mary stuttsMary Stutts, former VP of corporate communications at Bristol-Myers Squibb, has moved to Comcast in a new external affairs post covering California.

Andrew Johnson, a 16-year veteran, left the VP slot in January.

The cable and media giant last year fumbled an announcement that it was moving 1,000 call center jobs out of California, initially blaming the high cost of doing business in the state where it has 2.2M customers.

Stutts oversees the company's newly merged government affairs and communications units based in Livermore. The cable giant and parent to NBCUniversal has more than 5,000 employees in the state.

Prior to BMS, Stutts was senior VP of corporate relations at Elan Pharmaceuticals and senior director of corporate communications at Genentech, in addition to posts at Kaiser Permanente, Bayer and UnitedHealthGroup.

At Comcast, she reports to regional senior VP Hank Fore, who noted her understanding of CSR and experience in directing large public affairs teams made her an ideal fit.

Comcast is based in Philadelphia. The company this week promoted Jennifer Khoury to senior VP, corporate and digital communications under CCO D'Arcy Rudnay.