John A. Byrne

Born in Paterson, N.J., Byrne was the only child of John and Valerie Byrne. His father worked in a finishing textile mill in Paterson until becoming a Post Office worker. His mother worked in a garment assembly plant in the city. Among his earliest memories is Byrne's father coming home after work, his feet dyed a different color from the dyes used in the plant that day. The family lived in humble circumstances in a two-bedroom apartment on Marshall St. without central heating or a bathroom with either a shower or bath tub, having to take 'gypsy showers' in the kitchen sink. Byrne shined shoes for 15 cents a pair on the city's downtown streets and had three newspaper routes, delivering The Morning Call, The Paterson Evening News, and local shoppers.

While a high school student at St. John's Cathedral High, he began working part-time in the circulation department of The Morning Call, spending chunks of time in the morgue reading newspaper accounts of historical events in bound volumes of the paper. When the Call was shut down, he recalls walking out of its offices on Church St. as staffers openly wept over the newspaper's death. Byrne landed a job with The Record as a part-time editorial clerk, writing obituaries, stripping the AP and UPI wires, and fetching sandwiches for editors. He began covering local town council and board of education meetings in Bergen County for a chain of suburban newspapers and shoppers, until gaining another part-time job while in college at the New Jersey bureau for the New York Daily News where he took dictation for articles from reporters in the field.

A first-generation college student, Byrne ultimately got his master's degree in journalism from the University of Missouri and an undergraduate degree in English and political science from William Paterson College.[4][5]

College transformed his life. After serving as the rock critic and arts editor for his college student weekly, The Beacon, Byrne was editor-in-chief for two years. It was an experience that led to his decision to pursue his graduate degree in journalism after which he joined the Washington, D.C, bureau of Fairchild News Service where he covered several regulatory agencies and the federal courts, including the U.S. Supreme Court. Byrne was sent to London by Fairchild to run its London bureau where he interviewed Paul McCartney, actors Peter O'Toole and Angela Lansbury, novelists P.D. James and Alberto Moravia, director Jonathan Miller, and many other artists and celebrities. After a three-year stint there, he returned to the U.S. as a staff writer for Forbes magazine in New York and was subsequently recruited to Business Week Business Week magazine as management editor. During an 18-year period, Byrne wrote or co-wrote an unprecedented 58 cover stories for Business Week.

His articles explored trends in leadership, strategy, innovation and management, including the folly of management fads, the discontent among middle managers in major companies, the exorbitant growth of CEO pay, the corporate culture of the world's most disliked corporation, among many other topics. He was a finalist for both a National Magazine Award for feature writing as well as a Loeb Award for business journalism. It was at Business Week when Byrne created the first of the regularly published rankings of MBA programs in 1988. Byrne left Business Week as a senior writer in 2002 to become Editor-in-Chief of Fast Company magazine. Under his leadership, the magazine won its first Loeb Award, the highest honor in business journalism. Byrne was instrumental in securing a buyer, entrepreneur Joe Mansueto, for Fast Company in 2005 which saved the publication from certain closure.

He was then recruited to rejoin Business Week as Executive Editor, responsible for the day-to-day editorial operations of the magazine under Editor-in-Chief Steve Adler. He was also made Editor-in-Chief of Business Week's online operations in 2007. When Bloomberg purchased Business Week in 2009, Byrne started his own entrepreneurial venture C-Change Media with the launch of the website PoetsandQuants.com, which became the leading source of information and intelligence on graduate management education. C-Change would ultimately own five websites, covering all facets of business education and law schools. Over a 12-year timeframe, Byrne recruited and led a team that built C-Change into a multi-million-dollar company with record revenue for 11 out of a dozen years. It was sold to Times Higher Education for an undisclosed sum in 2023.

All told, Byrne has now been in the reporting and writing industry for more than 50 years, a span in which he authored or co-authored more than 12 business books, including two New York Times bestsellers. Most notably, he collaborated as a co-author with Jack Welch, the legendary chairman and CEO of General Electric, on Straight From The Gut, which was on the bestseller list for 26 consecutive weeks, and John Sculley, the CEO of Apple Computer, on Odyssey: From Pepsi To Apple. Byrne also is the only journalist to have written cover stories for all three major U.S. business magazines: Forbes, Businessweek, and Fortune. [1][6] He is now based in Charlottesville, Virginia, United States.

Byrne's views on business education and the future of journalism have served him in his career as a speaker and essayist.[7] He has spoken at dozens of conferences worldwide, has been frequently interviewed about the new world of journalism and the future of business education, and has been written about by Harvard University's Nieman Reports,[8] The Christian Science Monitor,[7] and MediaWeek magazine.[9][1][10][11]

• Official website