Keynote - Piera Gelardi

Piera Gelardi is co-founder and executive creative director of the trailblazing digital media and entertainment company, Refinery29. Her company has changed the way media and advertising speaks to and represents women and reaches a devoted audience of 500 million globally with diverse, original creativity, storytelling, and experiences. She and her team have won numerous awards and honors including spots on both Inc. 500 and Fast Company's lists of most innovative companies. Piera is passionate about using storytelling and creativity as tools to inspire and empower people, to spark change, and to heal. Her mission is to use these tools to create a more inclusive, imaginative, and beautiful world. Piera was recently honored as one of Ad Age's 50 Most Creative People of the year, Entrepreneur magazine’s 50 Most Daring Entrepreneurs, and was featured in Adweek as one of the 37 Women Who Are Disrupting the Status Quo and Championing Gender Diversity in Advertising and Tech. Always scheming and dreaming, one of Piera’s proudest creations is 29Rooms, the wildly creative, interactive exhibition of style, culture, and technology that’s become a viral event sensation. She is a frequent public speaker, appearing at events like SXSW, INBOUND, Creative Mornings, and TNW, sparking audience's imagination and entrepreneurial spirit. Her talks ignite conversations and offer advice on cultivating creativity, being the most you, and creating inclusive leadership and storytelling practices. She’s often tapped as a creativity, new media, and entrepreneurship expert on outlets like Sirius XM, CBS News, and Business Insider. When she is not burning the midnight oil at Refinery29, she’s exploring, learning, and expressing herself through relentless gallery hopping, podcast-listening binges, and breaking it down on the dance floor (which sometimes looks more like a subway platform). She is a passionate board member at the Lower East Side Girls Club, an organization that sets under-resourced girls up for success with well-rounded learning and outlets for creative expression and activism. “Be the spark, live with heart, turn it into art.”