Earlier this week, Tom Baldrica, vice president of marketing at Sony BMG, announced that Heather McBee has been promoted to vice president of digital business.  McBee, who has been with the label for 14 years, was formerly senior director of that department.

Baldrica said in a prepared statement:

"I’m so proud of this promotion.  Heather has demonstrated constant growth and leadership skills in building her new media band-of-one into a full-fledged digital business department.

Originally from Clarksburg, West Virginia, McBee interned with BNA Records while attending the music program at Belmont University and was employed as a sales assistant upon her graduation in 1993.  Through various mergers and acquisitions among the various labels, she ended up with Sony BMG.  In 1997 she was picked to head up a newly formed research department which eventually evolved into the Digital Business and New Media department.  She was appointed director of that department in 2003.

A part of Leadership Music’s 2007 Digital Summit, McBee is quoted as saying

I had the fortitude to stick it out when everybody was saying "no."

McBee credits label group chairman, Joe Galante for allowing her flexibility to prove the viability of her ideas about the future of the industry:

He asks that things be quantified. He gave me freedom to experiment…as long as I tempered my excitement and made it fit our goals and what we were doing.

Among other things, McBee was influential in moving Sony BMG into the cellular ringtone business.