Fortune Names Anastasia Nyrkovskaya as CEO

Fortune named Anastasia Nyrkovskaya as its next chief executive on Tuesday, making her the first woman to lead the 95-year-old business publication.

She takes over from Alan Murray, who announced in October that he would step down in 2024 after nearly 10 years at Fortune. Ms. Nyrkovskaya had been the chief financial officer and chief strategy officer since 2019.

In an interview, Ms. Nyrkovskaya said Fortune was profitable and had added more than 130 positions in the past 12 months across the editorial and business sides. The newsroom has doubled in size since 2021, she said. The company now has about 360 workers, including just over 100 in the newsroom.

“It’s a huge bet for us, especially in the current environment,” she said. “We’re building up a lot.”

Ms. Nyrkovskaya, 47, who was born outside Moscow and studied there, previously worked at NBCUniversal, Birchbox, XpresSpa and KPMG. Fortune appointed her as chief executive two and a half years after hiring its first female editor in chief, Alyson Shontell.

Fortune was started in 1929 by Henry Luce, a co-founder of Time magazine. Once part of the Time Inc. publishing empire, it was bought by Chatchaval Jiaravanon, a Thai businessman, for $150 million in 2018. The company is known for its Fortune 500 list, which annually ranks U.S. companies by revenue. The first Fortune 500 list was published in 1955.

Mr. Murray, the departing chief executive, said in a statement that Ms. Nyrkovskaya had steered Fortune through three years of profitable growth.

“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,” he said.

Ms. Nyrkovskaya said Fortune had worked for the past few years on diversifying its revenue streams by adding different conferences and events and introducing Fortune Well, which covers health and wellness tips for businesspeople.

More than 40 percent of the company’s revenue comes from digital subscriptions and advertising, she said, while Fortune-branded conferences and events make up 30 percent. Print magazine subscriptions and advertising, as well as the licensing of foreign editions, contribute about 25 percent of revenue.

Ms. Nyrkovskaya said she intended to focus on continued growth with the global expansion of events and new franchise lists, such as the Fortune 50 A.I. Innovators list, which came out in November.

She said Fortune would soon announce an artificial-intelligence-based project that used Fortune’s archives, though she declined to provide more details.

“The overarching goal for the company is growth,” she said, adding: “We think about the growth supporting journalism, investing in journalism.”