100 Women We Love: Class of 2017

Every June, GO compiles a select list of talented tastemakers, influencers and all-around inspirational women who are making their mark on the LGBT community and on the world at large.

Lydia Polgreen

Photo by Damon Dahlen/Huffington Post

This past December, Lydia Polgreen was hired as the Editor-in-Chief of HuffPost (formerly The Huffington Post) following the departure of Arianna Huffington, and immediately, it was clear she was more than capable of filling the founder’s shoes, having worked as a West Africa, South Asia and Johannesburg bureau chief and deputy international editor for the New York Times. However, Polgreen’s rise to the top has not always been smooth. She’s had to face the obvious challenge of making it in a business where queer women of color are not in the majority. She told Out that as a young journalist, she couldn’t afford her unpaid internship at Washington Monthly, so she had to take a waitress job on the side. She also had to keep her relationship with photographer wife Candace Feit under wraps when both were on a dangerous assignment covering a Sudanese warlord. There are further challenges likely awaiting Polgreen during a time of change for both HuffPost and America: “As we launch a brand-new name and look for HuffPost,” she recently wrote in an editor’s letter, “I’ve been thinking a lot about these questions. How can we become better listeners? How can we serve you, our audience, better? … We aim to make this extraordinary platform the news source of choice for people everywhere.” —GH


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