Lisa Emerick
Lisa Emerick, marketing director of Crain’s Chicago Business, has been promoted to associate publisher, adding responsibility over the company’s sales operation.
The move comes as the publication plans to enhance its political reporting, lifestyle coverage and digital presence as part of a broader strategy to boost Crain’s standing among affluent and influential readers.
The associate publisher position has been vacant since David Snyder moved up to publisher in 2010. “As our business has expanded — and as we step up our efforts to grow even more — this appointment will enable me to focus even more on charting the future path of CCB,” Snyder told staffers in a memo Monday. “Lisa is ideally suited to help manage CCB during this important phase of our history.”
Snyder will continue to oversee the editorial, digital, event and custom publishing departments. Kate Van Etten continues as advertising director.
A Chicago native and graduate of Trinity University in San Antonio, Emerick headed marketing and business development for Crain’s from 1986 to 1998. She returned in 2010 to head marketing and later added audience development responsibility.
Emerick’s promotion follows the appointment of Frank Sennett, former president and editor-in-chief of Time Out Chicago, as head of digital strategy, effective Jan. 20.
Frank Sennett
In his new role, Sennett will work with the editorial and business teams to strengthen digital properties and develop new ones. “Frank brings to CCB a great business sense, an appreciation of the great journalism we do, the skill and desire to build our existing digital ventures and the drive and creativity to launch new ones,” Snyder said in a statement. “Just as important, he has the smarts and disposition to fit in well with Crain’s collegial and collaborative culture.”
A graduate of the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University and the University of Montana, Sennett most recently was interim chief operating officer of Ebert Digital and RogerEbert.com. He previously was editor of NewCity.
"I'm thrilled to have the opportunity to work with David Snyder and his team at an organization that has increasingly become a primary news source for Chicagoans seeking an information edge," Sennett said in a statement.