Short-n-sweet

Deanna Zandt is a media technologist and consultant to key progressive media organizations including AlterNet and the Hightower Lowdown, and hosts TechGrrl Tips on GRITtv with Laura Flanders. She works with groups to create and implement effective web strategies toward organizational goals of civic engagement and empowerment, and uses her background in linguistics, advertising, telecommunications and finance to complement her technical expertise. Deanna also works with New York-based independent artists such as John S. Hall/King Missile, Surf Reality and the Art Stars to promote radical performances in downtown Manhattan, and is a member of the Brooklyn-based Not An Alternative political art collective.

Slightly longer, perhaps more entertaining

(Wait a sec– if you’re looking for something like a resume, howzabout you check me out on LinkedIn? That’s got my story in the traditional, neat, bulleted format.)

I grew up in the wild lands surrounding Binghamton, NY, and two days after my seventeenth birthday, I embarked on an independent study abroad period in Erlangen, Germany. I returned, much to my family’s bewilderment, with the radical politics of strong-minded convert; at least they were good with my determination to not only understand, but also to change the world around me. Mostly. After graduating with honors (and Phi Beta Kappa!) with a degree in Linguistics from the University at Albany, SUNY, I moved to New York City with a stunning lack of an idea of what to do next.

The next several years saw me tossed about the astonishingly high-ceilinged offices of the dot-com boom and the squishy-walled cubefarms of corporate America. (Best part of the cubefarm: prairie-dogging.) I worked for Deutsche Telekom North America in the Finance department, an ad agency called Toolbox (now: Munn Rabôt) as a webmonkey and then the Director of Interactive Services, and then back to DT, working this time for T-Systems North America, in the Network Operations department doing information management. Woah.

Alas, I was not meant for the world of “getting up” at the “same time” every day, and my inner overachiever was crying to get out to work eighty hours a week again. So, in early 2004, I struck it out my own, first working as the Creative Administrator of the Bowery Poetry Club, while pursuing political aspirations of organizing against the Republican National Convention. That’s where the Not An Alternative was formed; I also started working for AlterNet, and got involved with the Howl Festival (where I became friends with Surf Reality).

Since then, it’s been a rollercoaster, whirlwind of hard work and good times. You can have a look at my client list and services I offer to get an idea of what’s going on these days. Still got questions? Drop me a line.