Yahoo PR Head Out in Wake of CEO Scott Thompson’s Exit, Source Says

In his short time at Yahoo, former CEO Scott Thompson flanked himself with a couple of his allies from PayPal. At least one of them is following him out the door: PR head Amanda Pires.

Pires joined her former boss in mid-April, replacing former communications chief Eric Brown. She’s now leaving, according to a person familiar with the matter. Her Yahoo cellphone number has been disconnected, and Pires did not return messages sent to her through LinkedIn and Facebook.

A Yahoo spokeswoman did not return phone calls seeking comment by the morning of May 14.

It is not clear whether another former PayPal exec, Sam Shrauger, will be staying with Yahoo. Thompson hired Shrauger in April to help lead a commerce division whose future is now uncertain, with the media focused on Ross Levinsohn’s taking over. Shrauger did not immediately return a call for comment.

Yahoo hasn’t revealed much about its e-commerce plans beyond an April staff memo outlining its new structure. In the memo, Thompson said the e-commerce group “will build on Yahoo’s massive reach and strong consumer relationships, but their charter will go beyond traditional e-commerce.”

Yahoo is at least attempting to conduct business as usual, which means getting advertisers excited during the TV upfronts.

On May 14, Yahoo kicked off Internet Week with a presentation on data analysis in baseball by Oakland A’s general manager Billy Beane of Moneyball fame and a brief introduction to Yahoo’s new audience-buying platform, Genome, by newly appointed executive vice president-Americas Rich Riley.

There was no mention of the CEO change on stage, and in an interview with reporters about Genome, Riley declined to address the latest chapter in what has been a crazy nine months at Yahoo other than saying: “We continue to be focused on our advertiser and agency partners.”

Jason Del Rey writes for Advertising Age, a sister publication of Workforce Management. Comment below or email editors@workforce.com.

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