Arianna Huffington, who co-founded the Huffington Post over a decade ago, will step down as Editor-in-Chief to pursue Thrive Global, a new health and wellness company she is building, The New York Times reports.
According to The Huffington Post, what started out as a website “comprised primarily of aggregation and blog posts from friends” has “morphed over the years into a major news organization and digital media company that’s expanded into 15 countries.”
When announcing her new business venture in June, Huffington reportedly told her staff that her “focus [would] remain on The Huffington Post, with no change to [her] current role”, CNN Money reports.
According to the Times, in a note to her employees on Thursday, Huffington stated that she would be focusing her attention to her new project, saying she “fully expected to be able to continue leading HuffPost while also building Thrive Global, [b]ut it became clear that this was an illusion as Thrive went from an idea to a reality, with investors, staff and offices.”
Huffington told CNN Money that “[b]uilding something from scratch doesn’t become easier or less challenging just because you’ve done it before. There is only one way to do it: with your full attention and all your heart.”
According to HuffPost, Huffington’s role in the company has shifted before when AOL purchased the site in 2011; however, she remained Editor-in-Chief following the deal.
Her departure from the company comes after Verizon, AOL’s parent company, announced its plans to buy Yahoo, CNN Money reports. HuffPost reported that Huffington’s departure was not influenced by Verizon’s plans, saying that she thought it would be “great for HuffPost because of the amazing distribution it can provide for our content.”
Huffington told HuffPost that she’s confident the publication “will do amazing things in the future” under new leadership.
“Great companies always succeed beyond their founder. Even though HuffPost bears my name, it is absolutely about all of you and about this amazing team we’ve been for over 11 years,” Huffington said.