Julia Allison is a multi-platform media personality: columnist, television host, web entrepreneur, and public speaker.
Currently Allison co-hosts the chat show TMIweekly, which airs daily on NBC's New York NonStop cable channel and has been called "'The View' for the Facebook generation."
New York Magazine named her “the most famous young journalist in the city” in October of 2007, The New York Times wrote that she is "among the best-known columnists of her generation" in March of 2008 and MarketWatch called her "one of the most media-savvy twentysomethings in New York." Her unexpected August 2008 WIRED cover - on how to market yourself using new media - outsold every other issue in the last decade, save three.
Still confused? So were Allison's parents. For years. Ultimately, Allison is known for three things: her columns, her television punditry and her - (shudder) - "internet celebrity."
PRINT
Allison got her start as a columnist at Georgetown University, writing the first ever dating column in the student newspaper from 2002-2004. Her popular (and sometimes controversial) long-running dating column continued in AM New York from 2005-2007, and finally in Time Out New York from 2007 - 2009. After ending her column earlier this year, Allison remains a contributor to Time Out New York. She's also written for New York magazine, The Huffington Post, Newsweek, Cosmo, Maxim, Teen Vogue, Page Six magazine, and has covered everything from New York Fashion Week to the White House Correspondents' Dinner to the Glamour Women of the Year Awards to the Davos World Economic Forum.
TV
Beginning in 2006, Julia made over 450 appearances on every major network, including CNN, MSNBC, Vh1, Fox, E!, CBS, NBC, CW, FoxNews, and others. From 2007 - 2008, Julia was Editor-at-Large for STAR magazine, hired to be their tv "face" for the brand. She's done commentary for dozens of shows, including Access Hollywood, The Today Show, MTV's It's On with Alexa Chung, Showbiz Tonight, Chelsea Lately, Hannity & Colmes, Glenn Beck, Montel Williams, Fox&Friends, The Big Idea with Donny Deutsch, CNN's Reliable Sources, G4’s Attack of the Show, CBS’s Early Show, and the weekly Relationship 101 segment on Fox’s Morning Show with Mike & Juliet for most of 2007. She was featured in the 2009 HBO documentary "Youth Knows No Pain," as well as the 2009 Sundance Grand Jury Prize Winner "We Live In Public."
Allison conceptualized, executive produced and now co-hosts the popular chat show, TMI Weekly, from Next New Networks (the online media company of Obama Girl fame), launched in October of 2008. The show airs daily on NBC's New York NonStop cable channel, but can also be found on iTunes, Hulu, YouTube, Blip, or TMIweekly.com.
WEB & PUBLIC SPEAKING
"To know Julia Allison is to look into the heart of modern media itself," began a recent magazine profile about Allison. Obsessed with new media & web 2.0 (PR Week called her “a Web celebrity in the age of personality journalism"), Allison is the co-founder of NonSociety.com, a lifecasting platform - part memoir, part scrapbook - which was selected as a 2009 Official Webby Honoree. She's been hired to speak to companies like A&E, Unilever, Microsoft, as well as universities such as MIT's Sloan School, Wharton and Harvard - most frequently on new media, marketing & entrepreneurship. She is a regular panelist at tech & media conferences around the world, where she relishes the copious use of nametags.
Allison was hired by SONY in 2009 to be the celebrity spokesperson for their Vaio laptop, starring in their Fall/Winter national campaign (tv, print, radio & web) alongside Peyton Manning & Justin Timberlake (Sony.com/Experts). In the past year, she has also partnered with the brands Kodak, Cisco, Armani Exchange, Axe, Caress, Degree, Seaworld, T-Mobile, Smartcar and Pepsi's Propel, and worked with the organizations Oxfam, Women for Women International, and Charity: Water. Allison's true love, however, is mentoring aspiring female journalists & entrepreneurs with her quasi-patented brand of "somewhat unconventional" career advice.
She has two Facebook profiles, one Flickr, three Twitters, four Tumblrs, three Movable Type blogs, two Vimeo accounts, two YouTube channels, one MySpace page and a photogenic white shih-tzu named Lilly. And yes, of course her dog has a Twitter, too: @Lillydog. Please.
In the midst of college, Allison worked on a high profile congressional campaign, later becoming the youngest legislative correspondent on Capitol Hill, for a prominent Illinois Congressman during the 107th Congress. After graduating Georgetown with a degree in political science in 2004, she provided occasional on-air election commentary during the 2004 race and simultaneously rejected for a job at Bath & Body Works.
In the five years since, her proudest moment had to be when Oscar-winner Diablo Cody emailed to say she admired Allison's "balls," followed closely by Ashton Kutcher emailing to say he had "also been rejected for a job at Bath & Body Works."
Her father is still waiting for her to get a “real job” with health insurance.
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