OREANDA-NEWS. General Electric (NYSE: GE) Board of Directors has named Beth Comstock company vice chair leading GE Business Innovations. Comstock, 55, will be in charge of building out GE as a Service, along with her current GE Business Innovations responsibilities leading GE Lighting, GE Ventures and Licensing, corporate marketing, sales and communications.

"As we advance our digital capabilities, create new markets and build partnerships that enhance GE’s inventive culture and brand, Beth continues to be instrumental in delivering better, faster outcomes for our customers,” said GE Chairman and CEO Jeff Immelt. “Beth has a proven reputation inside and outside GE for transforming the enterprise and being a catalyst for digital innovation and growth. She has spearheaded our investment in the Industrial Internet -- driving our evolution to a digital industrial company. Her passion for change and innovation is critical to our growth strategy.”

Comstock was named a GE company officer in 1998 when she became vice president of corporate communications. She currently leads GE’s Business Innovations unit, which is focused on accelerating growth from new businesses and those in transition, intensifying commercial impact and increasing brand value, and working with partners who enhance GE’s inventive culture.

Comstock was GE’s first Chief Marketing Officer in more than 20 years in 2003 and has a long-history of marketing and digital expertise, having served as President of Integrated Media at NBC Universal. She has also held a succession of roles at NBC, CBS and Turner Broadcasting.

Comstock is a member Nike’s Board of Directors and Trustee president of the Cooper-Hewitt Smithsonian Design Museum. She graduated from the College of William and Mary with a degree in biology.

About GE

GE (NYSE: GE) imagines things others don’t, builds things others can’t and delivers outcomes that make the world work better. GE brings together the physical and digital worlds in ways no other company can. In its labs and factories and on the ground with customers, GE is inventing the next industrial era to move, power, build and cure the world.