Coursera names former New York Times CMO Amy Weisenbach as CMO

Coursera, Inc. (NYSE: COUR) has appointed Amy Weisenbach as Chief Marketing Officer, effective Nov. 30, 2026. The announcement, made from Dubai, positions a consumer-subscription marketing veteran at the top of a platform that now reaches more than 300 million learners and 12,000 enterprise customers following Coursera's combination with Udemy.

Weisenbach arrives from The New York Times, where she served as Chief Marketing Officer and led marketing across the company's full content portfolio: News, Games, Cooking, Audio, Wirecutter, and The Athletic. During her tenure she helped accelerate the Times' transformation into a digital-subscription business, pairing brand storytelling with performance marketing to acquire new audiences and drive subscription growth.

The hire lands at a moment of consolidation. Coursera recently combined with Udemy to build what the company calls one of the world's most comprehensive skills-development platforms, and the marketing organization must now unify two learner bases and two enterprise businesses under a single demand engine.

What does the appointment change for Coursera?

CEO Greg Hart framed the decision around Weisenbach's record of converting trusted content into paid digital relationships. "Amy brings an exceptional track record of helping turn trusted content into a thriving digital business," Hart said. "At The New York Times, she helped expand how people discover, engage with, and pay for high-quality journalism and a growing portfolio of products."

Hart tied the appointment directly to the integration ahead. "Her experience building consumer demand, combined with her personal connection to education, makes her an excellent addition to our leadership team as we bring Coursera and Udemy together and help more people gain the skills they need for a rapidly changing world," he said.

For marketing leaders, the signal is straightforward: Coursera intends to run the same playbook that news and media subscription businesses have refined over the past decade — audience acquisition, engagement depth, and multi-product bundling — against a catalog of courses, Professional Certificates, Specializations, and degrees built with university and industry partners.

Weisenbach also helped introduce and scale new products at the Times, supported by globally recognized campaigns that made the value of trusted journalism legible to consumers. That product-launch experience maps onto Coursera's current roadmap, which includes AI-powered personalized guidance, features such as Role Play and Course Builder, and role-based solutions the company markets as Skills Tracks.

Who is Amy Weisenbach?

Her résumé spans media, sporting goods, and beverages:

• Most recently CMO at The New York Times, leading marketing across six consumer products.
• Before that, led global marketing at Wilson Sporting Goods.
• Held marketing roles at Beam Suntory and Unilever.
• Serves as an adjunct assistant professor in the marketing department at NYU's Stern School of Business, teaching brand strategy and consumer behavior.
• Sits on DePauw University's Board of Trustees.

She holds an M.B.A. from Harvard Business School and a B.A. in Public Policy from DePauw University.

Weisenbach cast the move as mission-driven rather than purely commercial. "Coursera's mission resonates deeply with me, both as a marketer and an educator," she said. "Trusted content can have an extraordinary impact on people's lives, and Coursera brings that promise to learning at a time when developing new skills has never been more important."

She set out her immediate priorities in the same statement: "I'm excited to work with Greg and the team to help more learners discover the opportunities across Coursera and Udemy, build lasting relationships with our global community, and advance our mission through the next chapter of growth."

Why the timing matters

Coursera launched in 2012 when Andrew Ng and Daphne Koller founded the company with a mission of universal access to world-class learning. It is incorporated as a Delaware public benefit corporation and holds B Corp certification. Institutions worldwide use the platform to upskill and reskill employees, students, and citizens in high-demand fields including GenAI, data science, technology, and business.

The Udemy combination changes the scale of the marketing mandate. A single CMO now oversees acquisition and retention across a combined footprint of 300 million-plus learners and 12,000 enterprise customers — a scope closer to a global consumer-subscription business than a traditional edtech vendor.

What does this change for CMOs watching from other industries? It is one more data point that subscription-marketing talent now moves laterally across categories — from news to sportswear to education — and that boards increasingly treat trusted content, in any vertical, as a subscription asset to be monetized with the same performance discipline.