Arianna Huffington, founder of the Huffington Post news site that has become a global phenomenon, has announced that she was stepping down to launch a nonprofit group focused on health and wellness.
Greek-born Huffington, who launched her original American website in 2005 and sold it to internet giant AOL in 2011, said the new venture called Thrive Global aims “to change the way we work and live by ending the collective delusion that burnout is a necessary price for success”.
She said she would be stepping down as editor-in-chief of the Huffington Post, which now operates in 10 languages and has a user base of over 200mn.
She said she decided to leave the online news organisation because “I simply couldn’t do justice to both companies”.
“I’m filled with excitement at the prospect of devoting the rest of my life to accelerating the culture shift away from merely surviving and succeeding to thriving,” she said in a statement. “Running both companies would have involved working around the clock which would be a betrayal of the very principles of Thrive I’ve been writing and speaking about.”
Thrive has received funding from Lerer Hippeau Ventures – led by a HuffPost co-founder Kenneth Lerer – and other groups and individuals including NBA star Andre Iguodala and entrepreneur and philanthropist Sean Parker.
It is to launch after the US election in November.