Former Editor, The Undefeated, Billboard, Vibe | Keynote Speaker
Author, media creative, award-winning culture writer, and new historian — Danyel Smith is completing Shine Bright: How Black Women Took Over American Pop and Changed Culture Forever (One World / Random House, 2020). Most recently, Danyel was a senior editor and producer at ESPN, and before that, a 2013-14 John S. Knight Journalism Fellow at Stanford University. She has served as editor of Billboard, editor-at-large at Time Inc, and was twice editor-in-chief of VIBE, in its classic era. Danyel is cofounder of HRDCVR, a design-centered hardcover media project created by diverse teams for a diverse world. She has written two novels—More Like Wrestling (Crown, 2003) and Bliss (Crown, 2005). Among other outlets, her profiles and other nonfiction appear in ESPN The Magazine, NPR, the California Sunday Magazine, Rolling Stone, Bustle, and The New York Times. Danyel lives in California.