Twitter is eyeing Apple veteran Natalie Kerris for top communications job
Twitter Eyeing Apple Veteran for Top Comms Job — Twitter is close to hiring Natalie Kerris, the longtime and high-profile Apple communications exec, to run its communications unit, a critically important job given …
Context & Ripple Effects
This report lands mid-blitz in Twitter's executive rebuild: days earlier Re/code reported American Express marketing VP Leslie Berland as the leading choice for the CMO role (the CMO search), and a month before that Twitter had already pulled Apple's Jeffrey Siminoff across to run diversity and inclusion (the Siminoff hire). Kerris would be the third consumer-brand import in roughly a month, each aimed at how Twitter presents itself to the outside world.
The job's stated stakes — a 'critically important' communications unit — proved out in the coverage that followed: Kerris joined and was gone in under six months (her early exit), editorial director Karen Wickre left that March, and Twitter had to go back to the market that fall for Anthem PR's Kristin Binns to refill the comms bench.
First-order effects
- If the hire closes, Twitter installs an Apple-trained communications chief at the same moment it is searching for a CMO, giving its investor and press narrative a single coordinated owner for the first time in the reorganization.
- Apple loses one of its most visible, longest-tenured communications executives to a struggling peer — a direct talent drain from Cupertino's famously disciplined PR machine.
Second-order effects
- The import strategy squeezes Twitter's existing communications leadership: Karen Wickre, a longtime internal voice, departed within weeks of this report rather than work under the new structure.
- When Kerris exited inside six months, Twitter was forced back into the external market for Anthem PR's Kristin Binns — turning the comms job into a repeated, costly search rather than a settled appointment.
Third-order effects
- The pattern — poach a marquee Apple operator, absorb the churn when they leave, then layer more responsibility onto whoever remains, as with CMO Leslie Berland later taking over HR as 'Head of People' — points toward Twitter rebuilding its executive bench around imported consumer-brand talent instead of developing homegrown leaders.
The trend: Twitter's 2016 rebuild treated Apple and other consumer brands as its executive farm system, betting that borrowed communications discipline could fix its public narrative faster than internal promotion.