Tom Rielly
TED Conferences Partnership Director & Humorist
Currently, Rielly is Partnership Director at TED Conferences. He is responsible for sponsorships, gifts and marketing. Reach him at tom[at]ted[dot]com.
Tom Rielly is best known as the Founder and former CEO of PlanetOut.com, which joined forces with Gay.com to create the largest gay and lesbian online company with over 5 million monthly customers. Based in San Francisco, the company is now called PlanetOut, Inc.
His original satires, which close the annual TED (Technology, Entertainment, and Design) conferences, receive standing ovations year after year. His deadpan delivery combines cerebral musings, wordplay, original props, and classic slapstick, including concussion-inducing pratfalls, bottles of olive oil drenching his head, or a dance duet with an inflatable lowlife woman.
His "warm up acts" have included evangelist Billy Graham and former Vice-President Al Gore. In 1980 he played the role of Reissman in the feature film, My Bodyguard. He also performed at the TYPO conference twice, the largest graphic design conference in Europe, and at YPO University in Florence, as well as the Aspen Design Conference.
