Storytelling for Inspiration and Communication

Emily Ramshaw is the co-founder and CEO of The 19th, the nation’s first independent nonprofit newsroom at the intersection of gender, politics and policy. The 19th aims to elevate the voices of women, women of color and the LGBTQ+ community in American media with free-to-consume and free-to-republish daily journalism, newsletters and live events. Prior to The 19th, Ramshaw was editor-in-chief of The Texas Tribune, an award-winning local news startup that boasts the largest statehouse bureau in the nation. She is the youngest person ever to be named to the board of the Pulitzer Prize, where she is serving a nine-year term. In 2020, Ramshaw was named to Fortune’s “40 Under 40” list.

Ramshaw started her career at The Dallas Morning News, where she broke national stories about sexual abuse inside Texas’ youth lock-ups, reported from inside a West Texas polygamist compound and uncovered “fight clubs” at state institutions for people with disabilities.

A native of Washington, D.C., Ramshaw graduated from Northwestern University in 2003 with dual degrees in journalism and American history. She lives in Austin with her filmmaker husband, their spunky and spectacular 6-year-old daughter, and a one-eyed wonder dog.

Edu Giansante is the Head of Community at Wix and founder of Edublin.

Originally from Sao Paulo, Brazil, Edu moved to Ireland in 2008, which is when he started his first expat community: Edublin. His ability to share useful information in video storytelling has brought him to over 400K YouTube subscribers and over 50 million views.

While creating on Edublin, Edu also joined Zynga and led its Community as a Global Community manager. His work to scale communities resulted in millions of USD in savings, and he was awarded the most efficient employee of the year, in 2013. He later joined Dropbox, in 2014, with a challenge to start Dropbox's community strategy from scratch. Within months Edu launched the Dropbox Super User program and was able to fly them to the HQ in San Francisco, where they met the product team and Dropbox's founder: Drew Houston. In 2020 Edu was elected the Online Community Professional of the Year 2020 by CMX.

In 2021 Edu joined Wix to help shape its Community long-term strategy and scale to millions of Wix users. Edu also joined several non-profit mentorship programs to help people in their careers, as well as became an Angel Investor in multiple startups.

On a more personal note Edu loves his daily walks in the Dublin mountains with his beagle Danone, and he's the former drummer of the Irish band Medz.

Joel oversees several storytelling channels as Google's Editor-in-Chief of Internal Platforms. Before Google, he was an editor and writer in New York, Los Angeles, and Sydney. He has been the Arts Editor of the Sydney Morning Herald, Global Editor-in-Chief of Time Out, and, most recently was Editor-in-Chief of Webby-winning entertainment brand Rotten Tomatoes. In 2015 he published an essay collection, We're All Going to Die (Especially Me), through Black Inc.

Valencia Martin is originally from Detroit, Michigan and moved to Orlando, Florida with her husband and daughter in 1996. Valencia is a real estate broker and owns an independent brokerage firm. She has a masters degree in forensic accounting and recently graduated from the University of Central Florida's digital marketing program. Valencia enjoys writing, listening to music and entertaining. She has been on Nextdoor for about five years and a neighborhood Lead for about three. She loves Nextdoor's mission of community, connection and kindness and does everything she can as a neighbor to help Nextdoor fulfill that mission.