June Cohen - Early Career

Early Career

Cohen holds a BA in political science from Stanford University (minors in human biology, anthropology, African studies), where she was Editor-in-Chief of The Stanford Daily, which she describes as "another formative experience that has influenced everything I've done since."

Cohen was an early innovator in new media. In 1991, she led a team at Stanford University that developed the world's first networked multimedia magazines, called "Proteus". It was built in HyperCard, and used newly released QuickTime to integrate video. It was made available over the campus computer network, as a supplement to the campus newspaper, and was phased out after the advent of the web.

From 1994 to 2000, Cohen worked for HotWired, the pioneering website from Wired magazine, which introduced many of the conventions now commonplace on the web -- it was the first website to introduce a membership system, a commenting system, and ad banners. She was part of the team that launched the site in 1994, and from 1997-2000, as the young Vice President of Content, she helped lead HotWired to profitability. She also oversaw all creative development on sites, from Animation Express to the HotBot search engine. She wrote the Net Surf blog from 1994 to 1996. In 1996 she launched Webmonkey, the how-to site for web developers. In 1997, she led the widely publicized launch of "HotWired 4.0," which featured extensive use of JavaScript and "dynamic HTML."

After leaving Wired magazine, Cohen wrote "The Unusually Useful Web Book" in 2003, hailed by critics as "an instant classic" and translated into four languages.