Eli Pariser

Biography

Eli has dedicated his career to figuring out how technology can elevate important topics in the world -- as an author, an online organizer, and most recently, as a co-founder of Upworthy. Eli served as the Executive Director of MoveOn.org from 2004-2009. MoveOn revolutionized grassroots political organizing by introducing a small-donor-funded and email-driven model that has since been widely used across the political spectrum. MoveOn.org quickly grew to more than 5 million members and raised over $120 million. During this time he also co-founded Avaaz.org, which is now the largest online advocacy organization in the world totaling over 30 million members. In 2011, Eli published the New York Times bestseller The Filter Bubble: What the Internet Is Hiding from You. The book highlights the ways that important content can get lost in the newsfeed era. Eli founded Upworthy with longtime collaborator Peter Koechley in March of 2012. The pair set out to prove once and for all that what’s important can be incredibly popular, even if what’s popular isn’t usually important. To date, the Upworthy community has logged more than 1.5 billion minutes of attention on topics ranging from the criminal justice system to advertising’s adverse effects on body image to clean energy.