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Blackberry Alicia Keys

Blackberry global creative director Alicia Keys departs after a year

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By Jessica Davies, News Editor

January 3, 2014 | 2 min read

Blackberry has confirmed its global creative director Alicia Keys will leave the company on 30 January 2014, ending a year-long partnership.

The Grammy award-winning singer song writer, who first took on the role a year ago coinciding with the Blackberry 10 smartphone launch, has since been a part of several initiatives including the Blackberry Keep Moving Projects, and launched the Blackberry Scholars Programme, which provides scholarships to women in tech.

Blackberry said in a statement: “BlackBerry and Alicia Keys have completed our year-long collaboration. We thank Alicia for her many contributions including providing creative direction for the BlackBerry Keep Moving Project which attracted more than 40 million visits, advocating for women in STEM and launching the BlackBerry Scholars Program. We have enjoyed the opportunity to work with such an incredibly talented and passionate individual.”

Her departure marks the latest in a string of difficulties the mobile operator has had, having already bid farewell to the CEO who hired Keys Thorsten Heins. At the same time as his departure it announced it had abandoned plans to sell the company.

Heins was replaced by John S. Chen as interim CEO, but during the same month both the chief operating officer Kristian Tear, chief marketing officer Frank Boulben and chief finance officer Brian Bidulka all left.

The changes occurred during a tumultuous year for the company which failed to regain market share with the launch of its new mobile operating system BlackBerry 10 back in January.

Blackberry Alicia Keys

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