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Fortune’s Aspan on the greatness of Stephanie Meyers

Stephanie Meyers

Fortune senior writer Maria Aspan writes about Stephanie Meyers, the Inc. and Fast Company head of digital growth who died last week at 37.

Aspan writes, “Annoyingly prompt and utterly reliable, Steph was the person you wanted running any project, party, or zombie-apocalypse survival strategy. She loved creating elegant, sly plans to achieve her long-term goals, and then flawlessly executing them. She did that for her own career ambitions and those of her employees; for anything her family and friends needed; and for her health, which she ruthlessly managed. When it came to navigating health care, Steph was the most conscientious, informed, and proactive person I’ve ever known. Yet she died of undiagnosed blood clots.

“She was happy. She was hot. She would want me to include that, less for vanity — although she always looked flawless — and more because New Year’s resolutions were a religion for Steph, along with shopping for cute dresses. And one of her resolutions for 2021 was to emerge from the year of elastic pants into a summer of great hair and sharp clothes. She was already strategizing about her outfit for a friend’s August wedding.

“There were so many bigger things Steph was planning to do, now that the end of the pandemic was in sight. She was about to leave her longtime media job to start a new phase of her career in the tech industry, to finally use the MBA that she dedicated three years’ worth of nights and weekends to earn. She graduated in May 2020–and though she had to postpone the bigger celebrations she was planning, she never complained very much. She was the most cautious and responsible person I knew during the pandemic, and she didn’t want her behavior to put herself or anyone else at risk. But she was so happy to get vaccinated. She was so excited to get her future back.”

Read more here.

Chris Roush

Chris Roush was the dean of the School of Communications at Quinnipiac University in Hamden, Connecticut. He was previously Walter E. Hussman Sr. Distinguished Professor in business journalism at UNC-Chapel Hill. He is a former business journalist for Bloomberg News, Businessweek, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, The Tampa Tribune and the Sarasota Herald-Tribune. He is the author of the leading business reporting textbook "Show me the Money: Writing Business and Economics Stories for Mass Communication" and "Thinking Things Over," a biography of former Wall Street Journal editor Vermont Royster.

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