Emily Parkhurst is the founder and CEO of Formidable, a media and membership organization aimed at high-level women leaders. She has nearly 20 years of journalism and media experience, including a decade with the Puget Sound Business Journal in Seattle, where she served as a reporter, managing editor, editor in chief, and president and publisher. She also served as the head of content for national digital media brand 6AM City, where she led the launch of 20 daily newsletters in cities across the U.S.

Ms. Parkhurst is a national award-winning journalist. The PSBJ won the Society of Professional Journalists Sigma Delta Chi award for public service journalism in 2018 for its Price of Homelessness package, the 2018 SABEW award for real estate reporting, and her series of stories on restraint of school children in Maine won the Sigma Delta Chi award for investigative reporting in 2010.

She holds a master’s degree in creative writing from Vermont College of Fine Arts and a Bachelor’s of Music in Clarinet Performance from the University of Southern Maine. In the early 2000s, Ms. Parkhurst played clarinet, flute, and saxophone professionally for the Bangor Symphony Orchestra (Maine), Seacoast Repertory Theatre (New Hampshire), and in the Boehm Wind Trio. She also maintained a studio of clarinet and saxophone students.

Ms. Parkhurst was the classical music columnist for the alt-weekly newspaper the Portland Phoenix for five years, where she covered the classical music scene in Portland, Maine. She also wrote reviews for the Classical Voice of New England magazine.