TIME Announces New Hires and Promotions

TIME Editor Edward Felsenthal sent the following note to staff on Thursday

All,

The past few weeks have provided repeated reminders of the power of TIME. I have been hearing, as I’m sure you have, from people around the world about the impact of our Person of the Year coverage. The quality and depth of the reporting, video and photography was outstanding. Last Wednesday, we saw the second largest audience in TIME’s history. The global coverage surpassed anything I can remember. POY videos saw more than 15 million streams.

Just a few weeks earlier, Viv Walt’s interview with Emmanuel Macron dominated the media landscape in France for days. Our annual “Best Inventions” made its biggest splash yet. Working with the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, we scored a legal victory for press transparency in securing the release of records from a Trump Tower class action settlement. In October, we crashed through 1 billion video streams and won a Primetime Emmy for “A Year in Space.”

Overall, we’re averaging more than 53 million monthly readers in 2017, up more than 15% year over year–no small feat against a terrific 2016.

With that wind at our back, I wanted to take note of some staff news: 6 hires and a number of well-deserved promotions.

Katherine Pomerantz becomes Director of Multimedia. Reporting to Jonathan Woods, Katherine will oversee the photo team day to day. I first met Katherine at The Daily Beast, where her terrific eye and understanding of the digital landscape was critical to the site’s success. A former photo editor for ABC News among other outlets, Katherine should be a familiar face to many of you from stints here working on projects such as FIRSTS and Next Generation Leaders.

Sam Lansky returns to TIME from Spotify to become our West Coast Editor. Reporting to Kelly Conniff, Sam will execute our weekly print section, “Time Off” and assist fellow Deputy Culture Editor Eliza Berman in editing our entertainment coverage across platforms. Working out of Los Angeles, Sam is a keen observer of Hollywood and key connector to the entertainment industry.

Suyin Haynes has joined TIME’s staff in Hong Kong as Associate Audience Editor. A 2016 graduate from the London School of Economics, Suyin started as an intern in the London bureau.

Sophia Gottfried joins TIME as Assistant Audience Editor. A graduate of the University of Pennsylvania, Sophia most recently worked as a staff writer at The Record and NorthJersey.com where she wrote about food and developed her own video series.

Radhika Marya of the FORTUNE staff joins the News Desk as a News Editor. Radhika was most recently an editor at DNAinfo in New York, and has also worked at Mashable and NBC’s Breaking News. Radhika graduated from Rutgers before earning her master’s at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism.

Jamie Ducharme of the FORTUNE staff joins the News Desk as a reporter. She was most recently the health editor at Boston Magazine, covering fitness, nutrition, healthcare and hospitals. She graduated from Northeastern University’s journalism program in 2016.

And now the promotions:

Julie Shapiro becomes Deputy Editor of Time.com. Reporting to Kelly Conniff, she will help guide strategy for Time.com verticals. Julie will continue to manage Time Labs, which has produced some of Time.com’s most-read stories over the past year on topics ranging from immigration to the solar eclipse. Any expansion of Julie’s role is excellent news for TIME and for our readers: she makes us smarter.

Ashley Knierim becomes Director of Editorial Operations. Ashley will play a key role in our collaboration across titles and across platforms. She will manage editorial partnerships, production, newsletters and coordinate digital campaigns across Time, Money, Fortune and Health. At TIME, Ashley will own the editorial calendar and work with the audience and editorial teams to make sure we exceed our digital goals.

Andrew Katz becomes Deputy Director of Multimedia overseeing International photo and working with Katherine to manage our visual coverage. Since first coming to TIME in 2011, Andrew has worked in all corners of the newsroom. TIME’s Instagram has broken records every month in video views since Andrew took over managing it—in close collaboration the video team—in July. Andrew has a relentless work ethic, dedicated to quality in everything he does.

Brittany Robins becomes Deputy Director of Audience Strategy for the News Group. Reporting to Julia Ryan, who leads audience strategy for the company’s News and Lifestyle groups, Brittany will manage the News Group’s growing and energetic presence across social networks and lead the search for new audiences. Since joining TIME in 2016, she has become a key voice in maximizing the reach of our journalism and our resources.

Alice Park becomes Senior Writer. During her tenure at TIME, Alice has written countless conversation-starting stories, on everything from the opioid crisis and CRISPR to cancer immunotherapy breakthroughs and the Olympics, to name just a few. Alice’s sterling reputation in health and science frequently lands her exclusive access to important stories for TIME across all platforms.

Alex Fitzpatrick becomes Deputy Director of News. Alex has brought creativity, enterprise and ambition to TIME’s digital coverage, launching among other things our e-commerce vertical and newsletter The Goods. He has also for several years been a key contributor to the success of TIME’s continuous news coverage. In his new role, Alex will oversee 24-7 breaking news across TIME, FORTUNE and MONEY. He will also continue overseeing tech coverage on Time.com.

Liz Murray also becomes Deputy Director of News. Since joining TIME as a News Editor last year, Liz has become an innovative force and leader in collaborating with audience editors and extending TIME’s digital reach. In her new role, Liz will take charge of the News Desk’s growing collaboration with the lifestyle brands. She will also of course continue to shepherd coverage for the News group.

Mandy Oaklander becomes Editor of the Time Inc. Health Digital Desk. Mandy joined TIME in 2014 as a health writer, later becoming deputy health editor. Mandy’s work combines rigor and readability. She has written cover stories about exercise science and frontiers in depression treatment while also editing TIME’s daily health and science coverage. In her new role she will lead the strategic growth of digital health content across brands at Time Inc.

Ashley Hoffman becomes Newsfeed Editor. Ashley’s eye for compelling stories and knack for packaging them has helped grow our pop culture coverage considerably. Hardworking and collaborative, Ashley been a huge asset to TIME since joining in 2016.

Michael Zennie joins the News Desk as Senior Editor. For the past two-and-a-half years Michael has been News Director at People.com, where he helped run day-to-day coverage. Michael previously worked as an editor and reporter for The Daily Mail and at newspapers in North Carolina and Indiana.

On the video team:

Chris Grasinger becomes Senior Producer. Since joining TIME a little over a year ago, Chris has quickly become a key leader in our newsroom, keeping TIME video current amid the relentless pace of news. Shattering streaming records on our site and across all social properties, his team of producers creates nearly 350 videos per month.

Arpita Aneja becomes Producer. Arpitahas contributed to everything from “The Last Nazis” keep project to her memorable piece about moms advocating for health care.

Julia Lull becomes Producer. A stalwart member of the video enterprise team, contributing to our most significant projects including FIRSTS, TIME 100, and Next Generation Leaders, Julia has also conquered Facebook live shoots and developed enterprise features. We are grateful that Julia can both manage projects from beginning to end as well as land stories at the last minute.

In the Washington bureau:

Nash Jenkins, who became Staff Writer last winter, will cover Congress, where he is already off to a running start. An enterprising and energetic reporter, Nash became a member of our Hong Kong bureau in May 2014 where he covered major stories from Otto Wambier’s disappearance to violence in the Philippines all the while demonstrating a flair for stories that delight global audiences.

Justin Worland has also joined the Washington bureau where he adds the EPA to his coverage of climate and the environment. Since arriving at TIME three years ago, Justin has built an excellent body of work on his beat, highlighted by his recent profile of EPA administrator Scott Pruit, which was featured on our cover.

Kate Samuelson becomes a Reporter. Since she joined us over a year ago, Kate has made her creative presence felt across TIME digital, including Ideas, Health and Money on top of her news reporting for the World vertical during this year’s many crises. Kate has also taken on new responsibilities in print and as a reporter will expand her focus on entertainment stories.

Talia Avakian, a reporter at Travel + Leisure, joins the News Desk as a reporter. Before coming to T+L, Talia covered lifestyle and travel at Business Insider. Originally from Los Angeles, she went to Loyola Marymount University before earning a graduate degree in journalism from New York University in 2015.

Please join me in wishing all of the above colleagues the best, and in wishing all of us a well-deserved holiday break!

Edward