Jory Des Jardins

Cofounder of BlogHer

• Born: 1972?
• Place of Birth: Evanston, Illinois

Primary Company/Organization: BlogHer

Introduction

Jory Des Jardins, together with Web 2.0 media entrepreneurs Elisa Camahort Page and Lisa Stone, cofounded BlogHer in 2005. She leads the company's partnership initiatives as president of Strategic Alliances. Her leadership in that capacity helped BlogHer develop unique and potent strategic relationships that make it easier for women across the globe to communicate and find information and products. Before BlogHer's conferences, publishing platform, and online community, women were only a footnote in the male-dominated blogosphere. Thanks to BlogHer, all tech-saavy women, from social media entrepreneurs to stay-at-home moms, gained a voice that could be heard worldwide.

Early Life

Jory Des Jardins was raised in Evanston, Illinois, a Lake Michigan community about thirty minutes' drive north of Chicago. She once blogged that her childhood home had a fluorescent basement in hues of orange, pink, and yellow and was filled with Beanie Babies from her mother's extensive collection.

Des Jardins was not a risk taker in her early years, despite her creative nature. She was a solid student and adhered to all the norms and rules. She dreamed of being a television news anchor or a TV talk show host. In the days before media communications programs were widely offered by institutions of higher education, Des Jardins chose the next closest major—English literature—when she became a student at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

Des Jardins received bachelor of arts degree in English literature from the university and then relocated to New York. She did not find steady work as an editor. She expected to follow the traditional career path of working her way up through the ranks of an organization over time. However, she found the process to be slow and unfulfilling. She abandoned and returned to corporate life several times before finally deciding to venture out on her own. At one point, she was offered a contract to write a book. While most aspiring authors would have jumped at the chance, Des Jardins declined the offer. Making that decision helped her realize that she wanted (and owed it to herself) to be passionate about whatever she decided to do, which at the time did not entail writing a book. A chance meeting with some California entrepreneurs, however, was the spark she was looking for; she packed up and moved to the West Coast.

Life's Work

Des Jardins moved to California to join a start-up run by acquaintances she had met in New York. The company survived for less than three years but gave her insight into entrepreneurship and what she wanted her own future to be. She stayed in California and started blogging. To pay the bills, she took on consulting jobs to help businesses like Pluck and Rojo launch their own syndicated blogs and began writing articles for the business magazine Fast Company.

While attending a blog conference, Des Jardins connected with early professional blogger Elisa Camahort Page, who in turn introduced her to online community consultant Lisa Stone. The three discussed the lack of female representation at the conference and decided to host a conference of their own that would be dedicated specifically to women bloggers. The first BlogHer conference was held in 2005 and attracted three hundred women.

To help attendees and other interested women stay in touch, Des Jardins and her partners began a blog using Typepad for hosting and publishing. Within a year, the blog had gained such popularity that Camahort Page, Des Jardins, and Stone decided to leave their day jobs and launch BlogHer as a limited liability company in 2006. Around the same time, they moved their blog onto the Drupal platform in order to enhance the site's design and functionality. The same year, the cofounders developed an advertising and publishing network designed to facilitate and promote women's blogging, both personal and professional. They also enhanced their annual conferences with sponsorship from industry giants such as Procter & Gamble and Johnson and Johnson, as well as guests speakers, who have included such notables as the president of the United States.

In her role as BlogHer's president of Strategic Alliances, Des Jardins helped the company develop critical partnerships with Fortune 1000 companies across the United States who were seeking to connect with influential bloggers as a way to promote and market their products and services within the context of social media.

Des Jardins also served as a consultant to Fortune 500 companies that need assistance maneuvering through the social media universe. Through her training and advice, she helped companies build messaging models and campaigns to expand the reach of their brands and have an impact on the blogging community. In addition, Des Jardins represented BlogHer on the board of directors of the Interactive Advertising Bureau and was an advisory board member for FeedBlitz and Juno Baby. She served as BlogHer's representative through public speaking engagements, performing as a keynote speaker or panelist at important U.S. and international industry events, such as BlogWorld Expo, the Marketing to Moms Conference, ad:tech Chicago, Web 2.0, South by Southwest (SXSW) Interactive, Girls in Tech, and the Monaco (Monte Carlo) Media Forum.

In less than a decade of business, BlogHer saw its revenue soar to eight figures, its conference participation rate explode into the thousands, its advertising network achieving top-tier distribution status, and the utilization of its BlogHer.com community approaching half a billion hits per month.

Despite the dramatic and swift success of BlogHer, Des Jardins continued to draw from her editorial roots by writing on women's issues and contributing regularly to online and print publications. Her work has appeared in Fast Company, Good Housekeeping, Sports Illustrated for Women, The New York Times, the San Francisco Chronicle Magazine, USA Today Magazine, and Working Woman. She also posts frequently to BlogHer on the topics of entrepreneurship and career advancement.

After BlogHer was acquired by SheKnows Media in 2014, Des Jardins remained with the company for another sixteen months as its senior vice president for global strategic alliances based in New York. She then cofounded the Virago Group, a Silicon Valley tech start-up accelerator for women, in 2016 and joined the digital consultancy Tribal Advisors as a consumer digital partner in 2017. However, she soon moved to ConsenSys, where she became the global head of community, in 2018, and after a year, she began working at Amazon Web Services in 2019 as head of global start-up marketing, but left the company a year later. In 2022, Des Jardins became the chief marketing officer (CMO) at the San Francisco-based company Countable, which sells software that helps businesses engage with their community for social causes. She has also served on advisory boards for Practical XR and SheWorx.

As a way to remain connected within her own physical community, Des Jardins partnered with Camahort Page and a few other local women to found a networking group for women in the Silicon Valley. The organization, called the Silicon Valley Supper Club, enables women in all stages of their careers to connect with and support one another with everything from job leads to reading recommendations.

Personal Life

Des Jardins continues to serve as a media consultant and write for prominent publications on topics related to women's business. She also manages From Here to Autonomy, her personal blog.

She was included in Ernst and Young's Winning Women Class of 2011. That year, she and her BlogHer cofounders Camahort Page and Stone were jointly awarded the PepsiCo Women's Inspiration Award. She was a semifinalist for Ernst and Young's 2010 Entrepreneur of the Year Award. Fast Company named her as one of the most influential women in social media and technology in 2008, 2009, and 2010, and Forbes magazine identified her as one of the seven most power individuals in new media in 2009. She was also the recipient of the Anita Borg Institute's Social Impact Award in 2008.

In her free time, Des Jardins likes to power-walk while listening to music. She married landscape designer Jesse Markman in 2006. The couple lives in the San Francisco Bay Area with their daughters and cat.

Bibliography

Des Jardins, Jory. “Business Blogging for Beginners.” Fast Company 97 (2005): 28. Print.

Des Jardins, Jory. “I Am Woman (I Think).” Fast Company 94 (2005): 25–26. Print.

Des Jardins, Jory. “A Reality Check.” Business 2.0 8.1 (2007): 115. Print.

Des Jardins, Jory. “When Blogs Go Bad.” Inc. 27.11 (2005): 44–45. Print.

“Study: 3 in 4 Online Women Are Active Social Media Users.” Public Relations Tactics 17.5 (2010): 10. Print.

Swartz, Jon. “The New Faces of Tech.” USA Today 5 June 2012: n. pag. Print.

Viveiros, Beth Negus. “Picking Up Chicks.” Chief Marketer 2.5 (2010): 41–42. Print. Describes how

Wood, Shawn Paul. "BlogHer Co-Founder Joins Countable as CMO to Market a Cause." PR Newswire, 11 May 2022, www.prweek.com/article/1755702/blogher-co-founder-joins-countable-cmo-market-cause. Accessed 6 Mar. 2024.