Alexandra Kennedy is vice president, editorial director, Family and Children’s Magazine Group, part of Disney Publishing Worldwide, which includes Disney Adventures, FamilyFun and Wondertime. She oversees all editorial content and creative development for the Family and Children’s Magazine Group, developing new business opportunities for the three magazines.
Since FamilyFun’s premier in 1991, Kennedy has overseen its editorial content and design and has been instrumental in helping the magazine grow to its current circulation of 1.9 million. She has managed all of its brand extensions, including book publishing, online publications, Toy of the Year Awards, FamilyFun Test Kitchen, and broadcast efforts, including appearances on Oprah, the Today Show, CNN and CBS Early Show.
Kennedy also conceptualized the editorial vision of Wondertime, a magazine providing parents of newborns through 6-year-olds with the insights, inspiration, and activities they need to understand their children at every stage and encourage their natural curiosity. Wondertime is set to launch in Spring 2006.
Prior to joining Disney Publishing Worldwide, Kennedy was senior editor for New England Monthly, a publication that won two National Magazine Awards for General Excellence.
Kennedy received her B.A. from Colgate University and a Master of Fine Arts in poetry from the University of Massachusetts, where she taught writing for three years. She lives in Northampton, Massachusetts, with her husband James Haug and their two sons.
LISA STIEPOCK,
Editor of Wondertime,
has held senior editorial positions within Disney Publishing for more than a decade. She was director of creative development for FamilyFun magazine, where she had also served as travel editor. As creative director she managed special projects, from magazine start-ups, such as Wondertime, to book series to single-issue newsstand publications. As executive editor and then as editor of Disney Magazine when it launched with Disney Publishing in 1996, Lisa directed the magazine's content and design, overseeing its move onto newsstands and a growth in circulation from 300,000 to 750,000. She holds a B.A. in Philosophy and Political Science from Marquette University and an M.S. from the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University. She has also worked as a restaurateur, innkeeper, and bartender (!). Lisa lives in Williamsburg, Massachusetts, with her husband, Alan MacKay, their daughter, Alcy, 4, and their two dogs and two cats.
CAROLYN ECKERT,
Art Director of Wondertime,
spent 10 years as a designer at Impress, Inc., the Northampton, Massachusetts, studio headed by Hans Teensma. During her tenure at Impress, she worked on the launch of a new travel magazine, Getaways, and on The Gardener and Disney's Animal Kingdom. She designed several FamilyFun crafts and food books, as well as fine arts books for the Princeton University Press and 21st: the Journal of Contemporary Photography. Prior to relocating to New England, she worked in the design extremes of a large corporate art department at The Morgan Bank, in New York (free lunch), as well as a tiny four-person studio, Laundy Rogers Design (late nights and no free lunch). She is a graduate of Rhode Island School of Design. Carolyn lives in Northampton with her husband, Dana Gentes, and their boys, Marty, 3, and Roy, 18 months.
TRISHA THOMPSON,
Executive Editor of Wondertime,
is a former editor-in-chief of Time, Inc.’s BabyTalk magazine and has worked as an editor and writer for American Baby, BabyCenter.com/ParentCenter.com, Child, and Parenting.com. From 1999 to 2005 she wrote a monthly column for Parenting magazine (“Reality Check”), where she “attempted to give sound advice to a readership that deserved better.” Her articles have also appeared in Harper’s Bazaar, Redbook, Esquire, and Self. She served as director of publications for Harvard Medical School, and in 1992 she was awarded a Knight Science Journalism Fellowship at MIT, on the basis of her health writing. She holds a B.A. in Journalism and English from New York University. Trisha lives in Amherst, Massachusetts, with her husband, Fred Levine, and their daughters, Madeline, 12, and Eleanor, 9, who are glad that they’re too grown-up for their mother to write about them in Wondertime.