SAN FRANCISCO, Feb. 12 (Xinhua) -- U.S. aerospace leader Boeing Company said Monday that it has hired Linda Mills, a former senior executive of Starbucks, as vice president of communications for Boeing Commercial Airplanes.

Boeing said Mills, who has 20 years of strategic communications experience, joins its Commercial Airplanes, a 58-billion-U.S.-dollar passenger jet business unit from Seattle-based Starbucks, where she was vice president of global communications of the U.S. coffee giant.

Mills will lead a team of about 90 communications and marketing professionals at Boeing airplanes who are responsible for global media relations, employee and executive communications, social media, advertising and other communication efforts.

She succeeds Sean McCormack who is leaving Boeing after nearly a decade with the company in Washington, D.C. and Seattle, the largest city in Washington state on the U.S. west coast.

Mills will be based in Renton, Washington, the headquarters of Boeing Commercial Airplanes.

She will report to Phil Musser, Boeing's new senior vice president of communications in Chicago, and Kevin McAllister, president and CEO of Boeing Commercial Airplanes.