Patty Stonesifer, a longtime Amazon board member and former CEO of the Gates Foundation, was named interim CEO at The Washington Post following Monday’s announcement that publisher and current CEO Fred Ryan will step down Aug. 1.
Stonesifer joined Amazon’s board in 1997. She was the founding CEO of the Seattle-based Gates Foundation, and served as co-chair from 1997 to 2006. Stonesifer worked at Microsoft from 1988 to 1997, leading the consumer and interactive products division; she was the highest-ranking woman at the tech giant. She also ran the nonprofit Martha’s Table from 2013 to 2019.
Ryan led the Post for nine years, hired as publisher by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, who bought the newspaper for $250 million in 2013.
Ryan, the founding CEO of Politico, will lead the Center on Public Civility at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation, which is funded in part by Bezos.
The Post reported that Ryan has “Bezos’ full support in this move.”
The newspaper grew its digital subscriber count from 35,000 when Ryan took over, to 2 million today. But it has dealt with declining audience numbers and layoffs in recent years.
