CEO and Co-publisher

author bio Rufus Griscom co-founded Babble with his wife, Alisa Volkman, in December 2006. Prior to that, Rufus co-founded Nerve.com in 1997, and served as the website’s first editor and CEO. In the decade that followed, Rufus grew Nerve Media into a profitable website and online dating business, in the process spinning of Spring Street Networks, an online dating technology company, which was acquired in 2005. Rufus serves as an advisor to several New York-based internet companies, and sporadically updates a blog, www.momentsinsuccession.com. Rufus and Alisa have two sons, Declan and Grey.

VP, Sales and Marketing and Co-publisher

author bio Alisa Volkman co-founded Babble with her husband, Rufus Griscom, in December 2006. Prior to that she served as Vice President of Sales and Marketing at Nerve Media from 2001- 2008, during which time she grew advertising into Nerve’s largest source of revenue. Prior to joining Nerve, she was a story editor at Julia Roberts's Shoelace Productions, an assignment editor at CNN in Atlanta and a slave at Oliver Stone's Illusion Entertainment in Los Angeles. Alisa and Rufus have two sons, Declan and Grey.

Associate Editor and Director of Blogs

author bio April Peveteaux is a writer, editor and sometimes performer. She lives in Brooklyn with her husband, son and daughter.

Photo Editor

author bio Lauren De Luca is a NYC native who recently returned home after a four-year stint in the icy throes of Rochester, New York, where she studied photography and learned to embrace her inner geek. A fan of llamas, bad TV, and boycotting umbrellas, this girl enjoys spending her free time sipping Belgian beer on the LES and discussing simpler topics such as number theory. She currently lives in SoHo with her sister, her six-year-old niece, and a bipolar cat named Jäger.

Senior Designer

author bio Mandalee Meisner, a native Kansan, was voted "Most Likely to Herd Goats" in high school. After attending the University of Kansas, she moved to Brooklyn. In 2005, she began designing for Nerve. She designed Babble and now keeps it looking pretty.

Traffic Manager

author bio Megan Walton is a refugee from the world of book publishing. She enjoys pretentious books and reality television. She was raised in Brooklyn and lives there today.

Lead Web Developer

author bio Yong Choi has been working at Material Media since 2005. He develops code for both Nerve.com and Babble.com, and maintains Material Media's Community Server codebase.

Editorial Assistants

author bio Andrea Zimmerman is from Chicago, IL, home of the Cubs and deep-dish pizza. After graduating from Drake University, she worked abroad in London for five months, where she spent her weekends exploring Europe and obsessively stalking Jude Law. Before coming to Babble, Andrea worked for Glamour, lemondrop.com, and many of Meredith's custom publications. She lives in the Upper East Side with her kitten, Tesco.


author bio Emily Frost is a graduate of Wesleyan University. Before she started Babbling, Emily worked for The New Press, a progressive publishing company, and for Public Radio International’s “Fair Game with Faith Salie” and “Studio 360 with Kurt Andersen”. She resides in Fort Greene, Brooklyn, where she’s become quite attached to other people’s children (as a babysitter). She’s also currently assisting with A Nomad’s Life, a documentary about a Nomadic family in Eastern Tibet.


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