Danielle Belton, 43

After an extensive search, Sally Buzbee joined The Washington Post as its new executive editor on June 1, making her the first woman to lead the 143-year-old news organization. This past year was a remarkable one for women journalists like Buzbee who are breaking barriers and leading the charge in local and national news. Although most of the women on our list were recently promoted or hired to their current positions, make no mistake—they have the experience and fortitude to carry their newsrooms and the industry into a bright and successful future.

What are you most excited about in the news industry today?

I’m excited that, finally, things like workplace mental health and safety, and diversity are part of regular newsroom conversations, but we still have a lot of work to do in order to make sure Black and brown people, as well as women, people with disabilities, members of the LGBTQ community and other historically marginalized groups feel truly seen, heard and comfortable in our newsrooms. But I do feel we can achieve this, a more equitable newsroom.

What is your advice for aspiring women journalists?

Try everything and don’t be afraid to fail at anything. Failure is a huge part of success. I bumped my head many times on my route to where I am now. I’ve been laid off. I’ve been forced out. I’ve been passed over. And in the end, all of it made me better, stronger, and more capable as a journalist. Failures are lessons. You learn them and you grow from them. So be thankful for those times you messed up or didn’t get what you wanted and survived. You got a valuable lesson out of it you can apply to your future success.

and visual journalism—is so compelling. And it’s incredibly fun work.

What is your advice for aspiring women journalists?

A few years ago, when I was still at the Boston Globe, more than 100 of my journalist colleagues and I found ourselves assisting with home delivery after the company switched delivery vendors for the print newspaper and customers saw widespread delivery problems. We woke up well before dawn for days in a row, tried to make heads or tails of town maps and ensured that newspapers ended up on front stoops.

The experience reinforced for me the importance of learning the business models and levers that support your journalism and what’s needed to make them sustainable.

Yes, today that is more about understanding funnels, algorithms or KPIS than paper routes. But the days I spent delivering papers gave me a direct connection to the Globe’s subscribers and my colleagues who worked on subscriber engagement. I’ve since found that when you take the time to get to know your businessside co-workers, you all end up even more excited about collaborating toward the same goal: getting more journalism into more people’s hands.