Tom Rielly

Tom Rielly is Founder and Chairman of PlanetOut Corporation, the largest online community for lesbian, gay, bi and trans people worldwide. PlanetOut offers news, entertainment and information to over 500,000 unique monthly visitors. PNO investors include America Online Investments and many Silicon Valley leaders. PlanetOut makes money through advertising, sponsorships, e-commerce, and royalties. Advertisers include Microsoft, IBM, Barnes and Noble, Music Boulevard, Paramount Pictures, Proctor and Gamble, Saturn Cars, United Airlines, Alamo Rent a Car, E*Trade, among many others. PlanetOut is the recipient of the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation Award for Outstanding Interactive Media, The Webby People's Voice Award for best community site, The AOL member's choice award, and the Microsoft Outstanding Content Provider Award. It recently received YahooInternet Life magazine's Best of the Best '98. In addition, Rielly received a medal for Outstanding Innovation in Information Technology from the ComputerWorld/Smithsonian Awards. PlanetOut was recently named one of Upside's 100 hottest private companies, and Rielly was named one of the Upside 100 most influential people in Silicon Valley. PlanetOut and Rielly have been the subject of stories in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Entertainment Weekly, Out, Time Magazine, The Advocate, and Advertising Age, among others. Previously, Rielly served as President and CEO of PlanetOut and held senior marketing and sales posts at SuperMac, Radius, Farallon and the Voyager Company. Rielly is also creator, co-founder and board member of Digital Queers, an influential non-profit made up of technology professionals who raise money to equip lesbian and gay civil rights organization with modern computer technology. DQ also trains activists nationwide how to use computer and online technology in their work. Since its founding in 1992, DQ has raised over a half million dollars in cash, goods and services for these organizations. DQ recently merged with the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD) on January 7, 1999. The combined organization will continue DQ's work, with DQ making up GLAAD's Silicon Valley Wing. DQ and Rielly have been subject of stories in the New York Times, Out Magazine, the Advocate among others. Rielly also co-founded the Yale Macintosh Users' Group (1984); and the New Media Centers program, which helps college campuses establish New Media learning centers on their campuses. (1994) Rielly writes articles for the Advocate and contributed a chapter, with Karen Wickre, to Out in All Directions: A Gay and Lesbian Almanac (Warner Books, 1996) and frequently speaks at industry events. Rielly is also an accomplished stand-up comic. His original satires, which close the annual TED (Technology, Entertainment, and Design) conferences, receive standing ovations year after year. This year his warm up acts were Larry Ellison then Billy Graham. In 1980 he acted in the feature film, "My Bodyguard." Rielly was educated at Georgetown University, Yale University and the Sorbonne. He enjoys filmmaking, movies, DVD's, science fiction and hiking. He lives in San Francisco.