Marcia Stepanek

Marcia Stepanek is a Multimedia Journalist, New Media Strategist, an award-winning news and features editor, videographer, and author of the forthcoming book, "Swarms: The Rise of the Digital Anti-Establishment." She teaches social media strategy and cause video at New York University, curates an NYU speaker series she founded on disruptive innovation in the advocacy sector, and serves as New Media Advisor to NYU's Heyman Center for Philanthropy. She also publishes Cause Global, an award-winning blog covering the use of social media in social innovation. She blogs regularly for the Stanford Social Innovation Review, MSNBC.com, PopTech and Justmeans.

A former Knight Fellow in New Media at Stanford University and former Web strategies editor at Business Week, Marcia is a frequent speaker on the subject of social media and the impact of new media on society. She was Founding Editor-in-Chief of Contribute magazine, Founding Executive Editor of CIO Insight magazine, the Washington projects editor for Hearst Media and an investigative reporter for Knight-Ridder News. She has received a variety of awards for her work, including a George Polk award for Consumer Journalism, a National Press Club award for Washington Correspondence, and a New York Newswomens’ Club Front Page award for Internet Commentary, for a series of online columns exploring the notion of privacy in a digital world. Marcia was a finalist for a Pulitzer Prize.

In addition to her academic, editorial and new media strategy work, Marcia also lectures on digital storytelling and the use of new media and video in news and advocacy at workshops and conferences worldwide. She also serves as Managing Director, New and Social Media, for US+Partners, a new media startup, and is lead organizer and curator of MobileFest 2013, a regional video festival showcasing short-form, nonfiction video shot entirely on smartphones.

In 2011, Marcia was named a finalist for the World Technology Network award in media and journalism.