Markus Dohle had been serving as CEO of both Penguin Random House’s worldwide operations and its U.S. business since the merger of Penguin and Random House was completed in 2013. That ended in April, when Dohle promoted Madeline McIntosh from president of the Penguin Publishing Group to CEO of PRH US. At the time of the appointment, Dohle said the creation of McIntosh’s new position speaks to the “size and importance of the U.S. business for Penguin Random House worldwide.” He added, “Now is the right time for dedicated leadership in our U.S. market.”
Dohle has had no second thoughts about the McIntosh appointment. “It’s been gratifying to see the deep and positive impact she has already had leading our largest business,” he says.
A couple of months after McIntosh’s promotion, she made some key changes among PRH’s top executives. Those shifts included naming Nina von Moltke president, director of strategic development of PRH US, and promoting Amanda D’Acierno to president, publisher of PRH Audio Group. In addition, Sanyu Dillon, executive v-p, director of marketing at Random House, was named to a new companywide position as executive v-p, director, marketing strategy and consumer engagement of PRH US. All three report directly to McIntosh.
But McIntosh’s biggest move came in mid-October, when she announced the merger of the Crown Publishing Group and the Random House Publishing Group in a newly combined division reporting to Random House president and publisher Gina Centrello, who has been named president and publisher of the supergroup. The imprints will retain their distinct editorial identities. McIntosh says she believes the merger will allow the Random House and Crown teams to “not only maximize the sales for each individual book but also keep pace with consumer trends.”
For McIntosh, who started at Random House as an assistant, running the publisher was something she didn’t think much about early in her career. But now that she is CEO, she says she feels very comfortable. “Through all the changes that we’ve gone through over the years, the thing that has stayed the same is that the company has always felt like my home and all of our publishing groups and departments very much like family,” she says. “While this role is different in many ways from those that led up to it, what has been true throughout is that every single day I learn something new—from a colleague or an author or someone else in the industry. And that, for me, is a dream come true.”
