Fortune Media has named Anastasia Nyrkovskaya as the new Chief Executive Officer, becoming the first woman to lead the storied media brand. She has served as Fortune’s Chief Strategy Officer and Chief Financial Officer over the past five years.
With experience across investing, finance, and corporate development in both traditional media and startups, Anastasia succeeds Alan Murray, who has been CEO of Fortune since 2018 and announced last October that he planned to step down this April. In recent months, they have been working on the leadership transition.
Anastasia first joined Fortune Media in 2019 as one of the first senior executives when it became an independent media company. Founded by Henry Luce in 1929, Fortune spun off from Meredith Corporation and had previously been a longtime part of Time Inc.
Prior to Fortune, Anastasia held senior roles in finance and accounting at NBCUniversal, KPMG, and XpresSpa Group. At NBCUniversal, she was part of the corporate strategy team responsible for M&A and oversaw accounting and due diligence on multiple major acquisitions including MSNBC.com, The Weather Channel, and the formation of Hulu. Subsequently, she served in senior financial roles at NBCU, working with its subsidiaries, including studios, theme parks, and cable TV. She began her career in audit and transaction services at KPMG. Anastasia is based in New York with her husband and two children.
At Fortune, Anastasia has played a key role in its digital transformation and the diversification of its business model beyond magazine publishing and into new digital lines of business, as well as the global expansion of the Fortune brand and operations. At the same time, she supported expansion of editorial coverage and the size of the Fortune newsroom under Alyson Shontell, who took the reins as Editor in Chief and Chief Content Officer in October 2021. While she was Chief Financial Officer, Fortune posted three successive years of profits through 2023, and as Chief Strategy Officer, she rolled out a range of new products and enabled expansions of lists and conferences in Europe and Asia.
Fortune has actively been expanding its events and editorial franchises in Asia, most recently hosting a sold-out Fortune Innovation Forum for senior business and policy leaders, in Hong Kong. In June, Fortune will launch the Fortune Southeast Asia 500 List, a ranking of the largest 500 companies in Southeast Asia. In July, it will hold the Fortune Brainstorm AI conference in Singapore.
Outgoing Fortune CEO Alan Murray said, “As Chief Strategy and Finance Officer, Anastasia has steered Fortune through three years of profitable growth—almost unheard of in the legacy magazine business. She appreciates and supports the power of Fortune’s great journalism, its iconic lists, and its first-in-class executive communities, and understands how they work together to make business better. She has helped lead Fortune’s transformation into a profitable global multi-platform media company and is the right person to lead it into its second century.”
Incoming CEO Anastasia Nyrkovskaya said, “I believe in the power of Fortune’s journalism and its brand. For a media brand to evolve and progress today, you have to love this business and care about the people in it. Fortune has some of the best business journalists in the industry and the best Editor in Chief in Alyson Shontell. I have loved partnering with Alan and Alyson, as well as our Publisher and Chief Revenue Officer Michael Schneider and our Chief Technology Officer Jonathan Rivers.”
She added, “For the past five years, I have been focused on fiscal responsibility and the development of new revenue streams to sustain and grow the business. Looking ahead, I am excited to drive more focus and growth in journalism and business as Fortune expands globally.”
Editor in Chief Alyson Shontell said, “Anastasia has been a true partner in both expanding Fortune’s newsroom into a fully-fledged digital news operation and continuing our focus on original enterprise reporting. At every step, she has supported the newsroom’s independence with decisions that sustain our business. I look forward to continuing to work with her closely as she steps into the CEO role.”
