The White House has confirmed to The Deal that former Google Inc. executive Katie Jacobs Stanton has been hired. A spokesperson could not confirm her exact title, which AllthingsD.com reported late Wednesday night will be the very Web 2.0-sounding position of "director of citizen participation."
Stanton (pictured), a group product manager at Google who co-founded the company's election team, worked on Google Moderator, which was used to let the public submit questions for the presidential debates and which the Obama transition team experimented with on Change.gov.
Continue reading below
"President Obama started his career as a community organizer on the South Side of Chicago, where he saw firsthand what people can do when they come together for a common cause," Macon Phillips, director of new media for the White House,
blogged on whitehouse.gov on Inauguration Day. "Citizen participation will be a priority for the Administration, and the Internet will play an important role in that."
The White House is one of a growing number of organizations hiring people with the specific purpose of reaching out to their constituents -- or customers, as we call them in the business world. For example, to increase audience engagement and participation, six months ago BusinessWeek Online hired
Shirley Brady as "community editor," a job title we're likely to see more in the future. Meanwhile, the job of chief technology officer in the Obama administration is still open. -
Mary Kathleen Flynn
