• by Steve McClellan  @mp_mcclellan, December 3, 2015

Chuck Phillips, North America chief technology officer at J. Walter Thompson’s digital agency network Mirum, abruptly resigned yesterday. 

Phillips is the second founding partner in Digitaria — one of the core shops around which Mirum was formed earlier this year — to leave the San Diego-based agency. 

The other was Doug Hecht, who formally parted ways about three months ago. Hecht had been president and COO of Digitaria. Another founding partner, Dan Khabie, was appointed Global and North America CEO of Mirum when it was formed. 

Phillips is widely respected within both the agency and the San Diego advertising community.  In 2012, he was named IT Executive of the Year by both the San Diego Business Journal and San Diego Magazine (small business category). 

Philips is credited with spearheading the agency’s development of the “LRA Crisis Tracker,” which combined radio frequency technology with mapping and social communications to help Central Africans report the movements and activities of a terrorist group calling itself the Lord’s Resistance Army. 

The agency worked with human rights organization Invisible Children to develop the Crisis Tracker platform, which won multiple awards including Best In Show at the Creative Media Awards and a Cannes Lion. 

Reached today, Phillips declined to comment on his status at the agency. Reps there couldn’t immediately be reached.