Pilar Gerasimo is a pioneering content innovator and healthy

Pilar Gerasimo is a pioneering content innovator and
healthy-living advocate. Her personal and professional
passion: Helping people lead healthier, happier, more
sustainable lives.
Best known for her work as founding editor of Experience
Life magazine (est. 2001), Pilar is also the creative force
behind RevolutionaryAct.com and the author of A Manifesto
for Thriving in a Mixed up World. In 2013, she accepted the
top post at the Huffington Post’s Healthy Living division,
then gave up her day job to consult and write a book on the
art of being healthy in an unhealthy world.
A lifelong vitality-seeker, Pilar has seen a lot of health fads
come and go, and seen a lot of solid science either
misreported or ignored by the mainstream media. She made it her life’s mission to help
others make sense of what is too often a confusing muddle of health and fitness cacophony.
Raised by a sociologist father and back-to-the-land mother, Pilar came of age in the 1970s
and ‘80s — an era where obesity and chronic illness were just beginning to gain ground, and
where diet-foods and fitness crazes were gaining steam right alongside them.
After college, Pilar flirted briefly with an academic career, then with marketing and custompublishing. A few years later, she established her own editorial-consulting firm and began
noodling with the idea of creating a new-model magazine.
In a competitive space dominated by promises of six-pack abs and bikini-body
transformations, Pilar saw that there was something missing: A whole-person, whole-life
health and fitness magazine that favored substance and credibility over sensationalism and
hype — a magazine that helped busy people consciously tackle the challenges of choosing to
be healthy in predominantly unhealthy world.
This was the kind of publication Pilar had been wanting her entire adult life, she realized, but
had been unable to find on the newsstand. So in 2001, teaming up with Life Time Fitness as
publisher, Pilar set out to create the magazine she’d been looking for.
Today, Experience Life has national circulation of more than 630,000 and reaches an
estimated 3.2 million health-motivated men and women. It has earned a stellar editorial
reputation and attracted a fleet of coveted national advertisers. It has garnered kudos from
internationally recognized health and lifestyle leaders, including Dr. Mehmet Oz, Dr. Mark
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Hyman, Dr. Frank Lipman, Blue Zones author and National Geographic explorer Dan
Buettner, Oprah life-coach Cheryl Richardson, and health advocate Queen Rania of Jordan.
During Pilar’s twelve-year tenure as editor in chief, Experience Life earned more than 100
editorial and design awards (including six Folio awards) and evolved into a number of branddriven extensions, including a robust Web site, a digital edition, mobile apps, and a variety
of media and educational initiatives.
In addition leading Experience Life, Pilar also served as Life Time Fitness’s senior vice
president of education, becoming the company’s first female senior executive. While working
with Life Time, she developed a number of educational and media initiatives, including a FM
radio show (“Get a Whole Life”) and a pilot program for a healthy-living television show
(“Experience Life TV”).
In 2010, responding to worsening trends in obesity and chronic disease, Pilar tagged
Experience Life magazine with a bold new mantra: “Being Healthy Is a Revolutionary Act.”
She captured what she saw as the 10 guiding truths of this emerging healthy revolution in
her richly illustrated chapbook, A Manifesto for Thriving in a Mixed-Up World (Experience
Life, 2010).
A bold, no-BS guide on how to get and stay healthy even in the face of serious challenges,
Pilar’s manifesto sparked a dynamic health-advocacy spin-off, RevolutionaryAct.com. The
site, in turn, launched a wildly popular interactive feature and free mobile app: “101
Revolutionary Ways to Be Healthy.”
With five-star ratings and more than 150,000 downloads, the app has sparked viral social
media interest, driving millions of Tweets and Facebook impressions while putting the
magazine’s high-quality content into the hands of millions of new readers.
Meanwhile, Pilar’s vision and voice in co-creating this healthy revolution have galvanized an
enthusiastic community, and arguably given life to a powerful new cultural meme.
An engaging public speaker, broadcaster and vibrant media presence, Pilar has appeared on
a wide variety of radio and TV shows, from Dr. Oz’s Oprah & Friends to Mayo Clinic TV. She
is also a frequent presenter at national conferences and internationally renowned retreat
centers. She serves as an advisor for a number of forward-thinking health-focused
companies, including Greatist.com, en*theos Academy of Optimal Living, and Hu Kitchen.
Pilar holds a B.A. with honors in Comparative Literature from Mills College, where she
graduated Phi Beta Kappa and was awarded a Fulbright scholarship. She currently splits her
time between the East Coast and her family’s organic cooperative farm in western Wisconsin
— home to horses, pigs, sheep, chickens, bees, flowers, herbs, vegetables and Pilar’s
adorable three-legged pit bull pal, Frida.
Connect with her via Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and her website, www.PilarGerasimo.com.
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