Former Vice Chair, GE
Beth Comstock is a change maker. Her mission is to understand what’s next, navigate change and help people and organizations do the same.
She was formerly Vice Chair of GE. Over nearly three decades at GE, she led efforts to accelerate new growth and innovation. Beth initiated GE’s digital and clean-energy transformations, developed new businesses, increased GE’s brand value and partnered to enhance its inventive culture. She led the creation of Current, an intelligent environments business, GE Ventures & Licensing, the FastWorks innovation program, ecomagination and healthymagination, and oversaw GE Lighting. She was responsible for GE’s sales, marketing and communications functions, and was the company’s first Chief Marketing Officer in 20 years.
As President of Integrated Media at NBC Universal, Beth oversaw ad revenue and the company’s digital efforts, including early development of hulu.com. She held a succession of marketing and communications roles at GE, NBC, CBS and Turner Broadcasting/CNN.
Beth is a director at Nike, trustee of The National Geographic Society and former board president of the Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian National Design Museum. A native of Winchester, Virginia, she graduated from the College of William and Mary with a degree in biology. Having recently stepped down from GE, she is now exploring a path as an writer, instigator and connector. Her first book, Imagine It Forward, is about summoning courage and creativity in the face of change; it will be published September 18, 2018 by Currency, an imprint of Penguin Random House.
