Media Egg

Aliza Sherman’s Bio

“It’s a man’s world out there in cyberspace - but not if Aliza Sherman has anything to say about it. Her mission: empower women and girls through technology.”
-- The Wall Street Journal

Aliza Sherman is the Original Cybergrrl - an Internet thought leader, highly sought-after online marketing expert and passionate evangelist for the Internet, particularly as a valuable and useful tool for our personal and professional lives. She is a motivational and inspirational speaker who has spoken around the world about the Internet, social media, virtual worlds entrepreneurship and women’s empowerment.

Named by Newsweek as one of the “Top 50 People Who Matter Most on the Internet,” Aliza Sherman is a Web pioneer, online marketing expert, published author, international speaker and regular contributor to national magazines and web sites.

Pioneering Work

Aliza founded the first woman-owned, full-service Internet company - Cybergrrl, Inc. - in the early days of the World Wide Web,. She also founded Webgrrls International, the first women’s Internet networking group that grew to over 100 chapters worldwide in its first year. She has been building online communities for women since the early 1990s. She is the recipient of numerous awards for her innovative work on the Internet including the prestigious Avon Spirit of Enterprise Award.

In 1995, she built the first 3 websites for women (Cybergrrl.com, Webgrrls.com, Femina.com), preceding both Women.com and iVillage.com, and is considered the pioneer who helped pave the way on the Web and in the New Media industry for women.

Today, she is at the forefront of Web 2.0 and keeping an eye toward Web 3.0. She currently consults companies and nonprofit organizations on their Social Media strategies, soup to nuts, social networks to blogs to microblogs to audio and video podcasting to widgets to virtual worlds and more. She is working on her 8th book which will explore the intersections of Web 2.0 tools with our Web 1.0 tools, our work and our lives.

New Directions

In 2007, Aliza turned her love of blogging into providing pro-blogging services for clients including Web Worker Daily reviewing the latest cutting edge Web applications and pondering the ever changing landscape of our Web 2.0 work and world. She is also regularly blogging on WorkItMom as Entrepreneur Mom. More recently, she has taken her love of radio production into the world of podcasting with Small Biz Tech Girl, part of the Quick and Dirty Tips network and a podcast about Second Life.

In 2005, Aliza moved from new media to “old media,” producing, writing and narrating an original 12-part documentary series for Wyoming Public Television - “Wyoming Families First.” She and her husband started a production company - Moonbow Productions, Inc. - to develop film projects, publish books and create art with a purpose. Her first independent film is about miscarriage.

She has produced radio segments for “Marketplace” heard on NPR as well as for Wyoming Public Radio and Alaska Public Radio Network.

She is a regular freelance contributor to Entrepreneur, WomenEntrepreneur.com, Home Business, Pink Magazine, Professional Woman, Minority Engineer, and many others. Her 7th book - a business guide to the Internet for late adopters called “Streetwise Ecommerce” - was published by Adams Media in November 2007. Her previous book for Adams Media was “The Everything Blogging Book.”

She continues to work on a variety of multimedia projects including a book about her year-long solo travels across the country in an old RV and a handbook about miscarriage to help bring much needed information to women.

Recent Activities

In 2008, Aliza was given an award for Best Nonfiction Writing in the How-To Category by the Alaska Professional Communicators, part of the National Press Women organization, for her book “Streetwise Ecommerce” . A few months later, her book placed first in Best Nonfiction Writing in the How-To Category for the National Press Women’s overall national competition.

Last year, Aliza spoke at the Women’s Forum in Deauville, France as well as at the annual convention for the Society of American Travel Writers in Santiago, Chile. She also spoke about online communities at BlogHer 07 in Chicago and about blogging at several events in Anchorage, Alaska. More recently, she spoke about social networks at BizJam Seattle and about the intersection of blogging and Second Life at BlogHer 08.

Aliza received the 2004 Small Business Administration’s annual Small Business Journalist Award in the state of Wyoming. She appeared as a regular guest on Wyoming Public Radio’s evening talk show “Wyoming Today,” speaking on business and Internet topics.

Consulting & Advising

Most recently, Aliza has focused her Internet work on social media marketing, virtual world marketing and promotions and pro-blogging while continuing to write for print publications, web sites, blogs and also consult corporations and nonprofit organizations about their Internet strategies.

While with Cybergrrl, Inc., she was a highly regarded Internet strategy consultant for major corporations seeking to reach women online including Avon Products, Inc. and Estee Lauder Companies, Inc. for whom her company built the first web sites for the Jane Cosmetics and Origins brands. She also built the first breast cancer awareness resource online for Avon’s Breast Cancer Awareness Crusade.

Her company pioneered one of the first custom shopping carts on the Web for another client - Dr. Atkins. She also consulted non-profit organizations including Girls, Inc., the National Alliance of Breast Cancer Organizations, the Bone Marrow Foundation, and NYC Planned Parenthood on their Internet strategies.

In addition to serving on the Advisory Board for Wyndham’s “Women on Their Way” program, the “Frank About Women” program and Oxygen/Markle Pulse, she has beenan advisor to several nonprofit organizations for girls including GenAustin and numerous websites and women-owned businesses such as HipGuide and College Broadband. She was part of the American Association of University Women’s gender and technology task force and has served on the SBA Braintrust for women-owned businesses.

Extensive Press Coverage

She has been profiled internationally as well as in U.S. publications such as PEOPLE, USA TODAY, WALL STREET JOURNAL, US NEWS and WORLD REPORT, TIME DIGITAL, and ELLE magazine. She has been featured on CBS News with Dan Rather, CBS “This Morning,” Fox “Good Day New York,” Lifetime TV’s “New Attitudes,” and has had frequent appearances as an Internet expert and book author on CNN, CNN-FN, MSNBC, and CNBC. Radio credits include NPR, CBS Radio, Newsweek Radio and numerous local radio talk shows and Internet radio shows.

In 1999, she appeared on the cover of USA TODAY as part of a technology summit and was the only woman and the only small business owner on the panel of today’s technology leaders including Michael Dell of Dell Computers and the CEOs of Lucent Technologies, 3Com and Comcast.

Book Credits

Aliza Sherman is the author of 7 books including:
Streetwise Ecommerce (Adams Media, 2007)
The Everything Blogging Book (Adams Media, 2006)
PowerTools for Women in Business: 10 Ways to Succeed in Life and Work (Entrepreneur Press, 2001),
Cybergrrl @ Work: Tips and Inspiration for the Professional You (Penguin Putnam/Berkeley Books, 2001) and
Cybergrrl: A Woman’s Guide to the World Wide Web (Random House/Ballantine, 1998)
among other books…

Personal

Aliza spent all of 2001 on an extended double booktour promoting her 2nd and 3rd books, traveling the country in an RV with her chihuahuas. Her travel diary can be read at RVGirl.com. She is married to a wonderful man, and they live in Alaska with their beautiful baby girl, a Black Lab & a little Chihuahua.