After years of building her career as a popular TV and radio news presenter, veteran broadcast journalist Fiona Ellis-Jones shifted gears into senior management. In 2022, she became Head of News and Information for ARN Australia — leading the national news division for one of the country’s largest audio networks, overseeing content strategy and editorial operations across multiple brands. Fiona manages a team of 65 journalists at 58 radio stations in 33 markets, reaching 15 million Australians weekly.
Fiona makes her career transition as traditional media faces challenges to engage younger digital audiences who get their news from social media, video platforms, podcasts, and other online sources. “It’s a huge responsibility to inform an entire generation of Australians as we try to make our news even more credible,” she says.
Fiona was charged with driving a transformational shift in ARN’s newsrooms, pivoting from traditional broadcast bulletins to a digital-first, on-demand news strategy. “I found myself suddenly leading a very big team and managing a very big budget, with commercial accountability and responsibilities,” she shares. “I’d been a working journalist for 25 years, but I’d never been taught the business skills.” She began to search for educational programs to help her rise to these challenges.
In 2024, Fiona received a B&T Women in Media award and the Chief Executive Women (CEW) Maureen Kerridge Scholarship. “I had to choose a course for the scholarship,” she says. “No institution in Australia offered what I needed — the ability to rapidly upskill in the business side of media. Stanford Graduate School of Business Executive Education offered just the right program to immerse myself in the areas where I needed to learn and grow.”
With this support, Fiona enrolled in the one-week, in-person Executive Leadership Development program in 2025.
Finding the Path to Personal Transformation
The program curriculum focuses on business acumen, innovation, and leadership. Fiona says she learned a lot about her potential as a business leader through classroom learning combined with Stanford’s proprietary 360º in-depth leadership assessment tool, LEAP (Leadership Evaluation and Action Planning).
“I’m very empathetic and I like to lead by example,” Fiona says. “LEAP and the leadership coaching showed me that I need to be a lot more strategic and analytical to lead our news operations over the coming months and years.”
She also valued sessions on design thinking, where participants explore mindsets of empathy, rapid prototyping, collaboration, iteration, and feedback. This human-centered framework for problem-solving is helping Fiona strategize ways for her broadcast networks to engage and grow new listeners.
“To survive, the media industry needs bold thinking and leaders that understand we are going through a period of rapid transformation,” Fiona says. “This requires an innovative approach if we’re going to stay relevant to audiences. I got that at Stanford.”
Envisioning the Future of Journalism
Fiona left Stanford with the business knowledge, ideas, and inspiration to chart her company’s long-term growth. “Studying in the heart of Silicon Valley was a game changer,” Fiona says. “Media companies around the world are being heavily disrupted by big tech. Being surrounded by people at the forefront of the technological transformation gave me so much more than I would have received from any other institution.”
Fiona remains in touch with her cohort on a WhatsApp group and on social media. “There were a couple of Australians in the course, which was lovely. Now we have accountability buddies for life back home.” She can soon add one more contact to her list: Her husband, Mark Scognamiglio, a marine science CEO, is attending the Executive Leadership Development program in 2026.
“It was so refreshing to be surrounded by people who were so passionate and excited about the opportunities ahead and who embrace — and do not fear — new technologies,” she says. Fiona regularly shares what she learned at Stanford with her colleagues, including the younger journalists she mentors.
Fiona hopes to one day rise to the C-suite, to achieve her full potential as a media business leader charting the industry’s future. Her Stanford experience also reminded her to stay true to her journalistic roots, as she embraces modern innovation. “The biggest thing I learned was our greatest commodity won’t be data, but trust.”
