Women in Journalism: A new series celebrating women leading sustainable business innovation in news

Journalism requires more than just great reporting. For news organizations to thrive and serve their communities, they need diversified revenue plans, an audience-first approach to product development, and thoughtful audience and community engagement strategies. 

In many news organizations around the world, women are leading these efforts to achieve equity and sustainability during a time where the only constant seems to be change.

March is Women’s History Month, and to celebrate, my colleagues and I at The Lenfest Institute are highlighting the work of 10 women leading and supporting business and product innovation. Each woman comes from a different background, works at a different type of organization, and is at a different point in their career.  

Over the next month, we will publish Q&As with each woman that focuses on the accomplishments, challenges, and lessons learned from their lives and careers.

We’ll publish the first issue on Tuesday, March 8 — International Women’s Day — in our Solution Set newsletter. You can sign up here to get it delivered to your inbox. We will publish a new section every Tuesday throughout March.

We began this project last year as a way to shine a light on the journeys of women working in news and to share their words of wisdom in hopes of guiding other young women on their own journeys. There is no shortage of incredible women in this industry, and we are so glad to celebrate another group. 

My colleagues Hayley Slusser, Mabedi Sennanyana, Samiya Green, and I spoke with a group of 10 women whose work falls on the business side of news. Some of these women are in the early-to-mid stages of their careers, and some are executives or co-founders. Some began working in newsrooms and others came to journalism from outside the industry. However, they each have unique stories and are all committed to an equitable and thriving future for news.

Here is the list of women we spoke to for this year’s Women in Journalism project: 

• Sandra Clark, CEO, StoryCorps
• Mary Walter-Brown, CEO & Founder, News Revenue Hub
• Mandy Jenkins, Head of Product, Factal
• DeAnna Tisdale Johnson, Publisher & Editor in Chief, The Jackson Advocate
• Kyra Kyles, CEO, YR Media
• Kiran Nazish, Journalist & Founding Director, Coalition for Women In Journalism
• Anna Nirmala, Vice President, Portfolio Success, American Journalism Project
• Jessica Sweeney, Development Director, The Salt Lake Tribune
• Gillian White, Senior VP of Programming and Revenue, Capital B
• Amanda Zamora, Co-Founder & Publisher, The 19th

We are excited to share more about these remarkable women and their stories throughout the month. Each week will be focused on a different stage in their careers.

Catch-up on all three parts of the series here:

• The Beginning
• The Path
• The Future

We are confident that their words will serve as inspiration for all of us as we continue pushing this important work forward.