June Cohen

A journalist by training, June Cohen has spent most of her career at the intersection of media and new technology. In her current role, as Director of TED Media, she's focused on thoughtfully extending the legendary TED Conference in new directions. She led the development of TEDTalks, the ground-breaking podcast series that launched June 2006. She also produces TED's salons, edits the TEDBlog, and co-produces the conference in Monterey.

Prior to joining TED, June had been creating innovative media for nearly 15 years. In 1991, she led the Stanford University team that developed the world’s first multimedia publication, dubbed "Proteus." Taking advantage of just-released QuickTime, Proteus was written in HyperCard and distributed over the campus computer network. It attracted international news coverage as a harbinger of things to come.

Then, in 1994, June helped launch HotWired.com, the world’s first professional website (and spin-off of Wired Magazine). So she was in the room when the first ad banner went live on the web. While at HotWired, she wrote "Net Surf," one of the web’s first blogs, documenting such historical moments as the launch of Amazon.com. She also founded Webmonkey.com, the much-loved web-developers’ site used by millions. Later, as HotWired’s VP of Content, she played a key role on a range of innovative and profitable sites, from Animation Express to the HotBot search engine.

In 2003, June published The Unusually Useful Web Book, which was hailed by critics as “an instant classic” and translated into four languages. Thanks to the Czech translation, she's known in Eastern Europe as "June Cohenova," which makes her sound like a really awesome tennis player. June holds a BA from Stanford, where she was Editor in Chief of The Stanford Daily. She now lives in New York, where she occasionally talks about things other than the Web.