Tiffany Shlain (born 1970) is an American filmmaker and founder of the Webby Awards.

Biography

Tiffany Shlain was born in Mill Valley, California in 1970. She is the daughter of surgeon and author Leonard Shlain (1937–2009). She is married to artist Ken Goldberg who is a UC Berkeley professor; they live in northern California and have two children.

Shlain is a Henry Crown Fellow of The Aspen Institute. She is a graduate of the University of California, Berkeley where she was selected as a valedictorian speaker for the interdisciplinary Studies Department and received the highest honor in art, the Eisner Award, for filmmaking. She received her BA in film theory and interdisciplinary studies in 1992. She studied organizational change at Harvard Business School Executive Education and film production at New York University’s Sight & Sound summer program in 1990. She serves on the advisory boards for The MIT GeoSpatial Data Center, The Fledging Fund, the San Francisco Film Festival’s Filmmaker Advisory Committee and the UC Berkeley Center for New Media. She also advises with the Institute for the Future. In 2010, she was invited to meet with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to talk about how technology is changing the landscape in society.

As a director for both theater and film, she has worked with Harrison Ford, Peter Coyote and Alan Cumming and was selected as an Artist-in-Residence at the Headland Center for the Arts and for a film residency at the San Francisco Film Society . She has been singled out by The New York Times, Variety, The Hollywood Reporter and the Sundance Institute for her work using documentaries and internet distribution to engage audiences. She lectures worldwide on filmmaking, Unplugging (Technology Shabbats), and the Internet’s influence on society. Invitations include Harvard, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Apple theaters in New York and San Francisco, The Idea Festival, Fortune 500 companies, the 92nd street in New York and the Sydney Opera House. She delivered the keynote address for University of California, Berkeley’s commencement ceremony in 2010.

Her video art installation, "Smashing", with her husband Goldberg, premiered in New York City at the Pulse Contemporary Art Fair. She has received a variety of awards (see below) during the course of her career for her work as a filmmaker, artist, internet pioneer and activist and she was recently honored with a "Disruptive Innovation Award" from the Tribeca Film Festival She has appeared on multiple TV shows including: Good Morning America, Last Call with Carson Daly & PBS' Tavis Smiley Show. Tiffany was recently featured as one of the 16 twitter stars to follow.