Good morning, Broadsheet readers! JPMorgan’s board spotlighted two women executives as leading CEO candidates, former President Donald Trump updates his stance on abortion, and Fortune names its first female CEO. Have a lovely Tuesday.
– Fortune’s first. When Anastasia Nyrkovskaya was growing up outside of Moscow in a town that was hidden from maps, she decided to pursue a career in business. Her parents and their friends were all rocket scientists, part of Russia’s equivalent of the Manhattan Project. She knew she wasn’t going to follow their path—”My parents were so incredibly smart, and I knew there was no way I could do that,” she says—and set out to build a different kind of career.
That career reaches a milestone today: Anastasia is the new CEO of Fortune, the first woman to lead the media organization. Anastasia joined Fortune in 2019 as CFO and later added chief strategy officer to her title. She takes over from Fortune CEO Alan Murray and joins editor-in-chief and chief content officer Alyson Shontell in steering a women-led news organization.
Anastasia started her career with KPMG in Russia after earning her MBA. That job moved her to New York in 2001; what was meant to be a short stint in the U.S. turned into two decades here. After KPMG, she assumed finance leadership positions at several companies, including NBCUniversal, where she built her media chops in corporate strategy and M&A working on acquisitions including MSNBC.com and the Weather Channel and the formation of Hulu.
“I love that we’re creating something,” she says of the media industry. “We create something that people rely on for their decision-making abilities, for their companies, and for the bigger picture.”
As she takes the reins at Fortune, a 95-year-old magazine, Anastasia is focused on our next century. Her priorities include growing Fortune’s conference business (for example, she’s proud that Fortune established its Brainstorm AI franchise a few years before the start of the AI craze); building out Fortune’s rankings from the well-known Fortune 500 and Most Powerful Women lists to more specialized lists; and pursuing further international expansion.
She says that her early career at KPMG taught her many of the fundamentals—like agility, a must-have for the news business—that prepared her for her first CEO job. Her years as a finance exec, she says, also readied her for this role. “It gives you tremendous insight and almost a leg up because you understand numbers and know how to read them…and can connect them to one bigger picture,” she says.
As Fortune becomes a woman-led business, Anastasia points out that the company’s workforce is 70% women across business and editorial. “It’s just an incredibly iconic brand with an incredible heart,” she says. “And with journalism at its core.”
Emma Hinchliffe
emma.hinchliffe@fortune.com
The Broadsheet is Fortune’s newsletter for and about the world’s most powerful women. Today’s edition was curated by Joseph Abrams. Subscribe here.
ALSO IN THE HEADLINES
- Succession set-up. In a new letter, the JPMorgan board named possible successors to CEO Jamie Dimon: Jennifer Piepszak and Troy Rohrbaugh, co-CEOs of the commercial and investment bank; Marianne Lake, CEO of consumer and community banking; and Mary Erdoes, CEO of asset and wealth management. Piepszak and Lake are considered frontrunners, and analysts give Piepszak a slight edge since the investment bank is a key revenue driver. Reuters
- Flip-flop. Former President Donald Trump said states should decide abortion rights, distancing himself from the national ban other conservatives are backing. The former president, who has boasted about the overturning of Roe v. Wade, also announced that he supports exceptions for cases of incest, rape, or to protect the life of the mother. The Washington Post
- Rom-comms. Renate Nyborg is funneling her experience as the former CEO of Tinder and general manager of Headspace into Meeno, the new AI chatbot she founded to give young people relationship advice. Nyborg hopes the app, released in select countries in December, helps young people who aren't successful on traditional dating apps and struggle with post-pandemic loneliness. Financial Times
- Unplugged. Larissa May is traveling to schools across the country to help students disconnect from the technology that she says is actively damaging their mental health. Half the Story, the nonprofit she founded, provides high school educators with material to teach students how to cope with negative online experiences. Wall Street Journal
- Seeing success. Mary Perkins founded Specsavers, the U.K.-based eyeglasses retailer and eye test provider, with her husband 40 years ago. Today, Specsavers is a £3 billion ($3.8 billion) chain. After spending years in leadership positions and filling in wherever needed, 80-year-old Perkins still works full-time and spends time on employee well-being initiatives. Financial Times
MOVERS AND SHAKERS: The Wall Street Journal hired Tammy Audi as economics editor.
ON MY RADAR
After abortion attempts, two women now bound by child Washington Post
New York's Letitia James is suing the world’s biggest meat company. It might be a tipping point for greenwashing Guardian
Why Aimee Song is taking a different approach to the influencer brand Business of Fashion
PARTING WORDS
“In way harder times, we’ve been able to save and preserve our democracy.”
—Suffs writer, composer, and actress Shaina Taub on what she wants people to take away from the new Broadway show based on the women's suffrage movement
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