Some kind words from talented people I’ve been so lucky to work with

Nathan Burstein, managing editor of newyorker.com:

Lainna has been a wonderful partner on countless projects: she is full of ideas, knowledge, and passion for The New Yorker. She is a true expert in her field–she always knows what our competitors are up to in audience development and suggests how we can adapt their strategies and make them better. More important, she constantly comes up with her own ideas and helps figure out how we can implement them. Strategic thinking comes to her naturally; I am routinely impressed by how quickly and insightfully she is able to analyze a proposal and suggest how we can adapt it for even greater impact. Her expertise about audience-development platforms and companies is remarkable, extending to those we use and those we don’t. Lainna’s knowledge is both wide-ranging and deep, encompassing the technology itself, its strategic potential, and key figures whose work we should be following. It’s clear that she puts immense time and energy into keeping up with new innovations and strategies and spotting opportunities for The New Yorker. 

Lainna is also an asset editorially. She constantly shares articles and flags projects of note at other publications, proposing ideas for how they could influence our work and how we could make our version better. She thinks critically about areas of coverage–not only what we need to grow our audience but how that strategy would align with our editorial values and serve our readers. She understands that The New Yorker ultimately lives on its editorial integrity, a discernment that separates her from others in her field. 

I love working with Lainna on headlines and other display language; she is absolutely vigilant about making sure we are optimized, with the key understanding that editorial concerns must determine our decisions (but with a relentless eye for opportunities to improve SEO within those parameters). She is generous with praise, shares credit, and is incredibly hard-working. She seems deeply devoted to her reports, and on a personal level has been a kind, energetic, and thoughtful co-worker. I feel lucky and grateful to work with her.

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Saira Khan, senior platform editor at WSJ. magazine, former director of social media at the New Yorker:

Lainna and I started at the New Yorker around the same time. I was the magazine’s first social media director and we quickly became allies in strategizing to get the magazine to adopt the most basic of Web optimization best practices back in 2016, up against resistance you might expect from a brand that had done things a very particular way for about nine decades. But here is Lainna’s strength: she is exceptional at talking editors into doing things they would’ve never considered doing, or may be very resistant to trying, because she has a great love and understanding of the magazine and shows her respect for the editorial world in how she builds convincing cases to her stakeholders to give something new a try, like writing social- and SEO- friendly headlines on print stories that don’t conform to Web best practices.

It’s not at all easy—in fact, I know from my own experience that it can be quite difficult—but she has the patience to work with very specific, deeply-held editorial processes and make a convincing case, even if it takes months to finally get a yes.

I also saw how closely she worked with our analyst, and saw how she would “translate” an analysis into something an editorial team could digest and put into practice. This is where she really excels. I very much enjoyed working with Lainna as a trusted colleague and a friend, and I wholeheartedly recommend her for the position of global director of audience development and analytics at the New Yorker.

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Brooks Brunson, head audience editor at WNYC + Gothamist, former audience development manager at the New Yorker:

Lainna is by far one of the smartest people I've ever worked with in digital media. She's extremely creative at finding new ways to grow our audience, while also upholding the The New Yorker’s high editorial standards. Her writing is quite sharp - I've never seen anyone able to write a web headline (especially for such long pieces!) so quickly. As a manager, she is always willing to work with me and make time for me, as well as others, when we need assistance or guidance. I also was very impressed with her leadership on publishing our first digital-only issue. She held a couple very organized meetings to go over the needed items for launch, created multiple project plan docs so everyone had visibility, and gave almost all departments initial ideas to work off of for promotion strategy. Everyone involved across departments appreciated her leadership.

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Sheena Hakimian, director of consumer revenue at the New Yorker:

I can say with confidence that over my 9 years at Condé Nast, I have never had a partner as smart, collaborative, and driven as Lainna. I completely trust Lainna. She undoubtedly makes my life as the Director of Consumer Revenue for New Yorker easier. We worked closely on strategies that would drive newsletter acquisition, which then leads to more subscriptions. She has always understood the entire consumer funnel and how important all of the different pieces of the puzzle are.

As two of the main business leads for the biggest consumer revenue driving brand in the company, we work extremely closely on all projects. She is constantly keeping me in the loop, well in advance, on important audience driving projects, which then allows my team to get ahead of capitalizing on subscriptions for these projects. She has also done an incredible job of including audience development projects (upcoming, in progress, and finished) in our New Yorker monthly business update meeting. It is so helpful for my team to see how her projects affect our overall strategy. My wish is to have all brands follow her lead here.  

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Nate Goldman, creator manager lead at LinkedIn and former social media editor at New York magazine:

Lainna was my manager at New York Magazine. She oversaw my execution of the social media strategy for New York’s parent accounts and Daily Intelligencer, its politics and news vertical. During my time there, here’s what I observed and experienced: Lainna is not only a skilled strategist and an expert at navigating cross-functional dependencies, which I’m sure you’ve experienced first-hand, but an attentive and thoughtful manager. Under her direction, I produced some of the work I’m most proud of in my career. Just as an example: We worked closely together on New York’s iconic cover story giving voice to Bill Cosby’s accusers. As you might imagine, the work was high stakes, multidisciplinary, and had zero room for error. Lainna not only helped me to navigate those challenges and pushed me to produce my best work, but supported me through its emotional intensity.

Of course, things only got more intense when, the night the story dropped, New York’s website was hit with a DDoS attack. In that moment, our entire rollout was called into question. But Lainna pivoted strategy quickly, deciding we would use Tumblr and Instagram as the main channels that readers would experience the story, while the attack was mitigated. She set clear action items for myself and others on the team in a period of extreme chaos and confusion. We emerged with a product that generated news headlines, not to mention company-wide enthusiasm around the very team she helmed. And, in my opinion, we became closer as a team. It was the quintessential expression of leadership.

I offer that story because it remains, to this day, my standout example of everything I aspire to be in a manager myself: empathetic, collaborative, able to think quickly, deeply, and holistically in equal measure, and a savvy problem solver. For that reason, and many others, I can confidently say that Lainna is an exceptionally gifted leader and manager. Any employee would be very lucky to report into her, just as I know I count myself lucky to have worked under — and learned from — her.

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Kathy Semel, engineering manager at the New York Times and engineering manager at the New Yorker:

Lainna and I worked together at The New Yorker for several years, her dedication to the brand is inspiring. She is endlessly creative, and would often bring exciting new ideas to my tech team to get estimates and feedback. Lainna always made my team feel included in her team's planning, and has a solid grasp of the process of product development. Lainna is deeply involved in the technology aspect of her projects, and understands the landscape of social media and how it meshes with the technology involved in running a website. She is compassionate and understanding, with a broad sense of current events that helps her advise on the right things to put out in public and when they will land well. She is the front-line defense against an unforgiving online culture ready to call out brand missteps. I enjoyed working with Lainna, and hope we have an opportunity to work together again.

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Alex Knapp, senior editor, and former social media editor, at Forbes:

Lainna has an excellent grasp of the strengths and weaknesses of different social media platforms. Her prose is witty and promotes content well. She's always paying attention to new features and jumps on board them right away. She's also proactive in developing new ideas for engagement and promotion of content on different platforms. Additionally, as someone who frequently uses social media on her personal accounts, she has her finger on the pulse of internet culture and gets how to communicate the same idea to different groups of people. She was a pleasure to work with.