Small Business Advocate

RIEVA LESONSKY – BIO

Rieva Lesonsky is CEO of GrowBiz Media, a media company specializing in covering small businesses and entrepreneurship. A nationally known speaker and authority on entrepreneurship, Lesonsky has been covering America’s entrepreneurs for nearly 30 years. Before co-founding GrowBiz Media, Lesonsky was Editorial Director of Entrepreneur Magazine.

Lesonsky has appeared on hundreds of radio shows and numerous local and national television programs, including the Today Show, Good Morning America, CNN, Fox Business News, The Martha Stewart show and Oprah, and can regularly be seen on MSNBC’s Your Business. 

Lesonsky writes about small business for SCORE, Small Business Trends, SBA.gov, Business on Main, Network Solutions, American Express OPEN Forum, AT&T and The Huffington Post Small Business. In 2009, she was named to Folio Magazine’s “Folio 40” list, which honors publishing’s top innovators. In 2011 she was named a Small Business Influencer by SmallBusinessTrends.com.

Many organizations have recognized Lesonsky for her tireless devotion to helping entrepreneurs. She served on the Small Business Administration’s National Advisory Council for six years, and was honored by the SBA as a Small Business Media Advocate and a Woman in Business Advocate. The Collegiate Entrepreneurs Organization honored her for helping drive “the entrepreneurial revolution in secondary education.” The ASBDC awarded her a “Champion of Small Business” award.

Lesonsky is the author or co-author of several books about entrepreneurship, including Startup Success: Boost Your Chances for Business Success With Web 2.0, Marketing 101 and Startup 101, all available at her blog, SmallBizDaily.com. Follow her on Twitter @rieva and visit her SmallBizTrendCast website to learn about the latest small business trends.