Christian A. Hendricks is an award-winning and highly respected digital media executive.. Hendricks' digital leadership began in 1996, when he was appointed president of Nando.net, the McClatchy Company's online publishing division. In 1999, he became McClatchy's vice president for interactive media (CDO). From then until 2017, he led and helped craft the company's digital strategies and initiatives. While at McClatchy, Hendricks also led its digital investment strategy resulting in the company taking stakes in companies like Apartments.com, CareerBuilder, and Cars.com. In addition to recommending investments, he also actively represented McClatchy's interests via boards of directors roles. In early 2021, Hendricks joined the board of Basis as its first independent board director. Also, in 2021, Hendricks became the board chair for Recruitology, where he had been a board director since 2018. Chris helped steer the company to a successful exit in the chair role, selling the company to Jobcase. Through his part-time role at the Local Media Consortium (LMC), which he co-founded in 2013, Christian maintains solid relationships with scores of newspaper, television, radio, and digital publishing companies and related solutions providers. As Managing Partner for Extol Digital, Chris assists client companies with business and go-to-market strategies. Hendricks also provides gratis executive mentoring and coaching to dozens of executives, founders, and CEOs. He currently serves as a trustee and vice-chair for the Breakthrough Collaborative, a national organization focused on increasing diversity in elementary and high school teaching ranks and providing better pathways to college for students of color in elementary and high school. Hendricks also serves as a board director for the Maynard Institute for Journalism (MIJE), a non-profit focused on DEI training for newsrooms and management training for executives of color in the media industry. He has been on the MIJE board of directors since 2001. Hendricks lives in Holly Springs, North Carolina. He holds a bachelor's degree from the University of Pennsylvania.
