Meet LION’s News Revenue Coach: Penda Howell joins LION from NY Amsterdam News

Designing revenue products, building strong relationships with sponsors, advertisers and donors to support mission-oriented work and making payroll every month are just a few of the challenges many LION founders face.

And they’re just a few of the skills that our newest hire, Penda Howell, has spent the last 25 years of his career mastering.

Penda will be sharing his insights and expertise with LION member organizations through our newest initiative, the LION News Revenue Fellowship, which commits $1,000,000 over two years to selected LION member organizations that are ready to design or bolster their revenue strategy. Penda will be advising us, helping design the training program, and then serving as a coach and mentor over the course of the fellowship.

Penda is a New Jersey native and most recently served as Chief Revenue Officer and Head of Advertising, Sales, and Partnerships at the New York Amsterdam News, and as a board member, national advertising and partnerships consultant, and regional marketing chair for the National Newspaper Publishers Association, the oldest professional trade organization for Black-owned publications. He’s also a member of several media trade organizations and groups across the country and recently took part in the Local Media Association’s Branded Content Project.

Penda also continues to sharpen his skills: He’s an alumnus of the Maynard 200 journalism fellowship of the Maynard Institute in the Executive Leadership track; he graduated from the Executive Leadership in Business program at Rutgers University; and heis now a fellow in the 2021 Media Transformation Challenge (MTC) Program at the Poynter Institute.

Based in East Stroudsburg, Pennsylvania, Penda is married to Dorothy Howell, and together they have three children, Penda Jr., Wayne, and Zaria Howell. Family time, traveling, digesting all things media-related, visiting car shows, reading investigative journalism, and watching documentaries are a few of his favorite past times.

We are thrilled that Penda is bringing his expertise in revenue generation to the LION team, and we know that those who participate in the News Revenue Fellowship program, and other LION members, will benefit from his decades of experience.

Applications will open for the LION News Revenue Fellowship program in the next few weeks.

You can reach Penda at [email protected].

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