WBJ names 40 Under Forty winners of 2016

Write a Comment

Welcome to what is the most-read WBJ recurring feature of the year. While we have a variety of features and enterprise stories that move the needle for Central Massachusetts businesses, nothing compares to the annual release of our 40 Under Forty winners, which lets young professionals know what it takes to make the cut and lets the established business community know who will be impacting the future.

To make this recurring feature – my personal favorite – remarkable from start to finish, we began extensive planning for it in March. With 40u40, everyone wants to know who the winners are and see their profiles. The problem, though, with the 40u40 is there are 40 honorees.

That means 40 names, 40 job titles, 40 (or more) photos, 40 bios. Asking any reader to stick with 40 similarly written-and-displayed articles is quite the heavy lift, much less retaining all that information.

Yet, since my goal every issue is to have every reader learn from (and love) every inch of WBJ content, we embraced the challenge.

What I love most about the 40u40 honorees is with an average age somewhere in the mid-30s, they are more willing to be playful with how we display their lives to the business world, as you can clearly see, with their bios, Q&As and photos. If we asked an Outstanding Woman in Business or a Business Leader of the Year to send selfies with them doing their favorite hobby (as we have done with the 40u40 in the past), that might take much more convincing.

As a 36-year-old editor, though, I am constantly mindful that the average reader age is nearly 15 years older than me, and WBJ has a tradition and a professionalism with its audience that shouldn’t be crossed. I rely on Publisher Peter Stanton and Events Manager Kris Prosser, who know our audience and have been doing this for awhile, to keep me from crossing that line.

To their great credit, when we pitched the idea of taking our most-read feature of the year – that typically puts 40u40 winners in very professional settings to introduce them to the Central Massachusetts business community – and have the honorees climb trees and ropes, jump off stages, ride kiddie trains, play with blocks and compare themselves to Disney princesses, John Wayne and Winnie the Pooh, the reaction from Stanton and Prosser was simply, “Aw, cool.”

- Brad Kane, editor