A new “centre of excellence” at regional publisher Australian Community Media will help grow partners’ businesses.

The commercial strategy and operations arm will be manned by existing hires including chief marketing officer Jarrah Petzold and commercial operations director Maree Neale, who becomes commercial strategy director.

Others include national strategy director Lisa Levesque (deputy commercial strategy director), ACM Agri marketing head Lupe Prada (ACM Agri marketing and commercial strategy director), and commercial business improvement head Chris Clarke (business intelligence director).

Petzold says the move reflects ACM’s commitment to driving business growth and transformation.

Neale (pictured) has been with ACM for almost a decade, and has also worked for Nine and Fairfax Media in senior roles. She says the commercial strategy centre of excellence – to give its full name – will allow ACM to leverage its collective expertise across the whole portfolio. “I’m proud to be working with some of the brightest minds in media sales and strategy to help grow our partners’ businesses in regional Australia,” she said.