Amy Cuevas Schroeder helps people be better business people.
Amy Cuevas Schroeder (nee Amy Schroeder) is a New York writer-editor, content strategist and the CEO/Founder of DIY Business Association and DIYTogether.
She takes a reporter’s approach to business by asking lots of questions, listening, observing, researching and learning by doing.
Shortly after coming up with the idea for the DIY Business Association on the New York subway, in February 2011, she left her day job at a major nonprofit to work full time on growing the business. Fast-forward a year, and she's about to launch the second phase of the company, DIYTogether and diytogether.biz, a how-to for collaborative entrepreneurship.
BEFORE DIY BUSINESS ASSOCIATION
Amy got her entrepreneurial start in the mid-’90s when she founded Venus Zine, the magazine for women in music and DIY culture, in her Michigan State University dorm room at age 19.
After about a decade of growing the publication from a cut-and-paste fanzine into an internationally circulated magazine with a starting budget of zero, she sold Venus and moved from Chicago to New York.
For her first year and a half in New York, Amy worked two full-time jobs for inkpop.com and Girl Scouts of the USA (focusing on developing the Imagine Engineering project). She saved a year’s salary in order to fund the startup costs of the DIY Business Association.
Amy speaks and writes about the Age of the Artist as Entrepreneur, Branding as Storytelling, empowering entrepreneurs, and has written for NYLON, Time Out, New York Observer’s Playground and others.
Her #BHAG2012 is to become a leading actualizer of collaborative entrepreneurship.
@diybusiness @amyschroeder amy [at] diybusinessassociation.com
IN THE PRESS
• "Her Campus knows what girls want and isn't too shy to sell it to them," in the Boston Phoenix, December 16, 2010 (quote on third page)
• Apartment Therapy's Most Popular Posts … So Far" ("Amy's Vintage Modern Nest House Tour")
• "What's the Write Word?" (PopMatters invites music critics to share advice for up-and-coming music writers)
• "Who's Afraid of the Word 'Feminism'?" on Salon.com (March 25, 2010)
• "Venus's Next Wave" in The Chicago Reader (March 25, 2010)
• "New New Yorkers" feature in New York Magazine (April 12, 2009)
• Chicago Public Radio (NPR) audio interview with Amy Schroeder (January 13, 2004)
• National Public Radio "Talk Of the Nation" (featuring Kara Jesella and Amy Schroeder as part of "To Girls, 'Sassy' Meant Something More" segment)
• Indie Biz Chicks audio interview with Amy Schroeder (October 7, 2008)
• Chicago Tribune “50 Favorite Magazines” nominates Venus Zine
• Apartment Therapy House Tour: Amy Schroeder's Chicago condo
• Chicagoist interview with Amy Schroeder after selling Venus Zine
• USA Today Pop Candy blog, "Five Alternatives To Rolling Stone"
• The New York Times, "They're Making a List and Checking It Twice, But Why?
SOCIAL NETWORKING
• LinkedIn
• Facebook
• Twitter
ONLINE WRITING SAMPLES
NYLON
• Pink Mountaintops review (upcoming May 2009 issue)
• Thunderheist & Amanda Blank interview (upcoming July 2009 Music Issue)
• various book reviews (upcoming July and August issue)
• (March 2009 issue)
Beirut and Realpeople
March of the Zapotec/Holland
(Pompeii/Ba Da Bing)
Before releasing his Balkan rhapsody to the world in the form of his one-man brass prodigy project Beirut, Zach Condon kept a dirty little secret weapon in his back pocket: ’80s synthpop. While recording a godload of instruments including trumpet, ukelele, and accordion in his parents’ New Mexico basement for the 2006 release of Gulag Orkestar, he noodled with electronic sounds under the pseudonym Realpeople. Initially writing off his electro efforts as his “early work,” he now realizes the beauty of those experimentations by including new home recordings on Holland, the standout second half of this double EP. At times sounding like a sexier Postal Service or a toned-down Hot Chip, at others Condon huffs Air, such as on “Venice,” flexing smooth moves on beats and keyboards. Inspired by a trip to Oaxaca, Mexico, the album’s first half is a raspy revitalization of the signature Beirut gypsy oompah sound, energetically orchestrated by a 19-piece funeral marching band. The 22-year-old Brooklynite employs his molasses vocals for the majority of the album, sometimes sounding like a bossa-nova David Byrne. A result of nearly a year’s worth of soul-searching and self-reflection, March of the Zapotec and Holland are as strong as separate entities as they are cohesive in their fresh approach to Beirut’s hopeful sinisterness.
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CHICAGO MAGAZINE
"Discovered: Sexy Science: A University of Chicago scientist sets out to inject sex appeal into her field" (May 2009 issue)
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TIME OUT CHICAGO ART REVIEWS
• “Justin Cooper” (2.26.09)
• “Robert Davis/Michael Langlois” (2.5.09)
• “Bad Moon” (1.15.09)
• “Body Chatter” (12.18.08)
• “From the Arctic to the Prairie” (11.27.08)
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VENUSZINE.COM
• “What Happened To Revolution Girl Style Now?”
• “Yoko Ono: The Legendary Experimental Artist’s Unfinished Work Gets a Happy New Ending On Yes, I’m a Witch”
• “Sinead O’Connor: “Welcome Back: Nothing Compares To This Pop Star-Turned-Reggae Artist”
• “Todd Oldham: The World’s Most Craftalicious Man Talks About Vintage, Modern, And Why Susan Sarandon And His Grandmother Inspire Him”
