Washington Post names O’Lear head of mobile strategy

The Washington Post has appointed Coleen O’Lear as head of mobile strategy.

The Post currently markets two news apps: the flagship Washington Post app and the visually oriented Washington Post Select app (internally known as “Rainbow”).

O’Lear will aim to unify these two apps into a single Post app and create a world-class app experience aimed at growing the Post’s audience and building stronger reader habits.

She will also be working with newsroom, engineering and product design teams to drive innovation in user experience and produce an essential app that appeals to both subscribers and new readers.

Currently, O’Lear is also an adjunct lecturer at Northwestern University’s Medill School where she teaches “The Business of Media Innovation,” a graduate-level course co-taught remotely winter semester.

O’Lear has been with the Post for more than 9 years, joining as a Homepage editor, Universal News Desk. She then became mobile producer, Mobile Innovations team, and was then an assignment editor, Emerging News Products. She then served as managing producer, Emerging News Products.

From 2016 to 2020, O’Lear held the post of editorial director for Emerging News Products, before serving as deputy director at the same department.

Before joining the Post, she was first a copy editor/page designer and then assistant copy desk chief at The Island Packet. She was also a copy editor, news and sports, at The Times-Picayune and an editorial assistant at NOLA.com.

She has also worked as a freelance reporter and as a summer intern at New Orleans CityBusiness and Northern Nevada Business Weekly, respectively.

O’Lear is a B.A. in print journalism and mass communication from Loyola University, New Orleans.