The geezers behind Geezer

Laura LeBleu

Laura LeBleu really wanted to be an ice skater, but growing up in El Paso, Texas made that impossible so she became a writer instead. Along the way she has been many other things—Emmy-award winning TV producer, lead singer in an Italian band, voice of a virtual character, stilt-walking circus ringmaster, minor gay icon, NYC cabaret performer. But writing was always her jam. (She is using “her jam” because it is a phrase that irritates Paul, which makes it fun to say.) She got the idea for Geezer magazine in the shower. She has had many good ideas in the shower, but this is the one that stuck. You can’t tell, but in her pic Laura is on roller skates. She also wrote the dot-matrix-printed Submission-page silliness when she was in college. She shared it because she wants everyone to create with the irrepressible ebullience of youth.

Paul von Zielbauer

Paul von Zielbauer isn't your average first-born son of European war-refugee parents. Growing up in Aurora, Illinois, people would casually call him the A-word—"all-American"—owing to his good grades, athletic ability, and clear skin. In his twenties, he rode a bicycle from Hanoi to Ho Chi Minh City back when most Americans thought of Vietnam only as a war they'd seen on TV. After 11 years as a journalist with The New York Times, which nominated his reporting for a Pulitzer Prize, Paul decided to leave the paper just as the Great Recession was getting started, to launch a business that got volunteers to build playgrounds for disadvantaged children overseas. Paul now brings that same impeccable market timing and business wizardry to Geezer, where he'll work quietly in the basement until Laura tells him it's okay to come upstairs.

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