New York, NY
USA

917-312-5999

isabel
at
draves
dot
org

Isabel Walcott Draves is an Internet startup consultant and an expert in strategic Internet marketing, social media, user-generated content, and online communities. She has worked at the crossroads of technology, media and start-ups for close to twenty years and loves to be involved in both the strategic and the tactical execution of innovative projects.

Lately Ms. Draves has begun to focus on working with artists and arts organizations, including as founder of the new community Leaders in Software and Art and as business manager for her husband, software artist Scott Draves. From 2006 through the present, she has worked with a series of Internet-oriented startups, including GreenHome.com, Linden Lab, and She Speaks, to develop design, content, marketing campaigns and revenue-generating strategies. During the late 00's, she also worked with the Cambridge-MIT Institute to document a multi-year grant program and helped launch the Business-to-Business Word-of-Mouth Marketing Practice at Edelman Inc. She has consulted for other start-up endeavors such as OpinionSource, Seedwiki, and Ember, and she launched the Pioneer Program at Sxip Networks Inc., where she promoted the concept of a new platform for online digital identity to a community of Internet insiders.

Before Sxip, Ms. Draves ran the Digital Security Board at The Research Board, a private think tank for Fortune 100 CIO's owned by Gartner Inc. There, she led conferences for a group of Chief Information Security Officers from the world's largest enterprises, identifying and analyzing emerging trends and conducting topical discussion sessions. She also project-managed the successful completion of a content management system on behalf of ArvatoSystems at Bertelsmann, a major international media company.

Draves was founder and CEO of SmartGirl Internette Inc., the first social media site exclusively by and for teenage girls. Word of the site spread virally through innovative word-of-mouth, garnering worldwide press attention and links. SmartGirl -- which featured over 20,000 pages of user-driven content, an active community of hundreds of thousands of girls and millions of hits a month -- was acquired by the University of Michigan in 2001 and is currently thriving.

Ms. Draves has a BA from Harvard and an MA from Columbia. From 2002- 2005, she was an instructor for the Media Management master's degree program at New School University in New York City.