LISA STONE, Co-Founder, BlogHer

Award-winning journalist and blogger Lisa Stone can teach a master class on reinvention. Lisa began her career covering politics for the Oakland Tribune before being recruited by CNN as a strategic programmer. In 1997, after giving birth to a beautiful baby boy, Lisa knew that the harried life that accompanied covering the newsbeat would not be conducive to her new role as a mom. So, she quit her high powered job and was hired by Web TV, where she worked three days a week producing news and sports segments.

After six months on the job, Lisa was recruited by an internet start-up, Women.com - where she was hired as executive producer with a four-day-a-week work schedule. Within four years, Lisa launched an 18 channel network that led Women.com to become the largest women's site on the internet. As she entered her fifth year at the company, the site was bought by ivillage and Lisa, who was now divorced, decided it was time to make a change. And so, she accepted a journalism fellowship at Harvard University and moved to Boston along with her son.

As a single mom attending Harvard, Lisa says she finally got to spend quality time with her child - picking him up in the middle of the day and attending those Mommy and Me classes her babysitter used to attend with him. "It was the first time in my life I got to calm down," Lisa says. But the calm wouldn't last long.

After completing her fellowship, Lisa took on a number of consulting jobs where she launched successful blog networks and interactive programming for many national brands including Hearst and Rodale magazines, E! Television/Online, HBO's Sex and the City, Knight Ridder Digital, American Lawyer and Glam Media. She also worked as freelance writer and was published by the New York Times, Los Angeles Times and Publishers Weekly and was recruited by the Los Angeles Times to blog on the Democratic National Convention.

Following the Convention, Lisa also began blogging on her own site surfette, where she came in contact with many other women who much like herself, were sharing their opinions on everything from politics to playdates, in blogs they created on the internet. As the phenomenon of blogging continued to grow and thrive, Lisa envisioned a way to bring all of these virtual writers together under one umbrella.

In 2005, she met entrepreneur and marketing executive Elisa Camahort and instantly knew she would be the perfect partner to help spearhead a conference for women bloggers. Camahort then recruited media strategist and writer Des Jardins and the trio went on to found BlogHer, an organization and website which brings together women from all over the world into one blogging community.

Since its inception, BlogHer has caught on like wildfire. The BlogHer Conference 2005 sold out with 300+ attendees, national press coverage and sponsorships by Google, Law.com and Yahoo, among other companies and their recent BlogHer Conference 2006 was also a tremendous success. BlogHer is currently at work planning their 2007 business conferences in New York and Chicago.

This year, BlogHer has also introduced several innovative and entrepreneurial initiatives including BlogHer ads - a division of the website that enables writers to earn ad revenue on their blog sites. They've also launched a successful virtual book tour for authors - with Arianna Huffington kicking off a virtual tour on BlogHer to promote her latest book, Fearless.

BlogHer's vision to provide members with a virtual phonebook listing categories for dozens of subjects being blogged about on the internet, has now become a reality. And Lisa Stone, is front and center - bringing together some of the best female writers from around the globe and enabling them to start turning a profit from their daily postings.

On the home front, Lisa fell in love again, moved in with her partner and welcomed his two children into her life. Her philosophy on the work/life balance is simple. "Balance is baloney," she says. "The true challenge is growing your ambition." More importantly, this mom of reinvention concludes, "Being a parent has made me better at everything that I do." To visit BlogHer, click here.