Affectionately known as “Dr. Goddess,” Kimberly C. Ellis, Ph.D. is a Scholar of American and Africana Studies, an Artist, Activist and Entrepreneur. She is an international thought leader on culture, gender, social technology and the digital humanities; and has been named one of the top “People of Color Impacting the Social Web,” one of the “Top Ten Women in Social Media” and one of the “Most Influential Black Women on Twitter.” Thus, she is a staple at conferences such as Netroots Nation, the Personal Democracy Forum, Blogging While Brown, Blogalicious, Black Thought 2.0 (Duke University), BlogHer and South by Southwest (SXSW); and presented stellar, featured panels at #SXSW including, “#SCANDAL: How Television’s Hottest Show is Fueled by Social Media,” “The Bombastic Brilliance of Black Twitter 2.0” and “A Conversation with Gina Prince-Bythewood” (Love and Basketball, The Secret Life of Bees, Beyond The Lights). She is also the creator of the tweetchat, “The Color of #GameofThrones,” which opens and closes every season of the show under the popular hashtag, #DemThrones.

A published author, speaker and producer, Dr. Goddess has successful campaigns under her belt and engages in digital strategy, civic tech and social media training, as well as consults on Social TV under “Fierce Star Media.” Her writings and appearances can be found across the internet, from Ebony, Essence and BlackEnterprise, to HuffPostLive, Alternet, Al Jazeera America and radio programs on Sirius/XM, NPR, BBC_WHYS, Voices of Russia and MomsRising as well as in the Women’s Media Center’s “SheSource” Directory. Dr. Goddess served as the Digital Director of the National Black Theatre Festival, the co-founder of #AskaSista, the founder of the civic tech project, #BlackPoliticsMatter, the author of the upcoming book, “The Bombastic Brilliance of Black Twitter (2009-2016),” and the producer of “You’re Beautiful to Me” (#YBTM), a feature documentary film about the journey with her Mother’s dementia.

As an artist and world traveler, Dr. Goddess has lectured and/or performed on Martha’s Vineyard, at the Virginia Center for the Arts, at the Banff International Center in Canada and in Jamaica, China and Dubai. Recently, she served as the closing, plenary panel speaker on “Black Twitter, the Digital Humanities and #Charleston,” at the Association for the Study of the World African Diaspora Conference (ASWAD) in Charleston, South Carolina. And most recently, she returned from South Africa, wherein she bore witness and participated in the #FeesMustFall Movement. In March 2016, she gave an IGNITE talk on “The Bombastic Brilliance of Black Twitter” at SXSW in Austin and in June 2016, she will give a keynote faculty address on “Black Twitter” for the National Endowment of the Humanities, Digital Humanities Institute at Purdue University.