CAROLINE BEASLEY

CEO, BEASLEY BROADCAST GROUP, NAPLES

Beasley, consistently named among the most powerful women in radio nationally, is currently leading her company away from its traditional all-radio focus into a diversified, multi-platform future that includes digital streaming, a Tampa-based events company and a string of e-sports investments, including an e-sports team in Houston. “Gen Z and Gen Y are really into this,” Beasley has says. “They watch e-sports the way our generations used to watch basketball or traditional sports.”

A graduate of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Beasley started at her father’s company answering phones after college. By the mid-1990s, she had become CFO of Naples-based Beasley Broadcast Group. Today, she runs the radio station network as CEO; her father, George, is chairman. Beasley has grown the company’s operations to 64 stations in 15 large and mid-size markets in the U.S., including in Southwest Florida. Three years ago, as she took over as CEO, she led the company through a $240-million acquisition of Greater Media, adding 20 radio stations in Boston, Charlotte, Detroit, New Jersey and Philadelphia.

Publicly traded Beasley Broadcast had revenue of $261.6 million in 2019.