Communicator spotlight: Kristin Carvell of GE Vernova
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Photo illustration: Axios Visuals. Photo: Courtesy of GE Vernova
As chief communications officer for GE Vernova, Kristin Carvell is responsible for leading communications and brand marketing for the energy company, which spun out from GE.
Why it matters: April marked the one-year mark of the spinoff, and since then, Carvell and her team have been focused on establishing the brand and shaping the story of the newly public company.
Catch up quick: Carvell started her career in politics, in which she spent a decade supporting communications for campaigns and elected officials.
- From there, she held communications roles at Cisco and Uber before joining GE in 2016.
What she's saying: "I think sometimes people just think about communications as sort of PR, and I feel like, certainly at GE, communicators are first and foremost business people. It's a highly strategic role, and I think communications has a seat at the table," Carvell told Axios.
State of play: Carvell reports to CEO Scott Strazik and oversees a global team of 75 who manage internal and external communications, brand marketing, and foundation work.
- "You're talking about sort of detangling more than 130 years of a foundation, right, to put together GE Vernova and the communications team," she said. "And one of the first decisions I made was to centralize the communications team."
- Because they were "going to be charged with building one brand, building one culture and sharing one external story with the world, we really needed to be one team, and I feel really good about that decision," Carvell added.
Zoom in: On the company's one-year anniversary, Carvell's team launched GE Vernova's first global brand campaign, inspired by its mission statement.
- "It's all about action, and it's really a campaign focused on what we call relentless optimism, or never-give-up optimism. It's something that we feel as we're working to accomplish this massive mission of electrifying and decarbonizing the world," she said.
What she's watching: Apple's latest ad campaign featuring Pedro Pascal and noise-canceling headphones, and Airbnb's animated ads.
- "I like companies that stay true to who they are but still manage to be very culturally relevant," she said.
Best advice came from a former Uber colleague: In communications, "we all do the windows, we all do the floors."
- "This really stuck with me as I was looking to build out my team. Of course, I want to hire strategic and smart leaders, and that is an expectation. But I also want leaders who will roll their sleeves up and dig in and do the work, and that's what I try to model every single day."
