• by January 19, 2006

Time Inc. has named two executives from outside the company to key advertising sales roles in one of the first major moves by new management since last month's massive corporate restructuring, in which more than 100 employees were fired.

Leslie Picard was named senior VP of sales for Time Inc.'s corporate sales and marketing division, a new post in a newly restructured unit. She joins the company from Conde Nast, where she previously worked for six years as VP of corporate sales, but most recently held the title of VP-publisher of Bon Appetit.

On the same day, Time also named Thomas Beusse president of Time4 Media, which includes titles such as Golf Magazine, Field & Stream, Popular Science, Yachting, and SKI, as well as This Old House Ventures and Warren Miller Entertainment. Beusse was most recently the president of magazine publishing at Rodale, Inc.

Picard's appointment was announced by Robin Domeniconi, the former publisher of Time Inc.'s Real Simple, who last month was named president of corporate sales and marketing in the restructuring. It marked her first major hire from outside the company.

Not long after her appointment, she promoted two executives within the Time Inc. family to new positions, naming Grant Schneider chief marketing officer of Time Inc., corporate sales and marketing, and Lisa Pols general manager of corporate sales and marketing.

Picard said her new role will allow her "to marry my skills as a VP of corporate sales at Conde Nast with an opportunity to work with Time Inc. and Time Warner" to develop unique, multiplatform marketing packages for the company's clients. She called the chance to marry the magazine unit's assets with those of its corporate parent "the ultimate in media integration," and said that media integration was a major goal at all Time Warner divisions, which "will play itself out as we work on large corporate deals with our advertisers."

Beusse's appointment was announced by the company's co-Chief Operating Officer John Squires. Beusse succeeds Mark Ford, who was named president of Sports Illustrated in December.

"Tom is a seasoned leader with a profound understanding of Time4 Media's deep connection with its audience of active, affluent consumers," said Squires. "His appointment signifies our continued commitment to growing this division across a variety of platforms."

At Rodale, Beusse, 41, oversaw the print, online, event, television, and licensing business of brands including Men's Health and Runner's World. He previously served for four years as president of Rodale's Men's Health/Sports Content Group.

Beusse has previous experience at Time Inc., where he worked as New England advertising manager at Field & Stream in the early 1990s, and later as a national account manager at Sports Illustrated.

The Time4 Media unit also includes Web sites, television and radio programming, feature films, events, and exhibitions. The division was founded in March 2001 following Time Inc.'s acquisition of Times Mirror Magazines in late 2000.

Beusse's appointment was one of the first major moves by Squires, who only last month was named the magazine company's first co-chief operating officer--along with Nora McAniff--in the company's history. They were named to their new posts as part of a huge corporate (and cultural) restructuring engineered by company CEO Ann Moore, in which she divided responsibilities for most of the company's brands between the two executives. Under Moore's plan, McAniff was put in charge of the women's titles, including People, In Style, and Real Simple, while Squires was assigned to handle the male-oriented sports and enthusiast titles, as well as Fortune and Time.

The restructuring took many magazine industry observers by surprise because of its breadth and scope, and because it resulted in the departure of more than 100 executives, some of whom had been with the company for as many as 20 years. They included two prominent executive VPs: Jack Haire and Richard Atkinson.

Moore initiated the reorganization in response to challenges and changes in the publishing and overall media environment that had left some of the company's venerable titles suffering declines in advertising and circulation. Those factors, coupled with a growing need to develop more effective synergies with the company's corporate parent and to increase the number of digital offerings, led Moore to announce the changes in mid-December.