AS EDITOR-IN-CHIEF of Elle UK, Farrah Storr took the realm of transatlantic expansion of Substack in the UK in November 2021, it was a new beginning of sorts.

In her words, she left magazines for newsletters because “I felt that I’d done everything that I set out to do. And there wasn’t really any other place for me to go”.

Under its recent assignment of Substack, Storr intends to sign “big, well-known writers” and “strong individualistic voices” to build the email newsletter platform’s audience in Britain.

Storr joins Substack from Elle UK, where she was editor-in-chief since April 2019. She previously held the same title at the UK edition of Cosmopolitan. In fact, Storr is known for revamping Cosmopolitan in the UK to make it a relevant, future-facing brand for a new generation of women. She also won multiple awards for her work, including the Editor of the Year award from the British Society of Magazine Editors in 2018, and from the Professional Publishers Association, in both 2018 and 2019.

A 2017 report by The Guardian and Operation Black Vote listed Storr as one of the 1000 most powerful people in the UK, making her one of seven BAME women to be included on the list. Prior to Cosmopolitan, Storr was at the sharp end of women’s magazine publishing for many years, quickly scaling her way up the ladder with roles at a number of titles, including Glamour and Marie Claire. She was brought in as editor to launch the UK edition of Women’s Health in 2011.

Born to a Pakistani father and an English mother in Salford, near Manchester, Storr is aware that “opportunity isn’t as fairly distributed as we’d like to believe” in various sectors of the society including media, and she is committed to address this issue.