Refinery29, the leading digital media and entertainment company for young women, today announced the appointment of two senior hires on its Product & Engineering team. Nicholas Butterworth has been named Executive Vice President and Marissa Rosenblum has been named Senior Director of Commerce.
Butterworth will be responsible for new product development, product management, user experience design, digital engineering and information technology and will report to Refinery29 co-founders and co-CEOs, Justin Stefano and Philippe von Borries.
“Nicholas is an incredible addition to the team, bringing a deep expertise in engineering and product innovation that will be invaluable to our company as we optimize our onsite user experience for video and shopping and enhance our bespoke CMS with new editorial features,” said Stefano.
Previously, Butterworth served as Senior Vice President, Digital Product Engineering for Time Inc., where he led a team of 180 and was responsible for engineering and product development for 25 US websites including People.com, Time.com, SI.com, Fortune.com, RealSimple.com, InStyle.com and HelloGiggles.com. During his tenure at Time Inc., Butterworth established Time Inc. as a Comscore Top 10 US Web Network while delivering major product wins in native advertising, CMS, video, content distribution, big data and OTT.
In her new role as Senior Director of Commerce, Rosenblum will focus on building out Refinery29’s commerce team, driving affiliate revenue, creating strategic relationships with retail partners and leading a group of writers in conceiving and producing the industry-standard of dynamic, creative, service-and commerce driven content. Rosenblum will report to Refinery29 Global Editor-in-Chief and co-founder, Christene Barberich.
Rosenblum returns to Refinery29 after spending several years at Barneys New York, where she most recently served as Vice President, Content Group, managing the company’s editorial site, The Window, doubling both traffic and converted revenue in two years. She previously held the titles of Shopping & Market Director and Editorial Director of E-commerce during her time at Refinery29. Rosenblum also served as Senior Fashion Market Editor at Seventeen Magazine where she began her editorial career as a fashion assistant.
“We couldn’t be more excited to welcome Marissa back to Refinery29, especially for a role she was born to do,” said Barberich. “By merging her content prowess with an unmistakable knack for product and problem solving, Marissa is poised to lead a critical new chapter in our affiliate commerce business and vision.”
Butterworth and Rosenblum join Refinery29 during a time of growth and optimization around the company’s onsite user experiences. Since the website redesign in May 2018, onsite video views are up 462 percent and shopping site visitors are up 326 percent. Refinery29 is working closely with its partners to create new onsite shopping experiences including price comparisons across retailers, new stock information and curated collections of products to help contextualize recommendations. Additionally, Refinery29 will launch a new watch homepage to increase new series discoverability. The Product & Engineering team continues to focus on the development of Refinery29’s bespoke content management system to give its editorial teams new tools and improve internal workflows.
About Refinery29
Refinery29 is the leading next-gen media and entertainment company focused on women with a global audience of 425 million across all platforms. Our mission is to be a catalyst for women to feel, see, and claim their power by providing optimistic and diverse creativity, storytelling, and unconventional points of view. We deliver style and substance to a highly engaged audience with our original video, editorial features, live experiences and social storytelling. Please visit www.refinery29.com,www.refinery29.uk, and www.refinery29.de for more information and to browse content.
