Copyright theatlantic
Dear everyone, As all of you already know, The Atlantic functions as well as it does in large part because Emily Gottschalk-Marconi makes it all happen. Her steel-trap mind, her unflappability, her kindness, creativity and hyper-competence, all combine to make her as close to indispensable as anyone who works here. As my chief of staff, and as director of newsroom operations, Emily is always innovating and solving problems or otherwise devising escape paths from crises large and small. Over time, Emily’s responsibilities have grown substantially, and we wanted to acknowledge her work—and specifically how our journalism directly benefits from Emily’s leadership—by promoting her to a new role, Managing Editor for Operations. I know that this move will please quite literally everyone in our organization. Further empowering Emily only leads to good things for the rest of us. Emily joined The Atlantic as part of the Live team in 2016, and when the opportunity came for Emily to join the Editorial team, we didn’t hesitate. She quickly made herself important to our daily operations, in more ways than would be possible to list, including ushering in such innovations as AirTable (Before AirTable, we simply shouted our story plans to each other across the halls of the Watergate, when we remembered to do so.) Emily believes deeply in the mission and culture of The Atlantic, and her devotion to what we do is evident in every aspect of her work. No detail or deadline escapes her (to my occasional chagrin, since one of her duties has been tracking my own deadlines, except, strangely, the deadline for this note, which is coming about 10 days later than expected). Much of the infrastructure we all rely on—and might not even notice, when it’s working as intended—is testament to her skill, hard work, and foresight. This promotion recognizes Emily’s superior talent and the centrality of her role. Please join me in congratulating Emily on this well-earned promotion. She is easily embarrassed by praise, which should absolutely not stop you from expressing yourselves with flowery adjectives.
