Joanne Wilson
GET UPDATES FROM Joanne Wilson
Joanne has had several careers starting out as a buyer at Macys to running a company in the rag trade eventually leading to spearheading sales for a start-up magazine/e-zine/events company called Silicon Alley Reporter. On to the non-profit world where she chaired MOUSE (Making Opportunities in Upgrading Schools in Education) an organization focused on technology in inner-city schools. She has sat on a number of profit and non-profit boards and has been involved with a variety of real estate transactions from beginning to end.

Joanne has been blogging since 1994 under the name Gotham Gal. She is involved with the start-up community as an angel investor and adviser. She has been a champion of women in tech by starting and co-chairing the Women’s Entrepreneurial Festival with ITP at NYU. Many of the companies she is working with are owned or started by women. The tech companies are Food52, Catchafire, Dailyworth, Editd, Editions 01, Nest.io, Red Stamp, Curbed (Eater/Racked) as well as Ricks Picks, Gotham Gym, The Moon Group and Cacao Pietro. She also sits on the board of Hot Bread Kitchen and the Highline.

Her most successful venture is being married to her best friend, Fred and raising her three kids, Jessica, Emily and Josh.

Blog Entries by Joanne Wilson

Making It: My Address to the 2012 Women Entrepreneurs Festival

18 Comments | Posted January 19, 2012 | 01/19/12 09:52 AM ET

The following is an address I gave to the second Women Entrepreneurs Festival, held on January 17-18th of this year.


This year we chose the theme "making it" for the Women Entrepreneurs Festival. A maker is a person who creates something. Women tend to create...

Read Post

Can Women Have It All? Define 'All'

Posted November 4, 2011 | 11/04/11 02:02 PM ET

We were sitting at Joanne's apartment the other day going over our plans for this year's Women Entrepreneurs Festival.

Our conversation eventually turned, as it does when women meet to talk about business, to our kids. And then we both had seen something in the paper we thought was the...

Read Post

Maya Penn, Budding Entrepreneur

Posted February 7, 2011 | 02/07/11 08:27 AM ET

I get a lot of emails and I really do try to meet with the majority of people who reach out to me. Though this is difficult, the opportunity to talk to interesting people is something hard to pass up. This past week I got an email from a young...

Read Post

Judy Solomon, Entrepreneur

Posted December 20, 2010 | 12/20/10 12:39 AM ET

Judy Solomon was my mother. She died this past week, taken away at the early age of 73. Old enough to have lived a full life yet young enough to have had her life cut short. I always thought she would live to the ripe old age of 90 something,...

Read Post

Brittany Laughlin at gtrot

Posted December 13, 2010 | 12/13/10 07:51 AM ET

Tenacity is a trait I admire. I probably have never met an entrepreneur who doesn't have tenacity as part of their character. It maybe be required. I was at Fred's Donors Choose meet-up this past week and had the pleasure of meeting Brittany Laughlin who is...

Read Post

Women, Entrepreneurs and Food

Posted December 6, 2010 | 12/06/10 07:30 AM ET

I don't think many people would disagree with me if I would argue that most women are the ones at home cooking up the family dinners on a nightly basis. Then why are most of the top chefs around the world men? Someone in the restaurant business once told me...

Read Post