I am an exceptional leader, experienced digital journalist and marketer, at home honing a story, crafting creative campaigns, in pitch meetings and SEO discussions, with writers, videographers, sales people and coders. I enjoy:
- Connecting people to the information and stories that impact their lives positively.
- Building teams that are sustainable and high-performing.
- Creating an environment for brilliant things to happen.
I’ve done this long enough to know that all that involves vision, a sense of joy, and conflict. The skillful mediation of those tensions, plus a healthy dose of paying close attention, can make something special.
I am currently the Editor of Billy Penn at WHYY, a hyperlocal news site covering Philadelphia, and Senior Director of Specialty News Products at WHYY. Most recently, I had been Director of Content and Publications for Universal Health Services, Inc., a Fortune 300 company that manages 27 acute care hospitals and more than 330 behavioral health facilities in the U.S. and England. I managed messaging and words for the company’s marketing efforts for five years, following a short, impactful three months as the Managing Editor for the Philadelphia Business Journal.
This came after a decade-long run at health and wellness publisher Rodale Inc. I was the Senior Director of Digital Editorial Operations from 2016 to March 2018, working to help the company’s high-profile brands—Men’s Health, Women’s Health, Prevention, Bicycling, and Runner’s World—reach and empower audiences across the world. I led cross-brands teams dedicated to video, social media, and digital production. Strategy, tactics, putting out fires and holding folks accountable to the mission—yeah, done that. Before that, I was Senior Managing Editor of MensHealth.com, beginning in 2007, serving as the only common factor on an ever-revolving team that grew audience and revenue 15-fold over eight years while feeding the content machine AND maintaining quality AND staying true to the brand.
That followed a significant stint as editorial and operations lead (formal titles: Director of Site Operations and Executive Producer) for Philly.com, the online home of the Philadelphia Inquirer and Philadelphia Daily News.
Over that time, I’ve learned a lot about healthcare marketing and journalism—both news and service—and the business of digital, including all the acronyms: SEO, AMP, P&L, DFP, CMS, CRM, Aff-Comm, E-Comm, etc. Beyond acronyms, I’m an experienced leader who has learned that paying careful attention, investing in your team, staying open, and doggedly sticking with it is usually the best way to accomplish what you’re aiming for in this world. (If you’re interested, here’s my LinkedIn profile. If you’re looking for references, I’m partial to the Facebook comments here when I shared news that I wouldn’t have a role with Hearst.)
I served for three years as an adjunct professor at Syracuse University’s S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications, where I taught two 500-level classes: “Writing and Editing for Magazine Web Sites” and “Sports Writing for Multiple Platforms.” I think universities are literally miracles, and I enjoyed teaching—I was Newhouse’s first foray into remote teaching, and I experienced both the magic and the frustrations of teaching from the front of a virtual classroom.
I live near Philadelphia with my wife Virginia. That’s her, above. Other than sweeping all three games in Monday night basketball, she and my family (two sons, three grandchildren) are the joys in my life.
I like to write. I’ve done it professionally for almost three decades. I’ve kept a modest blog over the years. It’s all collected here.
Here are some things I have written for publications over the years:
- Two the Hard Way (Asbury Park Press, 1990; this won an AP best-in-state award for sports feature writing)
- Lance Armstrong’s Incredible Comeback (Philadelphia Daily News, 1998)
- Why You Could Be Days Away From a Heart Attack and Not Even Know It (Men’s Health; a long-form feature in the magazine’s January 2016 issue)
- Interview With Jason Isbell About Dads and Sons (Men’s Health)
- Should You Buy Your Next Mattress on the Internet? (Men’s Health)
- Why You Should Give Up Drinking for 30 Days (Men’s Health)
- Why the NFL Should Buy the MLS Right Now (Men’s Health)
- What Makes a Hero? (Men’s Health)
- We Should Move the Super Bowl to Saturday (Tonic)
- SJU Grads Feed Boyle’s Mission (Saint Joseph’s University)
- What does ‘digital transformation’ mean for health startups in 2019? (Technical.ly)
At UHS, I covered a lot of bases. Here are Best Practices books we’ve created that serve as an overview of our work, which are distributed at an internal leadership conference in March of each year. It provides an overview, though it fails in representing the sheer scale of completing as many as 10,000 projects annually.
You can find me on Threads and Facebook too. Want to talk? You can reach me via email.
kevdonahue.com 
Leave a comment