Eve Burton

Executive Vice President and Chief Legal Officer, Hearst

Eve Burton is an executive vice president and the chief legal officer at Hearst, a leading global, diversified information, services and media company with operations in 40 countries. She is a member of Hearst’s board of directors and has been one of Hearst’s leaders in establishing worldwide strategic enterprise deals with partners. Her portfolio within Hearst is broad, and she manages technology operations, compliance, human resource issues, labor relations, government affairs, and digital initiatives. She co-founded and oversees HearstLab, which fosters innovation and investment in early-stage businesses led by women.

Eve is the president of the Helen Gurley Brown Foundation, an organization committed to “empowering women, empowering the future and empowering innovation.” In pursuit of those goals, the foundation creates partnerships with educational institutions, nonprofit organizations, theater companies and visionary leaders to support the development of dreams and to ensure that those dreams can be achieved. Under Eve’s leadership, the foundation sponsors the BOLD Women’s Leadership Network, a pioneering program cultivating leadership in young women in college and beyond. Colby-Sawyer has been one of six institutions in the BOLD network since 2016, and through investments totaling over $4 million at Colby-Sawyer alone, the organization has supported the career goals of female, first-generation college students with invaluable opportunities for career development, networking, financial aid, financial support for community-based projects, internships and post-graduate fellowships.

Eve serves on the boards of Intuit and the David and Helen Gurley Brown Institute for Media Innovation at Stanford and Columbia Universities and previously served on the board of directors of AOL and Middlebury College. She is a member of the Council of Foreign Affairs. She has served as vice president and chief legal counsel at Cable News Network (CNN) and was deputy general counsel at the New York Daily News.

A graduate of Hampshire College and Columbia Law School, Eve was a Fulbright Research Scholar at Thammasat University in Bangkok. She has won the Fulbright Award for her international work and was awarded a lifetime First Amendment Award from the Reporter’s Committee for Freedom of the Press. She was also named an Outstanding Woman of the Bar by the New York County Lawyer’s Association.

Eve and her husband, John Finck, have also supported the college personally, endowing four scholarships in honor of each of their parents. Eve and John live in New London and are actively involved in the local community, supporting organizations and initiatives that contribute to the betterment of the town.