After 19 years, I'm leaving Fortune

This is my Data Sheet column on Fortune.com from this morning.

After 19 glorious, rewarding, life-changing years, I am leaving Fortune.

I am pleased to tell you I’ll have a lot going on in my post-Fortune life.

For starters, I am becoming editor in chief of World 50, an organization that builds private peer communities for CEOs and other top executives at leading global corporations. I have been moderating conversations for World 50 for more than a decade, and while the name of the outfit might not ring a bell, its members are the brightest lights at the world’s most important companies. World 50 itself is growing quickly, and I have a hunch its profile is going to rise in the months and years to come.

I also have signed on as a contributing writer for Business Insider and its various Insider properties, writing an every-other-week reported column on business and several feature stories a year about whatever swing-for-the-fences topics I can scare up.  BI is investing aggressively in quality journalism, particularly for its premium subscription offering, and I am energized to be working with its growing team of reporters and editors.

There’s more. I will continue as a regular contributor to the Fox Business Network. I’m also working with a friend on a really exciting documentary film series, a project that’s so much fun we think it won’t be our last. And I think I might have the idea for my next book.

I cannot begin to describe how much I love Fortune and always will. Before one of several color-scheme redesigns I frequently said I bled Fortune blue. I still do. When I joined Fortune my hair was brown, I was a newlywed, and I had never written a proper magazine feature. I was in awe of the giants who roamed the hallways of our Time-Life Building offices. Now my hair isn’t brown anymore, I celebrated my nineteenth wedding anniversary last week, and I’ve written (and edited) more features than I can count. Whatever I have accomplished here, I stand on the shoulders of all who came before me as well as Fortune’s current crew of hardworking, ambitious, talented, and committed journalists.

Fortune has been the professional gift that kept on giving. I have traveled the world, helped build a conference business, written two books, dived deep into topics far beyond commerce, and interviewed more CEOs and other luminaries than I can remember. I even shook hands with the Pope! I have been part of an organization that long knew exactly what it was about: Committing journalism on behalf of its readers.

Speaking of readers, I have truly enjoyed my relationship with you. Many of you are my sources, subjects, friends, confidantes, dinner companions, onstage dueling partners, cherished critics, and more.  I fully intend to keep our relationship going.

My last day at Fortune is Oct. 14, and I plan to run through the tape, including writing a feature for the November issue. I also intend to complete a few projects after my departure, like the six-episode podcast we launched today and virtually helping to host Brainstorm Tech on Dec. 1-2. My family and I are remaining in San Francisco. The rest of this is change enough.