Profiles

Anne Sachs '93 is Thrive Global's Chief Content Officer. Prior to joining the Thrive team, Anne managed a dual role at Condé Nast, where she served as both Executive Digital Director at W Magazine and the Editorial Director of Product Partnerships, working across product and content strategy. She also launched Conde Nast's Social News Desk, a central news hub for the company; served as interim Digital Director at Vogue; and was the Digital Director at Glamour. Before starting at Conde Nast, she worked in editorial for a wide range of brands, including ELLEgirl, MTV Networks, and The Gallup Poll.

“I was never more exhausted than when I was a student,” said Anne Sachs ’93. “You’re pushed really hard as a student, and I remember it well. The thing that I’m learning, still, is that you don’t have to push yourself every single day in the way that you pushed yourself the day before.”

Sachs’ shares this advice with Peddie students and more broadly in her role as chief content officer at Thrive Global. With a mission to “end the stress and burnout epidemic,” Thrive Global offers companies and individuals “sustainable, science-based solutions to enhance well-being, performance, and purpose, and create a healthier relationship with technology.”

“I worked at Condé Nast for a long time,” said Sachs, “and I absolutely loved it. But this opportunity was really different and new and exciting and a in field that I was incredibly interested in: the intersection of professional growth and wellness and how they complement each other.” Working on content strategy across the company, Sachs will be the driving force behind Thrive Global’s digital storytelling, generating content about real people and how they balance work and life. 

But before she became Thrive Global’s marketing maven, she was a student at Peddie.

“I thought Peddie was where you went if you were really, really, really good at school, and I was only moderately good at school coming in,” Sachs said. “But it was a place that really fostered you at your root level. They were great at bringing out what was uniquely good about you - what you were uniquely skilled to do. It was a place where I figured out I actually was a good student, I just didn’t know that about myself. I loved it. I really feel like I learned how to be good at studying. I learned how to be good at learning. I learned how to be a little more independent than I thought I would be at that age. My Peddie experience was great.”

Sachs found a passion for storytelling in Pat Clements’ annual lecture on “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn,” Bill Hill’s playwriting class and on the Peddie stage. After Peddie, Sachs went on to Skidmore College, where she earned a B.A. and found a job working in college textbook publishing. Not long afterward, she started her masters of Journalism at Columbia University. “I knew that I wanted to do storytelling. I was passionate about it. I just wasn’t quite sure how to make that pivot from book publishing to reporting because I didn’t have the experience.” Sachs’ pivot involved taking on a variety of jobs and gaining broad experience. Print journalism jobs were seen as more prestigious and competitive, so Sachs entered the growing world of digital publishing and flourished there. After joining Conde Nast, she became the digital director of Glamour Magazine. Then she became the executive digital director at W Magazine. In her new position at Thrive Global, Sachs is still telling stories. 

On being a professional storyteller and finding a career as a journalist in the digital age, Sachs said, “You’re telling people’s stories and you have to do it honestly and accurately and people need to trust that you’re going to be respectful and do right by them. The silver lining of taking all sorts of jobs that don’t seem to necessarily fit together is that you meet people who, hopefully, at the end of your time working together, would say “I know her and she does a good job. She is respectful of stories and strives to tell them the right way.” And that can lead you to something really big.”