Scholastic Appoints New CFO/Exec VP

By Neal 

Maureen O’Connell has taken on a slew of job titles at Scholastic, the kid’s publisher best known for bringing Harry Potter to the U.S. As reported by the Associated Press, starting next Monday, O’Connell will be the company’s new chief financial officer and chief administrative officer and an executive vice president. She joins Scholastic after a year as the CFO at the direct marketing firm Affinion, and previous stints at Gartner and Barnes & Noble. There’s a hint of office politics in the AP dispatch, which says “the outgoing chief financial officer, Mary Winston, decided to leave the company after [Scholastic CEO] Richard Robinson decided to appoint a chief administrative officer.” Now that’s got to have an interesting story behind it…