ReedPop president Lance Fensterman, who led the pop culture arm of Reed Exhibitions that launched in 2009, is leaving the company. Fensterman is known to the industry as a former bookseller, having managed bookstores in Minnesota and Connecticut, and as a former director of BookExpo America and New York Comic Con.
ReedPop continues to run NYCC, but has also launched a huge variety of global-facing shows and worked to make its events family-friendly, instead of just focused on fans. The events Fensterman was involved in launching include the PAX and EGX conferences, as well as New York Comic-Con and Star Wars Celebration. The company also owns several popular websites with tens of millions of users, including GamesIndustry.biz, Eurogamer, and Rock Paper Shotgun. Earlier this year, it was announced that ReedPop would partner with E3, the premier videogame conference, to run that event as well.
Popverse, the company’s corporate owned website, announced the news this week. It quoted Fensterman as saying, “After 17 years building the best live and digital pop culture company in the world, it felt like the right time to start a new adventure. We’ve emerged really strongly from the pandemic and the difficult years that period included and as we are positioned for tremendous growth, I was ready to consider what the next chapter of my career could look like, and a very interesting opportunity arose that I’ll share in due time, today is about my wonderful time at ReedPop." Fensterman indicated that he is taking a new job, though he did not yet share what it was.
It has yet to be announced who will fill Fensterman’s shoes at ReedPop. Popverse stated that group v-p Michael J. Kisken and U.K. managing director Simon Maxwell, among others, were still in key roles.
