Hillary Clinton hasn’t declared that she’s running for president — YET — but she seems to already have one crucial hire in place: The Washington Post reports via anonymous sources that a longtime Google exec, Stephanie Hannon, has been named chief technology officer of Clinton’s not-yet-announced campaign.
According to the WaPo’s story, Hannon will work out of Clinton’s NYC headquarters and “oversee a team of engineers and developers… to devise Web sites, apps and other tools.” In other words, find a way for Clinton to connect with voters and, you know, engage with the kids.
Hannon seems to be perfectly suited for such a role. After working on the teams that launched Google Apps and Gmail (cue the Clinton personal email jokes), Hannon helped launch Google Maps in Europe and Google Wave in Australia. She then left for stints at Eventbrite and Facebook but came back to Google in 2012 as a product manager in the company’s Civic Innovation and Social Impact division. One of her jobs includes working with cities on big data projects, including producing and sharing transparent election results.
Clinton is setting herself up nicely when it comes to a tech-forward team, echoing the game-changing moves by her former opponent Mr. Barack Obama. His campaign was smart enough to bring on the nascent digital strategy firm Blue State Digital back in 2008, and the strategic hiring of engineers from Google, Facebook and Twitter has been credited for his 2012 victory. [WaPo]
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