Elise Hu keynote speaker
Elise Hu keynote speaker

Elise Hu

Award-winning journalist

Speaker Themes

  • Women’s empowerment
  • Future technologies and society
  • Beauty and aesthetic culture
  • Experienced host, interviewer and moderator

Travels from

Los Angeles, USA

BIOGRAPHY

Elise is a Los Angeles-based journalist, podcaster, author, and media entrepreneur. She’s the presenter/host of TED Talks Dailythe flagship podcast from TED, and two influential business podcasts — Microsoft’s WorkLab, Accenture’s Built for Change

Elise is also contract correspondent for VICE News Tonight and a host-at large at NPR, where she spent nearly a decade as a reporter. Elise has reported stories from more than a dozen countries as an international correspondent, and opened NPR’s first-ever Seoul bureau, in 2015. Her debut nonfiction book, Flawless: Lessons on Looks and Culture from the K-Beauty Capital, examines the global rise of the K-beauty industry, the values it sells and the power of beauty itself. 

She also created the Gracie-award winning video series Elise Tries. In 2009, Elise helped found The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit digital startup after stops at many stations as a television news reporter.

In addition to her hosting and reporting work, Elise co-founded and helps lead an all-woman podcast production house, Reasonable Volume. The team produces bespoke podcasts for clients ranging from individuals to non-profits to multi-billion dollar brands.

An honors graduate of the University of Missouri-Columbia’s School of Journalism, Elise’s work has earned a Gannett Foundation Award for Innovation in Watchdog Journalism, a National Edward R. Murrow award for best online video and The Austin Chronicle once dubiously named her the “Best TV Reporter Who Can Write.”

Outside of work, she is a senior fellow at the University of Southern California’s Annenberg Innovation Lab, sits on the board of Grist magazine and is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. A mother of three girls, she spends an inordinate amount of time doing other people’s hair.

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