More than a year ago, The New York Times announced it was seeking an editor to drive coverage of how gender shapes the lives of people across the globe. We were promptly flooded with more than 300 applications from across the globe. Ultimately, we found our leader close to home: She is Jessica Bennett, whose compelling contributions to The Times since 2012 include this profile of Monica Lewinsky, this Op-Ed on Wonder Woman, pieces on female pot entrepreneurs, feminists in sororities, campus programs teaching failure, and this column on Resting Bitch Face.

Photo Credit: Sharon Attia

Jessica is the author of Feminist Fight Club, an illustrated battle manual for fighting sexism at work, and a coveted campus and corporate speaker on gender, identity and digital culture. At Newsweek, she coauthored a cover story about the women who had sued the magazine for discrimination in 1970, and as executive editor of Tumblr, she helped oversee the first live-GIFed presidential debate. She also once interned for the late Trump biographer Wayne Barrett.

As Gender Editor, Jessica will lead a multi-pronged initiative to deepen the engagement of female readers around the world. That means curating and elevating our excellent existing coverage of gender and expanding it where appropriate. It means driving conversation and building communities around that coverage, through a newsletter and other digital offerings, live events, and a differentiated audience strategy. It also means pushing forward research into how tone, storyform, subjects, sources and other elements of the report affect women’s consumption of it, and evangelizing best practices around the newsroom.

Susan Chira, who has demonstrated the power and potential of this line of coverage with agenda-setting pieces on Trump women and many other topics over the past year, will anchor our journalism in this area as senior gender correspondent.

Jessica’s strategic partner in this endeavor will be Francesca Donner, who has over the past two years helped multiply the audience of Times Insider and made it a staple of the NYT experience. Francesca came to us from The Wall Street Journal, where she was editor for digital strategy, and previously launched ForbesWoman, a website geared toward professional and executive women. As Director of the Gender Initiative, she will spearhead the development of news products; nurture external partnerships; coordinate our research, analytics and growth efforts; connect with relevant teams across the company; and be the operational lead.

Jessica and Francesca will work closely with Alicia Ping-Quon Wittmeyer, who recently joined Op-Ed as gender editor. Sandra Stevenson of the photo desk will bring her experience from Race/Related and her visual sensibilities to the development of the newsletter. The initiative will be under the auspices of NYT Global, taking advantage of its audience-first, cross-company approach.

We will be seeking one or more new devoted storytellers to cover gender, but this initiative will be largely built around the stellar work already being done on gender around the room and around the world, like last week’s blockbuster Harvey Weinstein story. The following people will remain in their current roles and, in agreement with their department heads, also work with Jessica and Francesca as part of the Gender Team: Lynsey Addario, Yamiche Alcindor, Nellie Bowles, Audra Burch, Annie Correal, Susan Dominus, Alexandra Garcia, Jack Healy, Amanda Hess, Claire Cain Miller, Wesley Morris, Jina Moore, Somini Sengupta, Amanda Taub and Jenna Wortham.

This incredible list is only the beginning. We will be convening groups of people interested in gender, embracing ideas from throughout the company and seeding new ones, and generally taking a phased approach to growing the coverage and the audience around it. Jessica starts Oct. 30, and in the meantime you might enjoy this feminist Mortal Kombat video.