NEW YORK — Former General Motors comms head Craig Buchholz is joining Hill+Knowlton Strategies as the firm's new US CEO.

Starting tomorrow, Buchholz will lead the agency’s 300-plus US team located in 10 offices across the country. He will report to global chairman and CEO AnnaMaria DeSalva and join H+K’s Global Leadership Council.

Buchholz succeeds Richard Millar, who has been leading the US in addition to serving as global president since 2019. Millar will maintain his global presidency role and return to the UK.

Buchholz brings nearly three decades of experience to the role, which included holding top comms jobs at GM and P&G.

Most recently, he served as senior vice VP of global communications for GM, where, as the top communications executive and a member of the senior leadership team, he was responsible for the company’s overall global communications strategy. At GM, he was instrumental in helping the company execute its transformation to become a leader in electric vehicles, autonomous technology, and software services.

Before joining GM in 2020, Buchholz spent six years with P&G, which named him CCO in June 2018 as part of a larger reorganization that included combining its brand and corporate communications functions in the process. He also led the company’s global healthcare communications. Buchholz joined P&G in 2014 as VP of global communications, where he developed and directed a global strategic communications plan.

Prior to P&G, Buchholz spent nearly a decade at Merck, where he led the team responsible for strategic communications on behalf of the company's prescription medicines, vaccines, biologic therapies, consumer care, and animal health products. While at Merck, he was deeply involved in the company’s $41 billion acquisition of Schering-Plough.

“I am proud and delighted to welcome Craig Buchholz as the new leader of our US business,” said DeSalva. “He is a highly respected, admired leader in our field who has helped some of the world’s most important companies advance through significant periods of transformation and growth. He is deep in industrial sectors that are important to our business. And as a former H+K client, Craig knows us well. I’m excited to work with him to scale our US business, building on the momentum that Richard Millar has established over the last three years.”