PALO ALTO, CA — Longtime HP comms lead Karen Kahn will be departing the tech giant — which has named Silicon Valley veteran Stella Low her successor.


“Like so many other leaders who have worked tirelessly through the last few years of Covid, I have made a bittersweet decision to focus on other passions in my life with a focus on investing in gender empowerment. My run at HP has been nothing short of extraordinary and I have deep gratitude for the impact we have been able to drive to elevate the brand and making ESG a central element of our storytelling and narrative,” Kahn told PRovoke Media.

“From diversity, equity and inclusion in marketing and communication, to charting our sustainable impact strategy to introducing our CEO and his platform to the industry and navigating these last few years, my work has been incredibly rewarding. The HP brand is beacon for trust, and I have cherished my time and role in helping to build a stronger HP. I have lots of faith in my successor, Stella Low to continue to the journey of HP’s reinvention,” she said.

Kahn, one of PRovoke Media’s Influence 100, has been HP’s CCO for more than six years, during which she has been a champion of promoting DEI. An HP mandate that its marketing agencies take concrete steps to increase the number of women and people of color in key creative and strategy roles continued under her leadership, with renewed urgency in the wake of the Black Lives Matter protests in 2020.

Low, meantime, joins most recently from Apple, where she spent eight months as head of global communications before departing in January. Low joined Apple from Cisco, where she spent two years as chief communications officer, prior to which she held senior communications roles at Dell, EMC and Unisys.