Veteran entertainment publicist Anne Stavola has been named vice president, East Coast Publicity for Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures. She will report directly to Jasmine Madatian, senior vice president, publicity for WDSMP, and will be responsible for overseeing Disney's newly reorganized New York publicity office. In her new role, Stavola will work directly with Madatian in developing and implementing publicity strategies and campaigns for all motion pictures released under the Walt Disney Pictures and Touchstone Pictures banners. Under the reorganization, Derek Del Rossi has been promoted to director, East Coast Publicity. He will share media relations duties with Chris Bogusz, who also holds the title of director.
A graduate of Hunter College, Stavola launched her entertainment industry career in 1981 at Columbia Pictures as assistant Northeast Field Representative, based in New York. She went on to serve as director of product placement for SpringGreene Marketing from 1983-84. She also worked at HarperCollins Children's Books in 2002 as executive director of Publicity and Sesame Workshop in 2006 as a senior publicist/consultant. Stavola's distinguished career includes a stint as vice president of National Publicity for Fox Searchlight Studios from 2005-6. She also worked as a senior publicist and consultant for many of the major studios, including Paramount, Universal and Warner Bros. Additionally, she conducted a specialized publicity campaign for New Line Cinema's AMERICAN HISTORY X.
Derek Del Rossi joined Disney in 1999 as an assistant to the vice president of East Coast Publicity, where his duties included coordinating all newspaper, broadcast and radio publicity breaks for internal and external distribution. Two years later, he was promoted to publicity coordinator for National Publicity, and for the past four years (2003-07), Del Rossi has served as senior manager, National Publicity, where he supervised all aspects of feature film publicity for long lead magazines and national and local broadcast.
