Ruby Sklar (and Rachel)
Graphic by Angelie Zaslavsky
For years, Rachel Sklar played the role of the feminist single woman to perfection in New York’s glittery tech and media world. She was an indefatigable networker and promoter (for herself and others) who knew how to attract the limelight — to win the TV gigs and the Twitter followers to her own creative brand. A lawyer by training, Sklar was a founding editor of the Huffington Post and Mediaite; by co-founding TheLi.st, she pivoted to become the unofficial scold of the male-dominated tech world, but in her own relentlessly upbeat style, prompting The New York Times to describe her as the “unofficial yenta for New York women in technology.”
Then, unexpectedly, she got knocked up.
“I had a lovely summer romance, and got pregnant,” she wrote in a widely shared essay last year. “The relationship ended, the pregnancy did not. And so, here I am — 41, single and pregnant. Woohoo, I have it all!”
Ever since she gave birth to Ruby in April, Sklar, 42, has turned her knack for relentless promotion to champion other single moms, using her enormous presence on social media (54,000 Twitter followers) to highlight causes such as the prohibitive cost of diapers for many single moms (#DiaperNeed). And she’s needled the family-oriented Jewish community to be more welcoming.
Sklar, a Canadian citizen, still shows up at glittery events, but now she brings her American-born daughter along, as mascot and representative of the changing Jewish family.
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