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Rachel Mallender, group audio director at HarperCollins, is leaving the publisher to join Blinkist, a platform that summarises non-fiction books into 15 minute text and audio digests.
Mallender will join the Berlin-based firm as its first head of new content development in July after spending two years at Harper.
Building a new team in London and Berlin, the role will see her lead Blinkist’s innovation strategy, devising new formats and adding to its audio content.
Prior to joining HarperCollins, Mallender had over 20 years of experience at the BBC, culminating in becoming editor for Radio 1 and 1Xtra. She joined HarperCollins in 2017, aiming to drive the firm’s “Total Audio” philosophy, a commitment to publish audio versions of every narrative print title.
Mallender said: “Blinkist is one of the most exciting and innovative startups in the world right now. As a consumer, I've been an enormous fan of the company and so the opportunity to be Head of New Content Development was one that I couldn't turn down. Blinkist has an impressive track record and I can't wait to play a key role in the next step of the company's journey.”
Founded in 2012, Blinkist now has more than 10 million users worldwide. It offers digests of the main ideas from more than 2,500 books which have been selected by an editorial team.
The firm’s co-founder and product lead Niklas Jansen said: “It is a huge win for Blinkist to have Rachel join the team, who brings with her an unparalleled amount of experience.
“As we grow as a company, we are keen to explore new ways in which we can develop our content offering to our millions of users around the world. We are very excited to now have Rachel lead our new content innovation strategy and really push the boundaries on the Blinkist product.”