The rest of the board, and supposedly Musk is being replaced to get a little bit more financial responsibility in Tesla. If Ms. Denholm has a bad track record, then that might not be good news, but I would assume Ms. Denholm was not an impulsive choice, and the board has good reason to seperate her abilities from Telstra's bad performance.
It's a self fulfilling prophecy: companies that aren't doing good hire certain C-execs to turn things around, and they don't always succeed. Robyn in particular was hired in the middle of current Telstra drop.
I'm referring to the kind of vilification that would cause brand damage for Tesla, so consumer-facing vilification.
Consumer-facing vilification in US media isn't really about what the person has done or what kind of person they are, it's more about what form of caricature can be depicted of them based on racial, gendered, and political stereotypes.
Denholm doesn't fit into a category of race, gender, and political affiliation that easily lends itself to a villainous caricature, and to the contrary does fit into such a category that would make it broadly unacceptable to consumers for a media company to create a villainous caricature of her. In other words, if a media company attempted to do so, it would damage the media company's consumer brand instead of Tesla's. This creates a disincentive protecting Tesla from attacks from media companies (all of which have a great financial interest in oil and legacy automakers, and very little financial interest in Tesla).
This is an increasingly common consideration for organizations responding to or seeking to preempt PR issues, especially for publicly traded companies with consumer brands, and other frequent targets of the media companies (such as police departments, private health insurance companies, and educational institutions).
Perhaps compared to James Murdoch, who was also rumoured to be in contention, she’s less easy to portray as a villain.
But she is easy to cast as an ‘insider’, which is not what many thought ‘an independent Chairman’ meant. The cynics might suggest that Tesla chose her because she is less likely to rock the boat.
