Babble

 

Rufus Griscom co-founded Nerve.com in 1997 and was the company's first editor. Since then, he has seen the company through many stages, including the launch of Nerve Personals and the creation of Spring Street Networks, which was spun off as a separate company and later sold. Prior to Nerve, Rufus worked in book publishing, not to mention construction and pizza delivery. His writing has appeared in Publishers Weekly, The Baltimore Sun, Wired and The Wall Street Journal, among other places. He graduated from Brown University in 1991. He has a 2 year old son with his wife, Alisa Volkman.

Alisa Volkman has served as Vice President of Sales and Marketing at Nerve Media since 2001. She has grown Nerve ad sales into Nerve Media’s largest source of revenue. Prior to joining Nerve, she was a story editor at Julia Roberts's Shoelace Productions, an assignment editor at CNN in Atlanta and a slave at Oliver Stone’s Illusion Entertainment in Los Angeles. She is the mother of toddler Declan and wife of Babble co-publisher and Nerve Media CEO Rufus Griscom.

Babble editor-in-chief Ada Calhoun is also a blogger for AOL News, a consulting editor at Nerve.com, and a frequent contributor to the New York Times Book Review. Her writing has appeared in Time magazine, New York magazine, Salon.com and the anthology One of the Guys.

Babble editor Gwynne Watkins is a Brooklyn-based writer whose work has appeared both online and in print. She is a consulting editor at Nerve.com, as well as a playwright and a lyricist. Her most recent show, the children's musical Space Pirates, premiered in May.

Babble editorial assistant April Peveteaux is a writer and performer. Her work can be seen in RADAR and The Life and Times of the Mummy. She lives in Brooklyn with her husband, daughter and cocker spaniel.

Sam Apple's work has appeared in The New York Times Magazine, ESPN The Magazine, and Slate.com, among many other publications. His first book, Schlepping Through the Alps, was named a finalist for the PEN America award for a first work of nonfiction. In 2005 he received the annual Faux Faulkner award. Apple's next book, American Parent, will be published in 2008.

Agatha Wasilewska is a freewheeling photo editor and marketing consultant born in Warsaw, Poland. Trained at Parsons School of Design, she has more than eight years experience in publishing and advertising in New York. Her independent clients include Burton Snowboards, Maxim magazine and Berlin Cameron United. She can't survive without snowboarding, surfing, yoga, her cameras, public radio, flip-flops, red wine, dirty martinis or spooning, and she can go from snowboard boots to stilettos in five. Henry (pictured) is her constant companion due to a snowboarding injury, and the best boyfriend she has had to date.

Nicole Ankowski has lived in Ohio, Oakland, and on the high plains of South Dakota, but is now proud to call Brooklyn home. She wrote for alternative weekly papers in the first two states, and tried to learn Lakota in the last. (The vowels can be tricky.) She just earned her MFA in Creative Writing and has been published in Beeswax literary journal. She is unable to resist good writing or bad TV.

Mandalee Meisner wrote and designed for 4kids.org and New Moon magazine before joining the Nerve staff in 2005. She has illustrated for ElleGirl magazine, and currently lives in Brooklyn with her collection of antique paperweights. She does cartwheels on demand.

Charles Yesuwan wandered onto an airplane and ended up in New York City. Like most Seattle-ites, Charles harbors a love of coffee, flannel and the great outdoors. He also maintains a love/hate relationship with a certain software company. Whenever he's not working, you can find him tossing back a few at an open bar somewhere in Lower Manhattan.

Yong Choi has been working at Material Media since 2005. He develops code for both Nerve.com and Babble.com, and maintains Material Media's Community Server codebase.

Lauren De Luca is an NYC native who recently returned home after a four-year stint in the icy throes of Rochester, New York, where she studied photography, refined her beer pong skills, and learned to embrace her inner geek. A fan of llamas, bad TV, and boycotting umbrellas, this girl enjoys spending her free time sipping Belgian beer on the LES and discussing simpler topics such as number theory. She currently lives in NoHo with a bipolar cat named Jäger. Her photos are at http://lbd0278.cias.rit.edu.

Derrick Sanskrit was born and raised on Long Island, New York. The Rick Rubin/Busta Rhymes part of Long Island, not the Martha Stewart/P. Diddy part. Despite his slovenly appearance and shaggy hair, Derrick claims to care about fashion and style. He is a self-professed geek in a variety of fields including typography, graphic design, comic books, music and cartoons. He has terrible posture and icy blue eyes.

Joe Lazauskas is the former corrupter and Editor of his college newspaper. He enjoys writing essays exploring the heart of vintage baseball reenactments, prose poetry, and seeing what happens when you drink way too much gin at a nudist resort. He finds no greater pleasure than drinking outdoors and calling the cops on himself, and he is terrified of graduating college in two years.

Jim Ryan is a rising senior at a small college in upstate New York, where he studies Creative Writing and (for reasons even he can't understand) Classics. When he’s not in the library crying over Latin-to-English dictionaries or lounging on his couch reading, he spends his time watching bad TV about rich people or looking at designer clothes he can’t afford. He does not know how to drive and has no plans to learn.

Meghan Pleticha recently graduated with a degree in English and a minor in LGBT studies (like women’s studies, but less angry and more fabulous). Having grown up in Northern California and gone to school in L.A., she’s just popped over to New York to see what all the fuss is about. She enjoys sonnets, is passionate about reality television, and never misses a chance to rock out.

Robert Quigley is a rising college senior, an editor at his school music magazine, and a sometime tournament Scrabble player. He spends way too much of his free time reading blogs.

Bianca Merbaum recently graduated from Goucher College where she majored in International Relations, and consequently learned way too much about nuclear warfare. She was also Arts Editor for her college paper and wrote a sex column that was banned because too many parents tormented her editor, expressing their "shock" to read such "pornography." Her current interests include drinking copious amounts of Kombucha tea (it's better than alcohol), studying zodiac philosophies, imitating Indian and Russian accents and seeing live music. She spends her free time writing at The Bean coffee shop, talking to strangers, reading Interview magazine and worshipping Max Ehrmann's poetry. She is known for her horrible sense of direction and laughing at people when they fall (she's really sorry but can't help it).

partner links