Eva Chen (pictured left) has taken over as editor of Lucky.
Chen, 33, becomes the youngest editor-in-chief of a major fashion magazine by more than a decade and the first Asian American to run a Conde Nast magazine, reports Business of Fashion.
The Chinese American had every intention to follow her parents wishes and become a doctor. Right before taking the MCAT, she was filling burned out and decided to apply for internships in the publishing and media world. She landed at Harper Bazaar and absolutely loved it. She hasn’t looked back since.
“Of course, there was the matter of telling my parents, ‘Hey, guess what? I’m moving away from this very established career path that is very easy to understand and more linear to do something that is completely nonlinear and completely unpredictable.’”
She worked for just six weeks at Lucky before landing a job at Elle. From there she moved to Teen Vogue before becoming a consultant at Lucky and being named Editor-in-Chief two months later.
“I don’t know how quickly it’s actually been, because I’ve been over a decade in the industry,” adding, “I understand the Lucky audience so innately, because I feel like I am that audience. Someone who’s obsessed with shopping 18,000 different ways is probably the right person to run a shopping magazine.”
You can read a lot more about her quick rise in the industry in the Business of Fashion.