Elana Zak

  • Director of Newsletter Strategy
  • The Washington Post

Elana Zak is the Director of Newsletter Strategy at The Washington Post, where she oversees the newsletter strategy team and works with newsletter writers and editors across the newsroom to ensure The Post's newsletter portfolio is fresh, experimental and forward-looking.

Most recently, Elana was the head of newsletters at Politico, where she oversaw the company’s extensive newsletter portfolio across its free and Pro sites, including editorial strategy, growth opportunities, audience outreach and product improvements. Previously, Elana was the senior editor of programming at CNN Business, where she launched several new products, including a personalized business news app and the CNN Business Nightcap newsletter. She managed CNN Business’s digital presence across platforms and worked with CNN’s homepage teams on breaking news events, sponsorships and push alerts.

Before CNN, Elana led social media efforts at STAT, Boston Globe Media's life sciences site, and was an audience engagement editor at the Wall Street Journal. She has been an adjunct professor at New York University and CUNY’s Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism. She is on the board of the Online News Association and holds a bachelor’s degree from Syracuse University’s S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communication and a master’s degree from Goldsmiths, University of London.