Kate Lewis is senior vice president and editorial director at Hearst Magazines Digital Media. In this position, Lewis is responsible for managing content groups across the Hearst Magazines Digital Media portfolio and collaborating with editorial teams on content strategy, as well as with technology and product groups. Hearst Magazines Digital Media is comprised of 20 websites for brands including Cosmopolitan, Esquire, ELLE, Harper’s BAZAAR, Popular Mechanics and Good Housekeeping.
Lewis was previously senior vice president and editorial director at Say Media, overseeing content operations, editorial strategy and development for Say’s portfolio of digital brands including xoJane, Remodelista and ReadWrite. Lewis also managed a network of partner sites as well as the shared services department that provided support and strategy for audience development, social media and partnerships.
Prior to Say Media, Lewis was a senior executive director of human resources at Conde Nast Publications. Before that, she was managing editor at Self for ten years, overseeing editorial and production, digital projects, book publishing, events and television partnerships.
How has your life experience made you the leader you are today?
My motto in life is “enter smiling.” I should probably answer this in a more cut throat way, but this is the truth. I am sure those who have worked with and for me would say that I can be tough as needed, but I assume the best outcome in every room I enter. I have no idea why life experience brought me to this point, but it did. Maybe because my husband is hilarious so he’s taught me to always expect the laughter, the upside, the adventure. And my career has been an adventure. For 17 or so years at Conde Nast, I rose in a relatively predictable way within the editorial organization, serving as managing editor at three magazines, with my longest tenure — a decade — at SELF. And then, quite happily, I moved over to the corporate world and to human resources. I think many of the skills I learned as an m.e. served me well in corporate: how to make a big team hum, how to motivate with encouragement rather than threats, and how to articulate a vision. And I loved being in the corporate world, amidst the decision making and the big picture thinking. So when an opportunity arose for me to take a corporate editorial role at Say Media, even though I wasn’t terribly wise about digital at the time, I was eager to try it, marrying my love of content with my newfound affinity for corporate culture. I’ve carried that with me at Hearst.
How has your previous employment experience aided your tenure at Hearst Magazines Digital Media?
All of the steps I’ve taken feel like building blocks. My first job was as the assistant to the art director, David Harris, at Vanity Fair. In addition to being his personal assistant, which was rather light work in his case, I was tasked with keeping the art department organized and running. So from the start, I was working with teams, finding processes, and building a culture that enabled creativity. In time, I added on running the budgets, for Bonnie Fuller at Glamour, and then being a true partner in the overall vision of the magazine, with Lucy Danziger at SELF. With each new position, I added skills and knowledge I didn’t have before. And from day 1, I have loved loved loved magazines. So the invitation from Hearst to help translate these storied American magazine brands to a digital audience has been exhilarating.
What have the highlights and challenges been during your tenure at Hearst?
Being a New Yorker, the challenges come to mind quicker than the highlights. I think our biggest challenge has been the constantly evolving and shifting publishing landscape. We never even bother to encode best practices in editorial because what holds true right now will be irrelevant or change entirely by the time I finish this sentence. Our ability to manage this perpetual change has, though, been a highlight for me. The site editors and I have been pretty fearless about trying new things, asking people to shift their thinking and their output. If you asked me this three years ago, I would say I was proud of our ability to translate the ethos of the print magazine brands to the web and to do it at scale, producing so many stories every day. Then I would have said that I was proud of the features capability we’d built — and the news-making and storytelling we were doing at a higher level. (This on top of all the reams of daily content.) Today I might say it’s our evolution to multi-media creation. Editors producing videos, weaving shooters and film editors into their orgs, trying short form and long form. The experiment of it all. And still navigating all of this change without losing site of what these brands really stand for and who is our audience.
What advice can you offer to women who want a career in your industry?
For people starting out, I would say get any job you can. I started out in an art department because my dream was to be at Vanity Fair and I would have washed the windows if they had asked. For those deep in it, I would say to be flexible and ambitious. Those are the two key traits I look for in people I’m hiring. Media is changing in such radical ways right now, that if you are comfortable with consistency, it will really, really frustrate you. You must be ready to entirely rethink — and you must seek out people who help you rethink — all that you are doing. (This is always a worry of mine, is our rate of change radical enough?) And then, be ambitious! Ask for more, take on more, expect more. I want those I work with to be advocates for themselves and their goals. I have a huge group of people under me, and I don’t often have the time to take stock of whether they’re doing the right thing or, should I put more in front of them? I expect my team to stand up and say, here’s a thing we’re not doing that we should be and I am going to take it on.
What is the most important lesson you’ve learned in your career to date?
Listen, listen, listen. I learn so much from the people around me. And I learn so much for our audience. I can be very opinionated, but I am always in search of someone else’s opinion. I don’t mind an argument at all and I am willing to change my mind.
How do you maintain a work/life balance?
My work is divided into two chunks: meetings and reading/watching the stuff we make. I do all the meetings during the work day and then I can do all the reading and watching wherever I need to be. So I am not glued to the office which helps. But I don’t think I can say I have figured it out. My kids would probably say I work a lot, my friends would say they don’t see me enough, I don’t even bother with a gym membership, but then there’s often a voice in my head saying I could have done more work today. It’s kind of nuts! I guess I measure whether there’s a balance by whether things are truly falling through the cracks. When I am at work am I obsessing about my family or my friendships? No? Then we’re good. When I am at home am I obsessing about work or some upcoming meeting? No? Then good.
What do you think is the biggest issue for women in the workplace?
Opportunity is really the biggest challenge. I have seen at points in my career how leadership can be a “boys club.” Building trust with your colleagues is a critical part of getting ahead at work, and that can really be strengthened in casual situations — whether outright socializing or even hallway banter. Men often seem more comfortable doing that casual chitchat with other men. It builds a sort of fraternity around them and it can be hard for women to break in. In my current role, I’ve been lucky to work under people who share a comradery with colleagues no matter their gender. In fact, often Troy Young, my boss, and I bond over parenting, or where to go to dinner, or how excellent/terrible that TV show/movie was as much as I would with any female colleague.
How has mentorship made a difference in your professional and personal life?
I don’t think I’ve ever had anyone who I realized at the time was a mentor. It’s only with hindsight that I can see that people mentored me. In particular Chris Garrett, the managing editor of Vanity Fair, who was my second boss and is a brilliant and elegant manager. So much of what I do today and how I think I owe to her — even including my lunch order! Decision making is essential to running a news-based operation and I’ve never met anyone as decisive as Chris. You know when you go to her, you’ll get an answer that will stick. Also on my list has to be Kim Kelleher, the Chief Business Officer of the Men’s Group at Conde Nast. Sometimes I persuade myself we are peers (and we are age-wise), but whenever I have professional soul-searching to do, she is the first call I make. She saw the potential in me, and offered me the position to run edit at Say Media despite my lack of true digital experience. She is always a step ahead.
Which other female leaders do you admire and why?
This is a long list, but I am going to single out two people I work with at Hearst right now: Our CFO, Debi Chirichella, who is just my kind of person. This is our second tour of duty together — we worked at Conde Nast some years ago. In both cases, as an editor, what I love is Debi’s commitment to and belief in the product, in what we make. She wants to empower editors and enable their craft. That’s not always the disposition of a CFO. Also she’s just good fun. She might be classified as an “enter smiling” person. The other person at work that I have deep admiration for is Amy Odell, who runs Cosmopolitan.com. She is so damn smart. And talk about ambitious. Amy puts her hand up, she has expectations. And it’s thrilled me to be able to be on the other end, giving her rope and letting her grow and lead more and more. I would be remiss, too, not to highlight my mother whose career was not unlike mine. She started out in the copy pool at J Walter Thompson in 1964 and ended up as the Creative Director of William Esty. When I was little I got to go with her to many of her commercial shoots — she worked on Listerine, Jif, Minute Rice, Vaseline to name a few — and I loved it. (I mean what grade school kid wouldn’t love spending days at the Beverly Wilshire hotel and on set at the ocean!) But I think I got it, too. My mom was in charge. She was running a team of highly creative people, men and women, and it was a business. It inspired me and still does.
What do you want Hearst to accomplish in the next year?
Our twin goals in editorial have been consistent since I started: grow our audience and generate buzz. I still hope to accomplish these things even as our definition of audience changes (we no longer obsess only about people on on site, but also our engaged Facebook audience, our subscribers and readers on Snapchat, our reach beyond the .com). And of course, everywhere we publish, we want to make content people are talking about. This year we’re very focused on showcasing the work we do around luxury and fashion and, of course, video, video, video.