Cindy Gallop
"Don't give a damn what anybody else thinks.”
Queens of Tech Podcast
60+ questions with female tech influencers about their journey into STEM
Cindy Gallop
Founder & CEO
Cindy Gallop is a graduate of Somerville College, Oxford, whose background is over 30 years in brand-building, marketing and advertising — she started up the US office of ad agency Bartle Bogle Hegarty in New York in 1998 and in 2003 was named Advertising Woman of the Year.
She is the founder and CEO of IfWeRanTheWorld, co-action software launched in beta at TED 2010 and subsequently written up and taught as a Harvard Business School case study, which enables brands to implement the business model of the future — Shared Values + Shared Action = Shared Profit (financial and social).
Cindy Gallop is the founder and CEO of MakeLoveNotPorn, launched at TED 2009 – ‘Pro-sex. Pro-porn. Pro-knowing the difference’. In 2013 she turned MakeLoveNotPorn into the world’s first user-generated, human-curated social sex videosharing platform MakeLoveNotPorn socializing and normalizing sex in order to make it easier to talk about, to promote consent, communication, good sexual values and good sexual behavior. MakeLoveNotPorn’s mission is to end rape culture by spearheading the Social Sex Revolution (the revolutionary part isn’t the sex, but the social). Cindy speaks at conferences globally and consults, describing her approach as ‘I like to blow shit up. I am the Michael Bay of business.’
Business Insider named her one of 15 Most Important Marketing Strategy Thinkers Today, alongside Malcolm Gladwell and Seth Godin, and cited her as number 33 on their list of 100 Most Influential Tech Women On Twitter, and number one on their list of Top 30 People In Advertising To Follow On Twitter.
Campaign named her number one on their list of Top 10 Trailblazers for both 2016 and 2017 and number two in 2018. She has a reputation as a highly compelling and inspirational speaker at conferences and events around the world on a variety of topics: her talks on the future of advertising and marketing have been tweeted as: ‘The most brilliant speech on the future of advertising ever — not the usual buzzword-laden bullshit’; ‘Watching @cindygallop slice and dice the ad industry status quo like a Ginsu knife. #purewin’; and ‘There must be a DeLorean parked outside, because Cindy Gallop is from the FUTURE!’.
InfluencerCon NYC introduced her as ‘Cindy Gallop is the truth Jack Nicholson told Tom Cruise he couldn’t handle.’
Together with Susan Credle of FCB and Margaret Johnson of Goodby, Cindy is one of three Campaign Review Committee chairs for the AdCouncil in the US, helping to make the work great.
Cindy is an outspoken advocate of diversity and inclusion in advertising, tech and business — she was Jury President at Cannes Lions 2015 for the inaugural Glass Lion awards, proposed by Sheryl Sandberg to celebrate advertising that shatters gender stereotypes in advertising, and in 2017 was turned by digital agency R/GA into a chatbot for Equal Pay Day that helps women ask for a raise — search AskCindyGallop on Facebook and chat to CindyBot on Facebook Messenger.
Cindy recently partnered with AARP on their Disrupt Aging initiative to challenge and change ageism.
Cindy has published ‘Make Love Not Porn: Technology’s Hardcore Impact on Human Behavior’ as one of TED’s line of TEDBooks.
It's been a pleasure, Jasmine.
Cindy Gallop