Where should communications sit?

Three appointments in the last week of September put communications next to legal, public affairs or sustainability. The common feature is adjacency, and the combined seat it produces has tended to come with a wider brief rather than a narrower one.

Michael Reaney  ·  2 October 2026  ·  4 min read

Some recent appointments in late September experiment with where communications sits. On 26th September Microsoft moved its communications function out of marketing and into the Corporate, External and Legal Affairs organisation led by Brad Smith, its vice chair and president, placing corporate communications alongside legal, regulatory, public policy and government relations.

Frank X. Shaw, who had led the function for more than seventeen years, steps away from day-to-day responsibility and advises through the transition, and Brent Colburn, until now vice president of global public affairs, takes it on in the interim while reporting to Smith and also joining the chief marketing officer's leadership team. On GeekWire's reading of the internal emails from Satya Nadella and Smith, the permanent chief communications officer is expected to report to Smith as well, which makes the structure more than a holding arrangement.

Meanwhile on 27th September, SC Johnson named Kate Wagner as chief communications officer, with global corporate affairs, communications, sustainability and government relations in her remit.

On 30th September O'Dwyer's reported that Meta had promoted Tucker Bounds, previously vice president of communications for Facebook, to head of communications and public affairs, a title that pairs the two terms rather than choosing between them, with public positioning on artificial intelligence and platform safety in the brief.

The common feature is adjacency. Two of these three moves also pair communications with sustainability or public affairs rather than with legal, which is a different move with a different logic. The pressure there comes from disclosure and licence to operate, rather than from litigation risk. The combined seat it produces has tended to come with a wider brief rather than a narrower one.

GeekWire reports that Nadella wrote that the people closest to the work have the best opportunity to shape how Microsoft is understood, and that Brad Smith indicated more employees and executives are likely to act as part of the company's public voice, including on social media. If more employees and executives speak publicly, the function sitting next to legal is no longer reviewing copy, it is licensing hundreds of speakers, which is a governance job rather than a marketing one.

Worth reading

• The Conference Board, "CEOs' Mandate for Chief Communicators in 2026: Corporate Strategy" (January 2026), drawing on C-Suite Outlook 2026, a survey of 1,732 executives worldwide including 771 chief executives: corporate strategy is the clearly leading communications priority for the year. The Conference Board, January 2026
• ContentGrip on the Microsoft reorganisation (26th September 2026), working from the internal emails first reported by GeekWire: the reporting lines, the interim arrangement and the expectation that the permanent chief communications officer reports to Smith. ContentGrip, 26th September 2026

The moves

• Microsoft: communications moves from marketing into Corporate, External and Legal Affairs under Brad Smith. Frank X. Shaw steps back after more than seventeen years; Brent Colburn is interim and reports to Smith; the permanent chief communications officer is expected to report to Smith as well.
• SC Johnson: Kate Wagner becomes chief communications officer, with corporate affairs, communications, sustainability and government relations. She joins from Abercrombie, and spent nine years at Levi Strauss before that, latterly as vice president of global corporate affairs.
• Meta: Tucker Bounds becomes head of communications and public affairs, succeeding David Ginsberg, who moves to a product and insights role working with the chief data officer.