Laura Sturaitis Promoted to Business Wire's Executive Vice President, Media Services and Product Strategy, and Named to Executive Committee

NEW YORK--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Business Wire announced Thursday that Laura Sturaitis has been named executive vice president, media services and product strategy, a promotion that recognizes her leadership role in leveraging search engine optimization, social media, and web-based technologies into critical PR and IR applications that have transformed the news wire industry.

“She brings passion, creativity and energy to her new role which, combined with her proven knowledge of our industry, is certain to lead to continued product innovations in the future.”

Sturaitis also has been appointed to Business Wire's Executive Committee. She reports to Phyllis Dantuono, Business Wire's chief operating officer.

Sturaitis has championed Business Wire's innovative use of the Internet as a key distribution platform, developing a range of multimedia products to capitalize on its dynamic capabilities.

Most recently, Sturaitis led a multi-department product development team that created EON: Enhanced Online News, a robust platform that employs SEO and social media tools to maximize web visibility. Business Wire is the only commercial news wire to distribute over dual SEO-Enhanced platforms (businesswire.com and http://eon.businesswire.com/portal/site/eon/), which improves the performance of news on popular search engines, while also enabling content to be shared across social media networks.

Additionally, Sturaitis has been instrumental in expanding Business Wire's mobile reach, as well as advanced measurement initiatives designed to improve "ROI" reporting. She also sits on the board of PYMNTS.com, an interactive portal for the payments industry that is a joint venture with Market Platform Dynamics.

"Laura has played a pivotal role in Business Wire's migration onto the Internet over the past decade," said Cathy Baron Tamraz, chief executive officer, in making today's announcement. "She brings passion, creativity and energy to her new role which, combined with her proven knowledge of our industry, is certain to lead to continued product innovations in the future."

Prior to joining Business Wire in 1992, Sturaitis was founder, vice president and general manager of International Business Chronicle, a biweekly publication focusing on trade issues in the southeastern U.S., Caribbean, and Latin America. She also has worked at the Miami Herald and the South Florida Business Journal. Sturaitis holds a B.A. degree from St. Thomas University (Miami), and an MBA from Florida Atlantic University.

About Business Wire

Business Wire, a Berkshire Hathaway company, is utilized by tens of thousands of member companies and organizations worldwide to functionally enhance and communicate investor relations and public relations content to target audiences. As a recognized disclosure vehicle in the United States, Canada, the UK, France, Germany and other EU markets, Business Wire facilitates the simultaneous flow of market-moving press releases from corporations to financial markets and their audiences, including regulatory authorities, media, investors, financial information systems and consumer news services. Business Wire also handles XBRL tagging, document formatting and regulatory filing into the EDGAR and SEDAR systems.

Communications professionals turn to Business Wire to optimize and issue press releases, photos and multimedia to news organizations, journalists, trade publications, search engines, and individuals, with full-text posting to web sites, online services and databases. A range of distribution options enables members to target by geography, industry, news theme and audience demographics.

Founded in 1961, Business Wire has dual headquarters in San Francisco and New York, with 30 bureaus in cities including Los Angeles, Chicago, Boston, Miami, Paris, Frankfurt, London, Brussels, Tokyo, Toronto and Sydney and reciprocal offices throughout the world. Business Wire's patented NX data platform supports XML, XHTML and XBRL code that enhances news release interactivity, social media sharing and search engine optimization. More information about Business Wire and its services is located on its website at www.BusinessWire.com.

Photos/Multimedia Gallery Available: http://www.businesswire.com/cgi-bin/mmg.cgi?eid=6211507&lang=en