Pedestrian publisher Vanessa Lawrence is moving to New York to be chief content officer at Adtech platform Linkby.
She will be responsible for all publisher-focused outcomes, including engagement, revenue, product usage and performance, and community-building across Linkby’s global publishing network, including The Daily Mail, Refinery29, VICE, Buzzfeed, Marie Claire and Dotdash Meredith.
Lawrence has spent a total of six years at Pedestrian Group, where she leads a team of 45 across editorial, native and e-commerce for PEDESTRIAN.TV, VICE, Refinery29, Kotaku, Lifehacker, Gizmodo and the soon-to-launch Web3-focused publication The Chainsaw.
At Linkby, she’ll report directly to Linkby’s CEO & co-founder Chris Wirasinha, who also co-founded Pedestrian, now wholly owned by Nine Entertainment, with his former business partner Oscar Martin in 2005.
Wirasinha said: “Vanessa is the single most impressive mind I’ve come across in the Australian publishing landscape and, after two stints working together at Pedestrian over the years."
Lawrence: “While I’m going to miss Pedestrian Group terribly, I’m excited to once again work closely with Chris - and the wider Linkby team - to foster relationships between premium brands and some of the world’s biggest digital publishers in a way that benefits their audiences as much as the bottom line.”
Linkby recently raised a $5 million seed round to help scale its software platform, which helps connect brands such as Koala, Bed Threads, Modibodi and Brosa with digital publishers across the US, UK, Australia and Singapore.
Lawrence starts her new role on October 17.
Pedestrian CEO Matt Rowley, in an email to satff, wished Lawrence well:
"After six incredible, jam-packed years with Pedestrian Group, the news is that Vanessa Lawrence will be moving on to a new challenge.
"Ness has put so much of herself into this place that it can be a little hard to compute at first the idea of her not being here. However, thanks to her remarkable talent, dedication and leadership, she leaves Pedestrian Group in the strongest of positions."
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