For Connie Guglielmo, Editor-in-Chief of CNET, Every Day is an Adventure

Fall 2021 • Spotlight

As a young reader in Brooklyn, Connie Guglielmo never imagined her path would lead to tech. Today, the self-proclaimed adventurer is the Editor-in-Chief of CNET.

By Alana Blumenstein

For Connie Guglielmo, Editor-in-Chief of CNET, every day is an adventure. The veteran tech journalist, who now serves at the world's leader in tech product reviews, news, and how-tos, sees everything, good and bad, as an opportunity to learn something new. “If you're learning something, and you're not hurting people in the process, that’s an adventure,” she says. “I wish that when I was a kid, people had reminded me of that.”

As a child, Guglielmo’s search for adventure led her to storytelling. In her childhood home in Brooklyn, she was often found hidden in closets, with her nose deep in a book. “I used to hide in closets, with my flashlight, reading,” she recalls, detailing how stories changed her worldview with new ideas and perspectives. “I’m not an expert in everything, but I have the confidence that I can learn anything if I put my mind to it. Maybe not become an engineer or chemist overnight, but …  I don’t fear it’s beyond my can.”

When it was time for college, Guglielmo set her eyes on being a reporter. The field was unheard of in her household. Shaking her head, Guglielmo remembers her mother’s shock at the news. “She was like, ‘Why would you want to be a paparazzi?’ I’m like, ‘No, it’s not a paparazzi. It’s different than that.’ That just wasn’t in their dynamic,” she explains. Yet she was determined. Just as reading allowed her to escape to new worlds, storytelling allowed her to create her own.

Whatever she read or wrote, she couldn’t help but notice the struggles of her mother, who had immigrated from Italy. Her father, who had Brooklyn roots, had met her mother while traveling in Europe. Guglielmo describes how her mother was unfairly dismissed by others. “She had a heavy accent, and people treated her badly,” she says. “Even in a place like New York, where there are many different people and accents.”

Still, Guglielmo carries that with her, naming it as her motivation for being a journalist. “I don’t like seeing people lose,” she says. Today, she oversees a global team of reporters, editors, and photographers, covering the world’s biggest issues through the lens of technology. Guglielmo herself is based in Silicon Valley, where she has also written for MacWeek, Wired, Upside, Interactive Week, Bloomberg News, and Forbes. Yet she never would have imagined her path would lead to tech. “If you told me, when I was in college, I would become a technology journalist, I would have laughed at you,” she admits. “I'm not mechanically inclined.”

Guglielmo, who attended UCLA undergrad, was not introduced to technology until college, while working in the school newsroom. “There wasn’t this thing called ‘tech,’” she says, adding that students primarily used pen and paper to write stories before transferring to typewriters and, later, devices like the IBM Electric. “After that, I happened to be just at the right place at the right time as these technologies were introduced to the world,” she says.

After graduation, Guglielmo got her first job working PR at Ashton Tate, a company known for creating one of the world’s first online databases. She received her Master’s in Communication at Stanford University, where her interest in tech continued to expand. In a field of few women, she began writing about the internet and the ‘World Wide Web,’ and penned early stories about up-and-coming companies like Amazon and eBay. “All of that was new,” Guglielmo says. “With tech, there was a small world that started in Silicon Valley, and then it has expanded to everything that you use today.”

But her upward climb soon came to a halt. “After 9/11, the media industry in the country kind of collapsed,” she remembers. She explains that many publications shut down, leaving writers like her unemployed. So, along with seven other journalists, she created her own: AGoodPeople.com. With no funding, they co-edited each other’s columns, and learned how to build a website from scratch. “It was good for us to all have this group camaraderie,” Guglielmo reflects. “As the group was around the country, and technology allowed us to share and write stories together, we got media attention.”

The attention was enough to land many of them jobs, and Guglielmo went off to become a financial reporter at Bloomberg. “What it showed me was that if you can be creative and inventive, you can get through anything,” she says of the time. “I'm friends with those people, many of them to this day, because when you're going through a difficult time you remember the people who helped you. Networking is important in any industry in the world. But having friends that can share experiences with you can get you through any period.”

With a liberal arts background, Guglielmo’s entire career is built off a dedication to learn. Her unfamiliarity with tech products not only taught her to be curious, but to write articles that anyone could understand. “Read a lot. Don't be afraid to ask questions. Don't be afraid to know what you don't know,” Guglielmo advises. “If someone explains it to you, and you still don't understand, do you know what the bravest question is? ‘I still don't understand, can you explain it again.’” 

In a field underrepresented by women, Guglielmo’s ability to look at technology from an outside perspective has pushed her to succeed where others haven’t. “We have proven at CNET, there's a way to do that. We are profitable newsroom, and I have expanded my staff over the past six years, which a lot of news organizations can't say that they've done,” she says, crediting her diverse team. “But it goes back to being creative and thinking about it in the long term, not just the short term.”

For Connie Guglielmo, every day is an adventure: because she makes an active choice to make it so. “Doing and learning just makes you a more interesting and compelling person,” says Guglielmo, whose mantra is to learn something new every year. Whether she is practicing the piano or weaving a pin loom, that mindset has pushed her to grow in her career and in life. “It's good to be a well-rounded person,” she says. “Otherwise, time just passes. What's the fun in that?”