Laurel Touby blows into a room creating her own personal happening. A tiny, blonde bombshell with an intense gaze behind stylish spectacles, the founder of journalism site Mediabistro.com is likely to corner you with rapid-fire questions about what you do, then drag you across the room to hook you up with someone you must get to know.
Which is exactly what she’s built a business doing. And that dynamism is perhaps why she’s turned a profit in a recession.
Touby, formerly a writer for Business Week, New York and Glamour, began throwing free media bashes in 1993. They became such a time-consuming avocation that in 1997 a friend made her a Web site.
Touby designed it as
Network
