1. For those who don’t know, tell us a little about your background.

JESSAMYN STANLEY is an internationally acclaimed voice in wellness, highly sought-after for her insights on 21st-century yoga and intersectional identity. As a successful award-winning yoga instructor and entrepreneur, she is the founder of The Underbelly, a streaming wellness app and community, co-host of the podcast Dear Jessamyn, and co-founder of We Go High, a North Carolina based cannabis justice initiative.

She is a regular contributor to SELF magazine, has been featured on the cover of Cosmopolitan magazine (UK), and covered in the New York Times, Vogue, Glamour, Sports Illustrated among many other domestic and international media outlets. She is also the author of Yoke: My Yoga of Self-Acceptance and Every Body Yoga: Let Go of Fear, Get on the Mat, Love your Body.

2. What particular expertise are you bringing to the Academy?

My expertise is in authenticity and harnessing the power of social media to tell a deep and rich story of the human experience.

3. What are you most looking forward to about reviewing this year’s Webby Awards entries?

What I’m most looking forward to about reviewing this year’s Webby Awards entries is seeing how social media has evolved and how other creators are using these platforms to bring light into the world.

4. What piece of creative work on the Internet has recently inspired you, and why? 

I am inspired regularly by so many people, and I have been really inspired by every creator I come across on TikTok. I am inspired by that platform and think it’s an incredible way to communicate. It epitomizes how egalitarian the internet is. Everyone who creates on there is living their most artistic self.

5.  What emerging trend or technology are you most excited about in your field of work?

Something I’m really excited by is the integration of brand identity for all people who are on the internet. I think that everyone who has a social handle somewhere on the Internet… a blog, their personal Facebook, their personal Instagram, or whatever the thing is… I really see more people understanding themselves as brands and being able to leverage the influencership that has always been part of the way we communicate with each other.

This is normalizing influencership, when really people have always been wanting to keep up with the Joneses, which is all that social media is. I love seeing everybody, from your grandma to your neighbor down the street, embody that for themselves.

We are so happy to have Jessamyn lend her expertise and level of care as a member of the International Academy of Digital Arts & Sciences. To have your work seen by Executive Judges like her, enter your work in the 26th Annual Webby Awards. The Final Entry Deadline is Friday, December 17th!