Natalie Pruitt will be the new president of Alabama Media Group, succeeding Tom Bates, who has led AMG as president since 2015 and announced his retirement on Thursday. A mid-May transition is planned.
Pruitt is the chief revenue officer for AMG and the head of digital advertising operations for Advance Local. She has spent 12 years working for Advance Local, AMG’s parent company, in various leadership roles.
“I appreciate the opportunity to help the team continue to excel at what we do best at AMG – connecting our communities through award-winning storytelling, growing new audiences and outperforming for our clients,” she said.
As chief revenue officer, Pruitt has doubled AMG’s digital ad revenue and built a client base across the Southeast. She pioneered the company’s video sales strategy with sports sponsorships and funded new brands such as This is Alabama and It’s a Southern Thing.
She spearheaded AMG’s focus on developing new business throughout the Southeast in travel, health care and education, creating the framework for a vertical strategy that prepared AMG for a post-print world.
Pruitt joined Advance Local in 2010 as vice president of sales for The Huntsville Times and in 2012 launched the Alabama Media Group sales operation, bringing together four sales organizations (three newspapers and AL.com) with disparate ad operating systems and driving consistent year-over-year digital revenue. Prior to joining Advance, she was vice president of advertising and interactive media at The Sun News in South Carolina.
Pruitt is on the executive boards for the Better Business Bureau of South and Central Alabama, The Bell Center for Early Intervention Programs and The Service Guild of Birmingham. She is also a board member and past president for the Multimedia Newspaper Advertising Executive Association.