About me
Piera Gelardi is Executive Creative Director and co-founder of the award-winning digital media company, Refinery29. She leads a growing team of creatives who bring the brand to life online and IRL through diverse, original content, storytelling, and experiences created to empower and inspire women. She and her team have won numerous awards and honors including CLIO Image, Webby's, Digiday Publishing, and spots on both Inc 500 and Fast Company's lists of most innovative companies. Piera was recently honored as one of Ad Age's 50 Most Creative People of the year.
Projects
- 67% Project: Refinery29 Represents "Real" Women - CBS This MorningAs part of CBS This Morning's My Generation series with Refinery29, we explore the often overlooked 67 percent of women in America who are considered plus size. Despite being a majority of the population, women sizes 14 and up only make up a reported one to two percent of what we see in the media. Refinery29 co-founder and executive creative director Piera Gelardi and plus-size model Denise Bidot join "CBS This Morning" to discuss their efforts to change the imbalance.
- BLACK LIVES MATTER PORTRAITSFebruary 2016 For Black History Month the Refinery29 news team wanted to take a moment to not only look toward the past but also forward to the people who are shaping black history of the future. To do this, we profiled several prominent civil rights activists from around the country. We worked with photographer Paul Octavious to take that concept and illustrate it through a series of unique and powerful portraits – with our main focus set on incorporating a psychedelic lighting style to our lea
- 29Rooms Is a Creative Playhouse for the Instagram Set - NY TimesJeeYoung Lee with her ocean of trash at the pop-up space 29Rooms.CreditAmy Lombard for The New York Times (Article originally published by NY Times, By MELENA RYZIK, SEPT. 6, 2017) The South Korean artist JeeYoung Lee stood surrounded by piles of New York City trash: 4,500 plastic water bottles, 1,500 wine corks, dozens of sheets of cardboard and recycled newspapers. Ms. Lee, who lives in Seoul, was in a warehouse in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, last week, turning the local garbage into a cheery seascape installation, complete with gulls and rolling waves against a backdrop the color of Caribbean waters. At the center of it was a sailboat, where visitors could perch, bobbing on a sea of their own detritus. By Ms. Lee’s request, the newspapers covering her boat were awash in articles about Hurricane Harvey. Her message — environmental disaster atop environmental disaster, some of it made by humans — may resonate on Instagram, where images of her project are certain to be shared. Or it may get lost amid the selfies and bright visual pop of her work. Either way, she said, she felt it would make its mark.
- 50 Most Daring Entrepreneurs - EntrepreneurEXECUTIVE CREATIVE DIRECTOR AND COFOUNDER // Refinery29 RISK // Proving that a lifestyle brand can be a heavy hitter When Refinery29 launched in 2005, it was just one in a sea of fashion blogs. But the startup had larger ambitions, and over 12 years it has evolved into a holistic news and lifestyle site, one that’s eager to wade into thorny issues its competitors tend to run from. Refinery29’s unmistakable voice (think an ultra-supportive, ultra-informed big sister) has attracted a global audi
- Creative 50 - The Most Creative People of the Year - AdAgePhoto Credit: Mark Iantosca Christene Barberich & Piera Gelardi Global Editor-in-Chief, Co-founder & Executive Creative Director, Co-founder, Refinery29 (Article originally published by AdAge, by Ann-Christine Diaz) The world of women's media has its icons. There's Vogue, Cosmopolitan and, if we were to name one for the digital age, it would be Refinery29. Founded as an online women's magazine in 2005 by Christene Barberich, Piera Gelardi, Philippe von Borries and Justin Stefano, the media comp
- 37 Women Who Are Disrupting the Status Quo and Championing Gender Diversity in Advertising and Tech, AdWeekCelebrating top female leaders in media and marketing It should come as a shock to no one that there is a serious lack of gender diversity in C-suites across the country. Currently, just over 4 percent of Fortune 500 companies are led by a female CEO, while only 19 percent of their senior management positions are held by women. In the advertising industry, a mere 11 percent of creative directors are female. So what exactly is being done to fix this glaring gender gap—and, more importantly, who’s stepping up to fix it? Read on to find out about 37 of the women who are taking on that crucial task and disrupting the status quo. —Emma Bazilian Piera Gelardi and Christene Barberich Co-founders, ecd and global editor in chief, respectively, Refinery29
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Projects credited in
- This International Women’s Day, meet the 200 Women Redefining the Creative Industry in 2018Discover our 2020 list here This International Women's Day, we asked influential icons to nominate 10 trailblazing women who they believe are redefining the creator landscape. The result? A unique and incredible list of 200 trailblazing women breaking barriers and inspiring change! Only 36% of jobs in the creative sector are currently filled by women. At the top of the tree there’s an even bigger problem - women make up only 11% of Creative Directors. In an attempt to change this, our month-lo165