Kelly Butler joins Ankler Media as chief of staff from Vanity Fair

Kelly Butler

Kelly Butler has joined Ankler Media as chief of staff after a decade-long tenure at Vanity Fair, where she most recently served as director of editorial operations. There, she led teams across digital, print and social, and oversaw coverage plans around tentpole moments, including Vanity Fair’s annual Hollywood Issue and Oscar Party.

In her new role, Butler will be responsible for managing all aspects of day-to-day editorial planning at Ankler Media, working in close partnership with our team of editors and writers, as well as serving as a liaison with the events and advertising teams and the company’s partners, including Substack. Reporting into Janice Min, Ankler Media CEO and editor-in-chief, Butler will start with the company on July 21.

“Kelly is a deft hand with a stellar reputation in the industry who is just the right person to manage and help scale a fast-growing company,” said Min. “Kelly’s combination of balancing fine editorial taste, high-end advertisers and the infrastructure that brings it all to life is unprecedented. As we massively expand our events and editorial footprint, and onboard more and more internal talent and advertising partners, I look forward to working with Kelly as my close partner.”

“I’m beyond thrilled to join The Ankler. Janice and Richard Rushfield have created an outlet that is meeting readers and listeners where they are in 2025, and it’s been so refreshing to watch the company grow and evolve as the media and Hollywood landscapes continue to shift,” said Butler. “I can’t wait to dive in to help The Ankler accomplish even more. Plus, I get to reunite with my former Vanity Fair colleagues Katey Rich, Christopher Rosen and Natalie Jarvey, which is simply a dream.”

Butler joins Ankler Media as it has expanded to include five standalone subscription newsletters (The Ankler, Like & Subscribe, The Optionist, The Ladder, and Series Business standalone), and whose team just returned from a high-impact week at Cannes Lions that included everything from Min’s big news-making interview with YouTube’s Neal Mohan to a dazzling lunch for 30 creators at the Hotel du Cap-Eden-Roc in partnership with Meta. In May, The Ankler was media partner to Netflix’s first time two-week FYSEE LA festival in Los Angeles, and in April, programmed the Business of Entertainment track at NAB Show in Las Vegas, where WWE’s Nick Khan and Triple H, Tribeca Enterprises CEO Jane Rosenthal, director Lesli Linka Glatter, Universal Music Group Publishing chairman and CEO Jody Gerson, and Candle Media’s Tom Staggs took the stage.

Butler lives in New Jersey with her husband and three children and can be reached at kelly@theankler.com.