James Follows Pittman Out AOL Door
By Mike Farrell -- Multichannel News, 7/19/2002 1:16:00 PM
Michele James, chief talent scout of AOL Time Warner Inc., submitted her resignation shortly after her boss, chief operating officer Bob Pittman, decided to throw in the towel.
And while James said her departure is the result of her desire to start her own business, she added that it is likely that other executives will follow Pittman out the door.
James said she is leaving AOL Time Warner effective Sept. 30 to start her own executive-search firm -- tentatively named James & Associates -- and she will count AOL Time Warner and all of its divisions as clients.
The company is expected to have four offices -- in New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles and London -- and it will be a high-end boutique firm specializing in media and technology placement.
James -- who joined America Online Inc. about three years ago, before its merger with Time Warner Inc. -- said she has been thinking of starting her own company for about the past 60 days.
'In the past three years, I learned a lot,' she added. 'I thought that maybe it's time to be entrepreneurial again and have AOL Time Warner as a client, but on the outside. Bob [Pittman] was a huge supporter of that.'
She continued, 'I do think you're going to see a talent drain out of the organization. I think you'll see several folks rethinking their position in the organization.'
Given all those factors, James said, the opportunity was right to go out on her own.
She wouldn't name names. But according to other sources, it is likely that former allies of Pittman -- like senior vice president Marshall Cohen, in charge of the company's consumer and marketing research; AOL International president Michael Lynton; and executive VP, office of the CEO Kenneth Lerer -- may be rethinking their status at the company.
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