Charlotte Cijffers has spent her career at the nexus of content, audience and technology. As CDO of ITP Media Group’s Luxury division, she oversees digital strategy, product development, audience growth and monetisation across some of the Middle East’s most recognised titles such as Harper’s Bazaar Arabia, Esquire Middle East, Cosmopolitan, Grazia, Dazed MENA, Arabian Business, T: The New York Times Style Magazine MENA and Complex MENA. She’s built a reputation for turning legacy editorial brands into scalable digital operations, working as the connective tissue across a publisher’s many digital functions. She also regularly speaks at global conferences, including recent appearances with Digiday and Web Summit.
What’s the biggest opportunity for women in digital content right now?
Leading the next operating model, not just participating in it. Digital content is being continually reshaped around first-party data, product-led growth and AI workflows, and women are already overrepresented in the disciplines that power it: community building, editorial judgement, consumer empathy and behaviour. The opportunity is to turn those strengths into ownership of the actual growth stack. Women who can speak the language of innovation and revenue as confidently as storytelling will shape what comes next. In the Middle East especially, where digital audiences are rapidly becoming more platform-native and deeply engaged, that opportunity is even bigger than most people realise.
What could companies do to make digital content better for women?
Make progression meaningful, then fund it. Build real career ladders with transparent salary bands. Make flexible working genuine, not performative. Invest in the skills that are becoming power centres: AI analytics and tooling, podcasts and newsletters, memberships and subscriptions. Give women budget ownership and decision rights early, because that’s where confidence gets built and where the real learning happens. And make advocating for other women a leadership expectation. Senior leaders and mentors who actively open doors and put names forward are what push the next generation ahead.
What support has mattered most to you?
Early in my career I had a boss who gave me a lot of responsibility before I felt ready for it. I was terrified, but I made it work, mostly because I knew I had a safety net: I could ask as many questions as I needed, make a few mistakes and learn on the job. That experience really changed how I think about my own leadership now. If I see talent, I try to platform it, build confidence and offer a challenge too. Beyond that, senior leaders and mentors who create runway matter enormously: people who back you when things are chaotic, support you through hard moments, and don’t gatekeep access to where decisions happen. A trusted peer network matters just as much, somewhere to ask honest questions about negotiations, salaries and all the politics nobody trains you for.
What’s the biggest myth about women in digital content?
That women are great at “content and storytelling” but not the technical side. I find it so lazy and stale. Women lead systems and processes all the time, just not always in a loud or flashy way, and that can make the work invisible. Competence shows up in results: products launched, audiences built, revenue grown. Stop confusing bravado with leadership.
What does the future of digital content in the Middle East look like to you?
Genuinely exciting, and still wide open. Audiences here are deeply engaged, but the infrastructure, the data capability, and the product thinking is still catching up. The next few years will see new media businesses built from scratch, with new monetisation models, owned audiences and data, and storytelling formats that travel globally. I’m excited to see the women who build and shape those businesses. I hope to keep being one of them.
