By Greg Hazley
Lisa Halliday, the top communications executive for Oprah Winfrey and her media juggernaut Harpo Productions, is stepping down after 12 years.
Halliday plans to return to Los Angeles to "pursue other interests," she said in a statement to O’Dwyer’s.
Her Harpo resume includes the recent launch of Winfrey’s struggling OWN network, along with scores of other campaigns and endeavors like “The Oprah Winfrey Show,” “Dr. Phil” and O, The Oprah Magazine. She also handled the launch and occasional PR flare-up of Winfrey’s school for girls in Africa.
Halliday moved to Chicago for the position in 1999 after serving as VP of national publicity for The Walt Disney Company’s Buena Vista Pictures Marketing division, where she worked for nearly a decade.
Harpo expects to name a successor within the month.
Winfrey this month took over the CEO reins of the OWN network, which slates a talk show with Rosie O’Donnell for the fall. The network launched on January 1 but has underperformed expectations after a splashy launch.
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