GE Names Beth Comstock as Its First Female Vice Chair
September 01 2015 - 1:49PM
Dow Jones News
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.
Ms. Comstock also serves on the board of Nike Inc., which is
unusual at GE. Executives typically don't serve on outside boards
until after retirement.
Joann S. Lublin contributed to this article.
Write to Ted Mann at ted.mann@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
September 01, 2015 13:34 ET (17:34 GMT)
Copyright (c) 2015 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
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