Tom Mattia, who retired as The Coca-Cola's company's top PR executive in March, has taken a new chief communications post at Yale University.
He takes over for Helaine Klasky, who stepped down in July and now heads public affairs at General Electric.
Tom Mattia |
The 60-year-old Mattia, a member of PR Seminar, will serve as chief communications office and special advisor to Yale's president, Richard Levin, starting on Nov. 1. He'll oversee the public affairs office and the university's press officers, and work directly with Levin as part of the president's administration.
Mattia said in a statement that Yale is one of a small handful of institutions capable of "making the intersection of academia, business, civil society and government work for the betterment of mankind."
He told the Yale Daily News that he had two other offers – one from a PR firm and another from an NGO.
Mattia headed public affairs and communications for Coca-Cola in three-plus years at the company after serving as a VP of communications for EDS and, earlier, director of communications for Ford and VP of its Lincoln Mercury unit during the 1990s. Previous stints included executive VP at Hill & Knowlton in Hong Kong and a start to his PR career at IBM in the early 1980s.
Sustainability and social responsibility were key focuses of his term at Coca-Cola.
The Ivy League institution endured national scrutiny last month after a student was murdered in a campus lab. |