GE GE Aerospace

By Ted Mann 

General Electric Co. Tuesday announced its marketing head, Beth Comstock, will take on a new role as vice chair, overseeing the company's efforts to reap industrial earnings from advances in data analysis and software.

Ms. Comstock, 55 years old, is the first woman to hold the title, which is an executive role and not a seat on the GE board. Named GE's chief marketing officer in 2003, Ms. Comstock also oversees the company's lighting business and a venture-capital operation. She is seen by company insiders as a close ally of Chief Executive Jeff Immelt.

Ms. Comstock joins three other vice chairmen of GE: John Rice, its Hong Kong-based global growth leader; Keith Sherin, the CEO of GE Capital, the finance business; and Daniel Heintzelman, the former head of its oil and gas unit who now oversees operations companywide.

At GE, Mr. Rice has long been seen as the executive who would step in immediately should anything happen unexpectedly to Mr. Immelt.

In a statement, Mr. Immelt said Ms. Comstock would focus on GE's efforts in what it has branded the "industrial Internet"--the confluence of large-scale data collection and analysis with the operation of GE's traditional heavy industrial products like power turbines, jet engines, medical scanners and locomotives. GE is developing software intended to allow users of heavy machinery to improve the efficiency of their operations and better plan for maintenance by monitoring the machines' performance in real time.

"Beth has a proven reputation inside and outside GE for transforming the enterprise and being a catalyst for digital innovation and growth," Mr. Immelt said.

Ms. Comstock formerly was senior vice president of corporate communications at NBC, which GE owned before selling the network's parent company, NBCUniversal, to Comcast Corp. in 2013. She took on responsibility to run her first GE business in October, when she was given oversight for GE Lighting.

She has been an increasingly visible public face of the company, leading GE into partnerships with companies like BuzzFeed, and overseeing companywide promotions like "ecomagination," the effort to improve public image and highlight its strategy relative to environmental concerns, which began in 2005.

Ms. Comstock has led GE's multifaceted efforts to broaden the reach of corporate PR. Under her leadership, GE has experimented with social media to perpetuate its brand, funded quirky TV advertising spots, and developed websites and blogs to promote GE's industrial products as an alternative to conventional news coverage.

She will continue to run a business unit GE calls "business innovations, " which includes its venture fund and corporate marketing.

In addition, Ms. Comstock serves on the board of Nike Inc., which is unusual at GE. Executives typically don't serve on outside boards until after retirement.

Ms. Comstock becomes part of a rare breed. Few major U.S. companies have vice chairmen and even fewer have female ones. At least 25 of the 580 biggest U.S. businesses have one or more vice chairmen serving as an executive or director, according to an analysis for The Wall Street Journal by corporate governance analysts at MSCI Inc.

Before Ms. Comstock's appointment, five of the companies had a woman as vice chairman. Shari Redstone is vice chairman of both including CBS Corp. and Viacom Inc.

Joann S. Lublin contributed to this article.

Write to Ted Mann at ted.mann@wsj.com

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

September 01, 2015 15:58 ET (19:58 GMT)

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