In this newly created position, Tarun will take responsibility for the trading teams across ShortList and Stylist magazines, their respective websites and brand extensions, and the company’s email brands Emerald Street and Mr Hyde.
Tarun joins the company from The National where he was Head of Agency Sales and has previously worked at major media owners including Trinity Mirror and The Telegraph. Shortlist Media’s newly appointed joint-Head of Sales, Fad Jamal and Stewart Dymock, will report into Tarun.
Group Commercial Director Chris Healy says: “The opportunity to appoint someone of Tarun’s experience and profile within the industry does not come along often. Married with the strategic objective of bolstering an already strong commercial team, Tarun showed a huge appetite and enthusiasm for the company and I look forward to working with him very closely over the coming months as the company moves from strength to strength.”
Tarun Naipaul says: “I am absolutely delighted to be joining ShortList Media. It is a company that has established fabulous award-winning brands with an excellent commercial reputation. I can’t wait to contribute to the continued success of such an exciting, forward thinking company.”
Shortlist Media also announced that Chris Healy will be leaving the business in November to move back to his native Manchester with his family.
Chief Executive Mike Soutar says: “The Board and senior commercial executives have known Chris' intention to relocate back North for well over a year and despite trying everything we could to convince him to stay he’s been a typically stubborn bloody Northerner about it all. In fact, Chris has just exchanged on his new house up there and his family will move up ahead of him during the summer. So on a personal level I could not be happier for him.
“We've been working together behind the scenes to manage the transition. Tarun's arrival to bolster an already strong team is part of the strategy to ensure that we remain in the best possible shape commercially – and our new CEO Ella Dolphin will lead the search for Chris' successor with my support.
“Since joining the company in 2007, Chris has always represented the very best of the company - talented, resourceful, enthusiastic – and his own career path trajectory has mirrored that of the company itself; relentlessly upwards from shop floor to board room. Chris is a brilliant role model and a much treasured colleague and when he eventually departs some months from now he will go with our very best wishes for the future.”
