About

Short-n-sweet
My media clips and clip reel can be viewed here.

For speaking inquiries, please contact Jen Angel, Aid & Abet, 510-910-5627 or jen@aidandabet.org. (All other inquiries, including media interviews, can use the contact form.)

Deanna Zandt is a media technologist and the author of Share This! How You Will Change the World with Social Networking (Berrett-Koehler, June 2010). She is a consultant to key progressive media organizations including AlterNet and Jim Hightower’s Hightower Lowdown, and is a Research Fellow at the Center for Social Media at American University. Zandt specializes in social media, is a leading expert in women and technology, and is a frequent guest on CNN International, BBC Radio, Fox News and more. She works with groups to create and implement effective web strategies toward organizational goals of civic engagement and empowerment, and uses her background in linguistics, advertising, telecommunications and finance to complement her technical expertise. She has spoken at a number of conferences, including Netroots Nation, SXSW Interactive, Personal Democracy Forum, the National Conference on Media Reform, Facing Race, Web 2.0 Expo, Bioneers, America’s Future Now (formerly “Take Back America,”) Women Action & The Media, and provides beginner and advanced workshops both online and in person.

In January 2009, Deanna was chosen as a fellow for the Progressive Women’s Voices program at the Women’s Media Center. She also serves as a technology advisor to a number of organizations, including Feministing, The Girls & Boys Projects and Women Action & The Media. She is on the board of the Applied Research Center, a racial justice think tank and home for media and activism.

In addition to her technology work, Deanna writes and illustrates graphic stories and comics, and volunteers with dog rescue organization Rat Terrier ResQ.

Need a publicity photos? Check out this Flickr set. Don’t see what you need? Let me know.

Slightly longer, perhaps more entertaining

(Wait a sec– if you’re looking for something like a resume, howzabout you check me out on LinkedIn? That’s got my story in the traditional, neat, bulleted format.)

I grew up in the wild lands surrounding Binghamton, NY, and two days after my seventeenth birthday, I embarked on an independent study abroad period in Erlangen, Germany. I returned, much to my family’s bewilderment, with the radical politics of strong-minded convert; at least they were good with my determination to not only understand, but also to change the world around me. Mostly. After graduating with honors (and Phi Beta Kappa!) with a degree in Linguistics from the University at Albany, SUNY, I moved to New York City with a stunning lack of an idea of what to do next.

The next several years saw me tossed about the astonishingly high-ceilinged offices of the dot-com boom and the squishy-walled cubefarms of corporate America. (Best part of the cubefarm: prairie-dogging.) I worked for Deutsche Telekom North America in the Finance department, an ad agency called Toolbox (now: Munn Rabôt) as a webmonkey and then the Director of Interactive Services, and then back to DT, working this time for T-Systems North America, in the Network Operations department doing information management. Woah.

Alas, I was not meant for the world of “getting up” at the “same time” every day, and my inner overachiever was crying to get out to work eighty hours a week again. So, in early 2004, I struck it out my own, first working as the Creative Administrator of the Bowery Poetry Club, while pursuing political aspirations of organizing against the Republican National Convention. That’s where the Not An Alternative was formed; I also started working for AlterNet, and got involved with the Howl Festival (where I became friends with Surf Reality). In early 2005, I got hooked up with the Hightower Lowdown and have been working for them as the Interweb Emissary; it’s been a real treat to pal around with Phillip Frazer (co-editor and publisher) and of course, Jim Hightower.

Since then, I’ve had the pleasure of working with and for a ton of good folks–way too many more to name here, so go to my client list to see them all. I’ve been offering strategy development and workshops-’n'-training. I couldn’t ask for better work.

This all culminated into me writing a book about how social networking is changing our public conversations (and thus our individual activism and more), and that’s called Share This! How You Will Change the World with Social Networking. It came out in June 2010, published by Berrett-Koehler. I was also selected to be a part of the Progressive Women’s Voices program at the Women’s Media Center, and I’m a fellow at the Center for Social Media at American University, too. Hey look, a whole bunch of people think I’m smart!

I now travel the world and tell people things I think they might think are interesting or useful, and continue to consult with media and advocacy organizations on their digital strategy. In my “free” “time,” I’m also returning to my creative and performance roots, working on a series of graphic stories (otherwise known as “comics”) that will eventually become a multimedia one-woman stage show. WHEE.

Not enough? You can have a look at my client list and services I offer. Still got questions? Drop me a line.