HITS Executive Editor and co-founder Toni Profera, who has worked with Editor in Chief Lenny Beer for more than 30 years and with Publisher Dennis Lavinthal for 25, has decided to leave the company. No announcement yet as to who will be taking over HITS Marketing, which Profera oversaw.

"The past 16 years at HITS have been the most exciting and challenging of my 30-year career in the music and journalism businesses," Profera said today. "While retaining a working relationship with Dennis, Lenny and my friends and colleagues at the company, I will be leaving to begin a new venture in the entertainment area.

"My journeys through the business have taken me from Record World magazine in the early’70s to 20^th Century Fox Records, Musicvision, Global Satellite Network and HITS," she continued. "To the entire staff of HITS, I send my enduring love and wishes for continued growth and success."

Profera began her career in 1969 at Record World in New York, becoming Chart Editor in 1972. At that point, she began working closely with Beer when he was brought in to design the industry’s first quantitative sales analysis. She relocated to Los Angeles in 1977, resigning from Record World and joining Beer at 20^th Century Fox, where, as VP Promotion, he appointed her to head the label’s Top 40 promotion efforts. A year later, she and Beer joined Lavinthal to form Musicvision, a strategic marketing company. As a principal in the formation of HITS in 1986, Profera proceeded to play a pivotal role in the growth of the magazine, including the formation of its retail and lifestyle-marketing department.