Jennifer A Nedeau is a social media consultant, progressive activist, feminist speaker and writer. She currently lives in the Lower East Side of New York City, and works as the Director of Digital Strategy at Air America Media.

Nedeau became specialized in digital efforts while working for New Media Strategies in Arlington, VA where she employed corporate and non-profit online campaigns utilizing the power of blogs, social networks, video sharing, social news, microblogging sites and message boards to analyze information, promote and protect her clients.

Nedeau began her career in political journalism and has been published by the likes of NewYorkTimes.com, Washingtonpost.com and Stateline.org; she has been a fellow at the Israel Embassy, worked on independent research for The Brookings Institution; worked for America Abroad Media and held several internships in places such as Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s Congressional office and NBC 11 in San Francisco.

In August 2008, Nedeau was selected to be the Editor of the Women’s Rights blog for Change.org where she facilitates daily discussion about the feminist movement as it relates to politics, technology and social norms.

Additionally, Nedeau volunteers for New Leaders Council, a non-profit that offers exclusive training for young leaders, where she serves as the Chief Technology Officer and participates as a member of local Advisory Boards. Nedeau grew up in San Francisco and attended The George Washington University in Washington, DC where she received a bachelor’s degree in Journalism.

This interview was conducted on June 15th at 6:00pm and has been edited for clarity.

6:00 PM  Anna Curran: Jen, Congratulations on being recently hired by Air America Media to be their Director of Digital Strategy. Can you tell us about your professional experiences that have helped prepare you for his job? And Can you tell us what you will be doing at Air America Media?

6:09 PM Jen Nedeau: Basically, I started out in political print journalism. It's all I wanted to do - until I realized that there may not be a bright future in that industry. So afterbeing published by the likes of NewYorkTimes.com, Washingtonpost.com and Stateline.org, I decided to try something new. I took a job at a non-profit that did radio and television programming on international affairs in Washington DC after graduating from the George Washington University.

While there, I taught myself basic tenets of online marketing - from Google analytics to blogger outreach. I really enjoyed watching information "move" from place to place online and the impact that simple marketing efforts could have with online content.

Due to budgetary restrictions, there wasn't the ability for me to do online marketing full-time for the non-profit so I decided to leave and take a position as an Online Analyst at New Media Strategies in Arlington, VA. I quickly moved up the ladder at NMS - from online analyst to senior online analyst to a project manager within my first eight months. While there I was encouraged by my managers to start blogging because they thought I was a good writer and it would be an opportunity to learn more about the online space. So I started a political-humor blog. It had a small, but influential audience and got noticed by a few women in the feminist blogosphere.
Around the same time, I also joined Twitter.

I decided to brand myself on Twitter based on the URL of my humor blog, which was humanfolly.wordpress.com. Hence, the name "Human Folly" on Twitter. Essentially, the blog and joining Twitter allowed me to propel myself into the political-feminist blogosphere and helped me land another job with Change.org as the Editor of the Women's Rights blog.

Thus, after 18 months at NMS and a year acting as a feminist blogger, I really learned a lot in both online marketing and progressive politics. I would say that the confluence of those two jobs, as well as my work with the organization, New Leaders Council, really allowed me to be ready for the Director of Digital Strategy position with Air America Media.

As Director of Digital Strategy, I am working with the Chief Digital Officer, Michael Bassik, and the CEO of Air America, Bennett Zier, to launch a new website this summer that will provide competitive, relevant and independent information for a progressive audience. The new website will integrate the radio show content with social media and other online efforts. Additionally, part of the job will be to rebrand Air America from a radio production company into a multimedia organization. I will be leveraging my marketing, blogging, journalism and political background to help bring Air America to the next level online, and off.

6:10 PM Anna Curran: Prior to working for Air America Media, you worked for New Media Strategies as Project Manager. What was your favorite art of that job? What was your least favorite?

6:16 PM  Jen Nedeau: My favorite part about working at New Media Strategies was the fun culture, hard work ethic and penchant for innovation.

I really learned a lot from my colleagues there who taught me how to navigate the online space - from blogs to twitter to social news sites - NMS has some great talent at the company and a lot of hard workers. My least favorite thing about working for NMS? If I had to say, it would be that often it was hard for me, since I worked with corporate clients, to find synergy between my extracurricular activities as a feminist blogger and launching a national non-profit with my daily work product.

6:15 PM  Anna Curran: Do you have a mentor who inspires you?

6:22 PM  Jen Nedeau: I am very blessed in that I have had several mentors who have helped me get to where I am today. They have all played a huge role in various points in my professional career. In college, I had the guidance of journalist and author, Steve Roberts, as well as Brookings Senior Fellow, Stephen Hess and former LA Times journalist, Johanna Neuman. Those three were true veterans of old-school journalism and gave me a strong writing background and perspective from which to cover politics and write about people and issues.

In the digital space, I've been blessed with many women who are willing to break down barriers as bloggers and women in technology. The likes of Tanya Tarr, Leslie Bradshaw, Jenni Collins, Shireen Mitchell, Cynthia Samuels, Jill Miller Zimon and many others have given me a broad perspective to think about blogging and the online space, as well as where women fit into that equation. So - we've heard it before from Secretary of State Hillary Clinton - but it's true. "It takes a village."

6:23 PM Anna Curran: It does!... You feel very passionately about digital bias. Can you tell our audience about the core trends you see in these areas?

6:29 PM  Jen Nedeau:Well, it's no secret that the internet is the future. And just as feminists critiqued the mainstream media for awarding the spotlight and editorial decisions to men for too long, I see similar trends in the digital space.

I think it's very important that as we build the future of information and influence on the internet that we make sure all voices and backgrounds are participating in this growth. Additionally, it's very noticeable that certain areas of the online world are highly antagonistic to women.

The seeming anonymous nature of the online space provokes a bizarre immaturity where sexism and misogyny seem to run rampant - which creates a higher barrier to entry for women to join the discussion, become online influencers and feel comfortable. I get very sad when I hear that some parents are keeping their daughters off the internet because they are afraid of online predators - which is a very real and scary threat - but this also thwarts women from becoming the ones who will create future innovation online.

I can go on and on - but I see my role, as a writer and activist, to raise the consciousness of those around me to any gender disparity in the tech field, or sexist behavior in the online space.

6:31 PM  Anna Curran: Now for a less serious question--You are involved in a number of professional organizations ranging from Women Who Tech to the New Leaders Council . What are organizations do you get the most out of? And who throws the best parties?

6:37 PM Jen Nedeau: Ha! Good question. Right now, I'm acting as the Chief Technology Officer for New Leaders Council and we're about to throw a five-day long party between June 22 and 26th in five different cities - San Francisco, Los Angeles, New York, Boston and Washington DC - to celebrate our "40 Under 40" awards. Our chairman, Mark Walsh, is running around the country on NLC's behalf to promote our leadership institutes and the concept of training the future "political entrepreneurs." So if I had to pick, I'd go with NLC for now on the "best parties" question. However, if you asked me who throws a better brunch - it's the Women Who Tech group. I had a very inspiring and enlightening brunch with them last Spring and it really opened my eyes to the need for continued CR (consciousness-raising) efforts in the larger online community about the existing prejudices toward women in that field.