Arianna Huffington's new venture as she steps down from Huffington Post - Women's Agenda

Arianna Huffington’s new venture as she steps down from Huffington Post

Decades of lost sleep is not the reason why Arianna Huffington has decided to call time on her Editor in Chief role at the media empire she created, The Huffington Post. 

Instead, the sleep advocate and author of Thrive, will focus on a new startup called Thrive Global based on the health and wellbeing space. 

Huffington tweeted overnight that it was time to move on. 

 

The move comes despite Huffington only recently signing a contract to stay on with the Post ad Editor in Chief and President until 2019. According to the Wall St Journal, the contract allowed her to launch Thrive Global at the same time. 

But Huffington’s decided it can’t be done, after securing major funding for the new startup just last week. “I really thought I could do both, but as we started building it up, I realized that it really needed my full attention,” she said. “It is important to know when one door closes and another opens, and I felt that moment had arrived.”  

Expected to launch in November, Thrive Global will work with organisations to help them improve the wellbeing of staff. Huffington used her shock exit announcement to tweet a little more about Thrive’s mission  

In a press release, Huffington added that stress and burnout are a global pandemic costing businesses billions of dollars. “Since publishing Thrive and then The Sleep Revolution, I’ve dreamt of taking the next step to help transform the way we work and live,” she said. “Change is desperately needed if another generation is to avoid the burnout that all too often comes with success today … Running both companies would have involved working around the clock, which would be a betrayal of the very principles of Thrive I’ve been writing and speaking about,”  

On her Facebook page, she shared a statement for ‘Huff Posters’ 

For the past 11 years, The Huffington Post has been at the center of my life, and frankly I thought it would be my last act. What we have built together has exceeded my wildest expectations. Never did I imagine when there were just five of us working out of my home office in L.A. that we’d grow HuffPost to be one of the most-visited news sites in the world with editions in (soon-to-be) 16 countries and a Pulitzer Prize-winning global leader in news and politics, solutions journalism and wellness.

As all of you know, since publishing Thrive, I’ve become more and more passionate – okay, obsessed – with burnout and stress and how we can reduce their impact on our lives. As I went around the world speaking about Thrive and hearing people’s stories, I became an even bigger believer in the urgent need to turn that passion into something real and tangible. That’s why, when I signed a new contract last spring, we included a carve-out so that I was able to also launch a venture dedicated to putting Thrive’s values into practice, helping individuals and companies around the world reduce stress and burnout and improve their health and productivity.

She added that having confidence in what’s been built “together” has made the decision easier to leave. Huffington has since updated the header on her Facebook page to reflect her new venture. 

Huffington started the Huffington Post eleven years ago, and stayed on with the company after it was acquired by AOL for a massive US$315 million in 2011. The Post has expanded aggressively in recent years to 14 countries, including into Australia with Fairfax media. 

Huffington has pushed sleep and wellbeing amongst her staff and fans, including publishing a number of books and introducing ‘sleep pods’ in offices around the world. Huffington famously suffered a broken cheek bone following a fall that she blames on lack of sleep. 

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