Vox Media’s Head of Product, Jennifer Cullem, announced the hire of Greg Barber as VP of Product, Consumer Revenue, and Zahra Ladak as VP of Product, Platform. Both Barber and Ladak will report to Cullem. Ladak started in September and Barber will start in mid-October.
Barber will lead consumer revenue from a product perspective at Vox Media, working across subscriptions, including New York Magazine and other paid products like Cafe Insider, Hot Pod. He’ll also focus on bringing new premium subscriber-only experiences to market. Barber joins Vox Media from the Washington Post, where he spent nearly two decades and most recently held the role of Director of News Product. Barber was also the co-founder of the Coral Project, a collaboration with Washington Post, The New York Times and Mozilla to build an open-source commenting system and best practices for growing communities around journalism, which went on to be acquired by Vox Media in 2019.
“I’m driven by the electricity of collaboration, mixing experts in journalism and technology to tell dynamic stories and engage subscribers,” said Barber. “I’m excited to join the Vox Media team, already awash in talent, and work across the company to expand our business and inform and delight our audience.”
Ladak will work on products across Vox Media’s owned and operated platforms, as the company continues to build its core product and technology to provide engaging, valuable, and novel experiences with journalism across its editorial brands. Before Vox Media, Ladak held product roles at Spotify, Zocdoc and more.
“I’m very interested in building product and platform solutions to business challenges leading with a customer and data driven mindset,” said Ladak. “Joining Vox Media at this stage in my career feels like a natural fit, where I’ll be able to continue to help scale products to new audiences.”
On the hires, Cullem shares: “I’m thrilled to bring Greg and Zahra’s deep experience with complex technology and news products to the Vox Media team. Greg’s experience in building news products will help us scale our consumer revenue products, as we continue to see opportunity in areas like subscriptions. Zahra is the right leader for our platform team to take on the challenge of continuing to build innovative and forward thinking experiences for our audiences.”
