Julia Allison

As a speaker, activist and strategic advisor, Julia teaches how to harness the power of both mainstream and social media to create a healthier, more regenerative planet. She advises startups, B-corps, visionaries, scientists, artists, entrepreneurs and philanthropists on how to shape their stories and their media presence to get their messaging - and their solutions - out to the world at large.

Beginning her career as a journalist, commentator and tv host, Julia made over 1,000 tv appearances on nearly every network, including CNN, MTV, ABC, NBC, CBS, Fox and E, as well as co-starring in her own tv show on BRAVO in 2012. As one of the new millennium’s best known gonzo journalists - she graced the cover of both Time Out New York and WIRED at age 27, and wrote long running columns for amNewYork, Time Out New York, a love column for ELLE, and an internationally syndicated technology column for Tribune Media Services.

In addition, she has written for The New York Times, Newsweek, New York Magazine, The Guardian, Cosmo, Marie Claire, Huffington Post, and dozens of other outlets. She also covered New York Fashion Week for 14 seasons, reporting for Star, Time Out New York & NBC’s New York Nonstop, among other outlets.

As a speaker, Julia has given talks at MIT, Wharton, Harvard, and at numerous conferences around the world about media, innovation, entrepreneurship, transformational culture, creativity and happiness. She has emceed and hosted myriad events, from festivals and charity auctions to conferences and summits.

As an entrepreneur, she was funded at age 27 by a VC from Sequoia to found and run a social media agency startup that specialized in marketing of young talent, for which her team won a Webby. She is an angel investor in the technology startup Andela, the media startup Brit + Co., and an advisor to several startups, including the global leadership organization Hive and the biotech company Neurohacker. She's also served as a spokesperson / ambassador for more traditional companies such as Sony, Intel, Cisco, RadioShack and Unilever.

After a decade of forging a more “traditional” media career path, in 2012 she got fed up, sent herself to an ashram, and embarked upon an extensive series of over 250 transformational experiments - from Native American sweat lodges to ecstatic dance to transcendental meditation to ayahuasca with a shaman in Peru - for a book she sold to St. Martin’s Press called “Experiments in Happiness.” When the book was due, she still didn’t know the answer to happiness, so she didn’t publish it.

Julia was raised on the North Shore of Chicago, and has lived in New York, LA, San Francisco, and Washington, DC, where she worked on Capitol Hill as the youngest full time legislative staff member in the 107th Congress for then-Congressman Mark Kirk. She graduated from Georgetown University with a degree in government.

After living in Bali for the past year, Julia moved back to SF. Her life mission is to be an exuberant force for positive transformation, creating a world of harmony and love that honors all beings.