Prince Harry and Meghan Markle have found their new head of public relations, according to a report in Britain’s Daily Mail. The California-based couple had been working with New York’s Sunshine Sachs for years, but it was confirmed in mid-September that the Duke and Duchess and the established firm had parted ways.
Rather than shop around for a new agency, the couple’s PR needs for their Archwell charity, as well as to promote their podcast, television series, and upcoming publishing neutron bomb, will now be handled from within.
Christine Weil Schirmer, who has worked with the Sussexes since 2020, will assume the position as the couple’s primary face to the media, without the aid of an outside company. Her initial role was one of head of communications before a promotion to senior advisor. Prior to working with Meghan and Harry, she worked for tech companies Pinterest, Digg, and Apple.
The Long Island-born, San Fransisco-based flak and Markle both attended Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois at the same time. It is unclear if they knew one another or had any mutual friends. (The school’s current enrollment for undergraduates is 8,000, so it’s hard to know everyone!)
The Daily Mail reported that Markle’s affiliation with Sunshine Sachs, whose client list includes Leonardo DiCaprio, Barbra Streisand, Natalie Portman, and Jennifer Lopez (and also, at one time, Harvey Weinstein), goes all the way back to her work on the USA Network series Suits.
Schirmer will have plenty to keep her busy in the coming months. Harry’s highly-anticipated memoir is now scheduled for next year, but new episodes of Markle’s Spotify podcast Archetypes are just around the corner. There is also the Netflix reality series about the Duke and Duchess, rumored to be currently undergoing some heavy post-production surgery.
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