Three decades of service as Beasley Media Group‘s Chief Financial Officer will conclude at the end of October for Marie Tedesco, as the publicly traded radio station owner in markets such as Tampa-St. Petersburg, Boston, Detroit and its home of Fort Myers-Naples has revealed her successor.
Lauren Burrows Coleman will take on the CFO role as of November 1, and previously served as Global Head of Strategic Corporate and Commercial Finance at Wayfair, where she led a global team of 50 across Financial Planning & Analysis, Commercial Finance, Capital Markets, Corporate Development, and Global Tax functions. She has also held leadership positions at private equity firms WindSail Capital Group and Wind Point Partners and at GE Capital, where she managed equity and debt investments across various industries. Coleman began her career as an investment banker in the Communications & Media group at Lehman Brothers.
“We are absolutely thrilled to welcome Lauren into the Beasley family,” said Caroline Beasley, Chief Executive Officer of the entity known on Wall Street under its former operating name, Beasley Broadcast Group Inc. “Her extensive and diverse experience, combined with her leadership skills, are exactly what we need to drive the company forward as we evolve into the future.”
Burrows Coleman holds an MBA from Harvard Business School and an A.B. cum laude from Dartmouth College.
Speaking of Tedesco, Ms. Beasley commented, “Marie has been an integral part of our success and her contributions have shaped the organization into what it is today. It has been a privilege to work alongside her, and we are deeply grateful for her unwavering commitment, hard work, and leadership. We will greatly miss Marie’s wisdom and guidance, and we wish her nothing but the very best!”
While Tedesco is the Italian word for German, Marie Tedesco is a native of Sweden and came to the U.S. to study at the University of California, Los Angeles. She joined Beasley as Corporate Controller, rose to VP of Finance in 1996 and took on the CFO role as 2017 began.
From 1984 through 1987, she worked in the accounting department of former industry trade publication Radio & Records. With its then-ownership by Westwood One, she moved to New York in 1988, taking a job in that company’s account department. One year later, she boarded a plane along with Scott Shannon and the man known as “Shadow” at WHTZ “Z100” to help launch “Rock 40” KQLZ-FM as “Pirate Radio” in March 1989.
Consistently named among the Most Influential “Women in Radio” by Radio Ink magazine, Tedesco also serves on the Executive Committee and Board of Directors of the Media Finance Management (MFM) Association and as Treasurer of The Alliance for Women in Media (AWM).