When Anna Jones was interviewed about co-founding a women-only private members club to foster female entrepreneurship – having left a high-profile role running the UK publisher of Cosmopolitan, Esquire and Men’s Health to go it alone – she sported a T-shirt emblazoned with “girl power” in orange block capitals.
Seven years on Jones has been appointed as the first female chief executive of the Telegraph’s parent company, exemplifying the progress she has championed in an almost 25-year career in media businesses.
Jones, whose friends and former bosses uniformly describe as an energetic and highly capable executive with a “can do” mentality, has boldly stepped into the role abruptly vacated by Nick Hugh at possibly the most tumultuous time in the 169-year history of the rightwing national title.
She takes the reins with the prospect of its owners, the Barclay family, transferring control of the Telegraph in a controversial and complex deal to a consortium backed by the United Arab Emirates.
“She is what I’d call a liberal feminist,” said one former colleague. “Blimey, the ownership, current and what is incoming, I wonder what she thinks of that?”
Jones, who grew up in Yorkshire, has had a fair bit of time to think about that quandary having been an adviser to the Telegraph executive team on “strategic and commercial growth plans, merger and acquisition strategy and leadership development programmes” since last January.
After leaving Hearst, where she worked for more than five years, including three years as chief executive, she co-founded the women-only networking venture AllBright, which opened its first private members club in Mayfair, London on International Women’s Day in 2018.
AllBright is named after the former US secretary of state Madeleine Albright, who once said “there is a special place in hell for women who don’t help other women”.
In her seven-year break between running major media businesses, Jones has filled her resumé with roles and ventures including co-founding WJV, a boutique investment firm that “champions diversity, wellness and economic empowerment”, chairing the investment committee of the seed funding business Mercuri, taking a part-time role as a UN Women UK changemaker and serving as board member of the Creative Industries Federation.
Now the 48-year-old, who is allergic to apples and lists her interests as pilates, baking and her children, has moved from entrepreneur to one of the highest profile roles in UK media. The shift makes for a curious move, with Jones describing herself in a previous interview as impatient person and expressing frustration with slow-moving corporate structures that mean implementing change is like “turning a tanker”.
Still, she has kept her hand in the big leagues. She is now a non-executive director at Universal Music, the world’s biggest music company, and was formerly a non-executive director at Telecom Italia.
Those roles came in part as a result of her time spent working with Arnaud de Puyfontaine, the chief executive of the sprawling French media conglomerate Vivendi, which has stakes in both companies and who was her boss when he ran Hearst’s European operations.
“The reinvention of a media brand is a hell of a journey,” says De Puyfontaine, who successfully pushed for Jones to become his successor at Hearst UK when he left London for Paris in 2014.
“She is extraordinarily energetic, motivated and driven with very good managerial skills, a can-do person, I’m a big fan. Nothing prevents the energy of her entrepreneurship, alongside her previous corporate experience, to push ahead one of the most famous British media brands – depending on [what] the new ownership [want].”
Jones is all too familiar with the digital challenges facing the Telegraph, having spent most of her career in the magazine industry. From 2000, she spent five years at Emap as marketing manager for the “women’s group” of titles, Grazia, More and Top Sante.
She subsequently moved to Hachette Filipacchi, the publisher of magazines and websites including Elle, Red and Digitalspy.com, where she rose to the role of digital and strategy director. Hearst acquired Hachette in 2011 with Jones taking the role of chief operating officer of the enlarged company before she stepped up to the role of chief executive in 2014.
“She was a real pleasure to work with,” says a senior editorial executive at her former employer. “She was very sunny, hands on, encouraging and wanted everyone to be more entrepreneurial in their businesses.”
Aware of the upheaval and general groundswell of negativity over the ownership saga in the Telegraph newsroom, Jones indicated in her appointment announcement that the wellbeing of employees continues to be high on her agenda.
“Although the business is operating in a period of uncertainty due to the change of ownership process, the titles continue to thrive and my role will focus on securing certainty for our staff, subscribers and partners,” she said.
