Lisa Williams is the CEO & founder of Placeblogger.com, the world’s largest searchable index of local weblogs. Placeblogger received seed funding from the Knight 21st Century News Challenge, which gives out $5 million dollars annually to innovators with projects that aim to define the future of journalism. Ms. Williams was also named 2009 New Media Woman Entrepreneur of the Year by J-Lab, a journalism think tank at American University.
Ms. Williams is a fellow at the MIT Media Lab’s Center for Future Civic Media. The Media Lab is one of the most well-known university-based technology and innovation centers in the world. The newly formed Center for Future Civic Media focuses on meeting the information needs of humanity over the next 100 years.
Prior to founding Placeblogger, Ms. Williams founded H2otown, an online community and news site by and for the residents of her hometown of Watertown, MA. H2otown became a nationally-recognized model for what came to be known as “citizen journalism,” or news created by nonjournalists to serve as a way to create a sense of community in their neighborhoods.
Lisa has worked with the Boston Globe, Dan Gillmor’s Center for Citizen Media, and countless startups and media organizations. She lives in Watertown, MA, with her spouse and two children. She's seriously considering buying a Vespa and spends a lot of her spare time taking programming courses and giving talks to journalism students on bringing an entrepreneurial culture in journalism. You can learn more about Ms. Williams' career via her LinkedIn profile and see a narrated presentation, "Startups for Journalists," here.
