Liza Donnelly

EXCLUSIVE
  • Award-Winning Cartoonist, The New Yorker
  • Cultural Envoy, U.S. State Department
  • Author/Editor of 18 Books
  • Visiting Scholar at Vassar College for 2023-2024

Award-winning author, writer, and cartoonist Liza Donnelly uses her creativity to draw (literally) connections between global events, feminism, and what’s funny. An innovator of digital visual journalism, Liza has live-drawn events including the Oscars, the Olympics, presidential debates, and White House Press Conferences. By disrupting how we make sense of everything from global politics to pop culture to gender equity, from history to the present, Liza invites audiences to shift their perspective, think differently, and innovate better.

Liza is known for her viral TED Talk “Drawing on humor for change,” which has been translated into 40 languages. She has written 18 books for adults and children, and is a contributor to The New York Times, Washington Post, Forbes, Medium, CNN, and CBS News. Liza’s most recent book, Very Funny Ladies: The New Yorker’s Women Cartoonists, is being developed into a documentary about women cartoonists globally. She teaches a virtual class with the 92Y on the history of the famous and beloved cartoons in The New Yorker and writes a wildly popular Substack newsletter “Seeing Things,” with an ever-growing readership. Liza’s unique and interactive programs enhance events, empower teams, and inspire innovation.

 

 


Liza Donnelly headshot
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Past Hosts Include:
  • Planet Green
  • Vanderbilt University
  • The Norman Rockwell Museum
  • The United Nations
  • Verizon Wireless
  • DLA Piper Law firm
  • Business Innovation Factory
  • World Affairs Council
  • Deutch Bank
  • TED
Rave Reviews About Liza Donnelly
A unique and thought-provoking speaker, Liza had the theatre in the palm of her hand. Liza's live drawing added a whole new layer of creativity to our event. Her thoughtful and smart interpretation of happenings and on-stage content brought a warmth and humanity to proceedings, and her ability to capture tone is unrivalled. What can we say? Liza is simply the best.

Virtual Pre-Rec - Humor is What Connects Us | ICAN Womens Leadership Conf. [14:54] - Get Sharable Link
Talks & Conversations with Liza Donnelly
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Innovative Disruption Demands Different Thinking

Disruptor Liza Donnelly leverages her position as a digital visual innovator through a surprising medium: cartoons. Making a forward-thinking point in such a limited space requires a significant grasp of the context, creativity, and a perspective that makes people laugh. For leaders and organization ...

Disruptor Liza Donnelly leverages her position as a digital visual innovator through a surprising medium: cartoons. Making a forward-thinking point in such a limited space requires a significant grasp of the context, creativity, and a perspective that makes people laugh. For leaders and organizations looking to disrupt their industries and stand out as innovators, Liza’s lessons in creativity, thinking differently, and not taking things too seriously are infinitely actionable.

Humor is the Key to Unity and Change

Award-winning cartoonist Liza Donnelly reveals the power of art and humor to unite us even amid divisive times. Humor has the power to encourage connections and inspires us to try a new perspective, transforming our differences into valuable opportunities for collaboration. In this powerful talk, Li ...

Award-winning cartoonist Liza Donnelly reveals the power of art and humor to unite us even amid divisive times. Humor has the power to encourage connections and inspires us to try a new perspective, transforming our differences into valuable opportunities for collaboration. In this powerful talk, Liza shares how we can use humor in our work and in our communities to find common ground and work together to build a better world for all of us.

A Masterclass in Creativity With Liza Donnelly

Cartoonist Liza Donnelly delivers a masterclass in creative expression, focusing on the wellness benefits of art. She walks attendees through the process of creating their own drawings for a unique and interactive experience. Liza shares how drawing can impact us personally and beyond – from how we ...

Cartoonist Liza Donnelly delivers a masterclass in creative expression, focusing on the wellness benefits of art. She walks attendees through the process of creating their own drawings for a unique and interactive experience. Liza shares how drawing can impact us personally and beyond – from how we think of ideas to transforming how we look at the world.

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Speaker News

Live drawing with Liza Donnelly – enhance your event, empower your team, transform your sense of innovation

For award-winning cartoonist LIZA DONNELLY, every event is a chance to be creative. A highly-regarded disruptor, Liza brings an infusion of creativity to every audience through both her live-drawing as well as creativity master classes. Her unparalleled approach

A digital visual journalism innovator, Donnelly has enhanced global events with her live-drawing – including the Oscars, the Olympics, presidential debates, and White House Press Conferences. In addition to creating unforgettable multimedia presentations for major corporate programming such as annual conferences and sales kickoff meetings, Liza also shares actionable lessons in creativity, connection, and collaboration by empowering her audiences to create their own works of art under her expert guidance.

Watch Liza Donnelly at the Normal Rockwell Museum >>

Watch Liza Donnelly on Women to Follow >>

For digital visual innovator Liza Donnelly, cartoons increase connection and understanding in the face of new tech

Award-winning cartoonist LIZA DONNELLY uses humor to create connections and expand understanding. As Liza wrote in a Washington Post piece about her historic solo exhibition at the Normal Rockwell Museum: “Visual art can help us see who we are. As our world evolves digitally and opens up viewpoints never before fully seen or understood, art can help us find our common humanity — not only in this country, but also globally.”

In this historic moment of tech innovation, Liza offers an empowering message of how to use these disruptive new tools to enhance creativity and collaboration. An essential balance for the exponential developments of AI-generated content, Liza inspires audiences to expand their perspective and drive innovation on their own terms.

Watch Liza Donnelly at Inspirefest >>

In her latest book-turned-documentary, cartoonist Liza Donnelly celebrates female creatives around the world

Renowned cartoonist and writer LIZA DONNELLY disrupts how we make sense of everything from global politics to pop culture to gender equity, from history to the present. Her most recent book Very Funny Ladies: The New Yorker’s Women Cartoonists is an anthology and celebration of women cartoonists around the world, and the impact of their work.

Liza’s offers distinctive insights on the creative process, and what it means to be a female cartoonist, in sought-after events. Very Funny Ladies is being developed into a documentary, and Liza has been in-demand for her popular a virtual class with the 92Y. A champion of both her medium and other female creatives, Liza shares how humor and creativity can inspire us to overcome difference and build more equitable workplaces and communities.

Watch Liza Donnelly on Women to Follow >>

Watch Liza Donnelly’s keynote at Inspirefest >>

Liza Donnelly uses live drawing to provide exciting coverage of events 

Award-winning New Yorker cartoonist LIZA DONNELLY can add a creative and buzz-worthy element to your event through her "live drawing" coverage. A technique Donnelly has famously used to cover major events such as the Oscars and the Women's March, through "live drawing" on her iPad Donnelly captures the people, ideas, and excitement of your event in real time. To best understand how it would work in conjunction with your event, you can watch Donnelly explain (and see examples) of how she covered a Hindustan Times conference through live drawing in the past. Donnelly can either share her drawings in real time on social media-- working with your own social media team and using the appropriate tags-- in order to amplify your conference and add a truly unique element. Or she can present her drawings at the conference's conclusion, offering a creative take on a highlights reel/ recap on some of the major moments. 

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Books by Liza Donnelly
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Biography

Liza Donnelly is a writer and award-winning cartoonist with The New Yorker Magazine, where she has been drawing cartoons and writing about culture and politics for over forty years. She is also a contributor for CBS News and CNN, creating political cartoons as well as live-drawing special cultural and political events. Donnelly writes and draws for The New York Times and CNN Opinion pages and Forbes. She is a designated top writer and cartoonist for Medium in politics and feminism where she writes and draws a regular column.

Donnelly delivered a very popular TED talk, which was translated into 38 languages and viewed over one million times. She also spoke at SXSW 2019, and will speak there again in 2020. She has delivered speeches at the United Nations in New York and Geneva; The New Yorker Festival; several TEDxes, Inspirefest, numerous universities, NGOs and corporate venues in the US and abroad. She has incorporated digitally drawing while on stage in her talks. Donnelly has been a Cultural Envoy for the US State Department, traveling around the world to speak about freedom of speech, cartoons and women’s rights. 

Donnelly is the creator of a new digital visual journalism she calls live-drawing. For CBS News, CNN and The New Yorker, she covered the DNC in 2016, and the 2017 inauguration, White House Press conference, political protest marches and various events for them since. According to NBC News, Donnelly is “a pioneer of on-the-fly sketching of live events” wherein she quickly cartoons people and events on her tablet and immediately tweets them out, sometimes with humorous and insightful commentary on the drawing or in the tweet.  

In 2016, Donnelly was the first cartoonist to be granted access on location to live draw and tweet the Academy Awards and red carpet, and she returns every year as the Oscar cartoonist.  She covered the presidential debates, State of The Union, election returns, the Emmys, the Golden Globes, the Grammys, the BET Awards, the Tonys, the Olympics, World Cup, Superbowl, literary events, and more.  Along with CBS News and The New Yorker, her clients include Fusion, The New York Times, BET, Medium, PBS, Narrative Magazine, ESPN, Stanford University, The Hindustan Times and others. Her innovative approach to reporting and commenting on events with live tweet drawing has been covered in Time, CBSNews.com, NBC News.com, Ad WeekUSA Today, and People Magazine.  

Donnelly was profiled on CBS Sunday Morning, MSNBC.com, NBC, has appeared on CBS This Morning, and has been interviewed on radio and in numerous magazines, newspapers and online. Donnelly’s cartoons and commentary can be seen on various websites: the New Yorker; Politico; CNN; Huffington Post; Salon; Daily Beast; Fusion; Narrative Magazine. Her work has appeared in print publications, including The New York Times, Glamour, Cosmopolitan, The Nation, South Hampton Review, Jerusalem Post, and The Harvard Business Review. Donnelly is the author/editor of eighteen books.  Donnelly is a charter member of the international project, Cartooning for Peace, helping to promote understanding through humor.  Her work has been in numerous exhibitions globally, and she has curated exhibits of international cartoonists, here and abroad.  Donnelly taught at Vassar College and the School of Visual Arts.

Currently a Distinguished Fellow at Barnard College, Donnelly is a recipient of an honorary PhD from University of Connecticut and delivered the Graduate School Commencement address, was a Thurber Prize finalist, the award for written humor in the United States, and is a recipient of a Reuben Award, the Salon St. Just International Prize, France, the AAUW Women of Distinction Award, and the Forte Dei Marmi, Italy, Satire Award. Her cartoons are in the Library of Congress Prints Collection, The Museum of Illustration and in private collections, and her cartoons are collected in numerous books around the world.  A member of PEN America, Donnelly is on the board of the American Association of Editorial Cartoonists.

Her website is lizadonnelly.com, and on IG and twitter at @lizadonnelly. She can be contacted at [email protected].  She lives in New York with her husband.