10
January
2005
|
16:35 PM
America/Los_Angeles

Are there more senior PR shakeups on the way at top Silicon Valley companies?

by Tom Foremski for SiliconValleyWatcher.com


The New Year has brought in a clean broom at Oracle and Sun Microsystems as their top PR executives depart suddenly. Is this their reward for toughing it out at some of the most challenging jobs in the industry?


In an exclusive story on SiliconValleyWatcher, we reported late Monday that Jim Finn, Oracle's head of communications is leaving. His replacement will be Jeff Lettes, the recent head of worldwide comms at Applied Materials. Oracle also lost Jennifer Glass just days ago -- she moved three thousand miles away to New York to work with Sony USA.


Andy Lark, head of Sun's PR, announced his resignation late last week. Are we going to see more turmoil in the communications teams of other top Silicon Valley companies?


The departures from Oracle are interesting. It would seem that Mr Finn and Ms Glass are leaving after all the hard work has been done around the nearly endless PeopleSoft hostile takeover. Maybe a change is as good as a rest.


As for Mr Lark, he hasn't said what he will do, but, reading his blog there are tons of clues. Here is my take: Andy is going to join a venture that will provide a variety of blogging and media services to corporates. (By the way, we're going to do that too--as a side consulting business---more details will follow....)


I'm going to see Andy at the New Communications Forum conference on Jan 25 and 26. He is giving the keynote and I'll be on a panel. You should come along, it's in Napa and I can guarantee an interesting group of people. Local attendees (we hope lots of our readers!) get a special rate of $595.

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