Bob Sauerberg

Robert A. Sauerberg Jr, former chief executive of Condé Nast, led fashion’s most famous publishing company. The executive joined the company as executive vice president in 2005. The long-time president of Condé Nast stepped out of the shadows to emerge as Charles Townsend's successor in recent years.

In 2015, Sauerberg took on much more operational responsibility and orchestrated a major company shake up — replacing the chief financial officer and taking direct control of ad sales, hiring new publishers for Wired, Vanity Fair and GQ, while investing in video content — as he leads Condé Nast’s evolution into a digital-savvy multimedia publication business. In July 2015 the company saw web traffic grow 47 percent from the previous year.

Sauerberg was instrumental in developing both Vogue.com’s online strategy and Condé Nast’s evolution of Style.com into an e-commerce destination, migrating its editorial content into a new site: Voguerunway.com. Additionally, the company has also rolled out its Condé Nast Entertainment platform, which produces digital video content including TV series and four feature films. It is headed by Oren Katzeff as president, who previously the head of programming at Tastemade. 

Sauerberg wanted to cement Condé Nast’s position as a premium media company and outlined a plan to return the publisher to profitability in two years and revive growth, by diversifying its revenue away from advertising and shedding certain magazine titles. Condé Nast has put the titles Brides, W and Golf Digest on the market. Sauerberg aims to boost revenue by $600 million by the end of 2022. Expanding its digital output has also left behind the print editions of Glamour, Teen Vogue and Self in 2017.

Previously group president of consumer marketing at Condé Nast, Sauerberg has extensive experience and insight into the magazine publishing world. Prior to his appointment at Condé Nast, he was chief finance officer of The New York Times Magazine Group for nine years from 1991 to 2000, moving on to Fairchild Publications in the role of chief operations officer until 2005. In addition, Sauerberg has a BSBA in finance from the University of Arkansas and an MBA from Mercer University.

In 2019, the industry veteran stepped down from his position as CEO of the company and it was announced that the US company would merge its US and International departments. Instead, Condé Nast underwent a restructuring period that led to the successive appointment of Roger Lynch, who previously held the position as Pandora and Dish Network chief executive. Albeit no previous publishing experience,  the new chief executive has vast experience in the area of banking and digital media and will lead the company’s continued progression into digital as a global entity. Sauerberg seeked to continue a marginal involvement with Condé Nast, through its parent company Advance which is a minority shareholder in Reddit.