• by Tanya Gazdik , 10 hours ago

Vinay Shahani, the outgoing senior vice president, U.S. marketing and sales, Nissan and Infiniti, is leaving automotive for a new industry. 

Shahani tells Marketing Daily he is heading to AT&T as senior vice president of marketing and planning. He will lead both consumer and business marketing. 

He reports to Kellyn Smith Kenny, chief marketing and growth officer at AT&T and will be based in Dallas. Shahani replaces Janna Ducich, who left AT&T in June. 

Nissan announced last week that Michael Soutter would take over Shahani’s position effective immediately. 

Shahani, who was previously at Lexus and Toyota in Plano, Texas, took on the demanding position at Nissan just under two years ago. 

Since leaving Lexus, based in Plano, Texas, he has been commuting from his home in Dallas to Nissan headquarters in Franklin, Tennessee. 

Shahani went to his boss Christian Meunier, chairman, Nissan Americas, about two months ago and told him he was having a hard time. 

“I’ve got a young family, I've got two kids,” Shahani says recalling the conversation. "I said, ‘I need you to find me a successor and I want to do this responsibly. I want to hand off the reigns in a smooth transition.”

Shahani says despite his need to leave, he thinks Nissan is on the right track. 

“I'm proud of all the progress we’ve made in a short period of time,” Shahani said recently on the Daily Dealer Live podcast. “It’s truly bittersweet. I mean, I grew up in this company [and] this is my second stint. I am the leader that I am today because of the investment that Nissan made in me many years ago, coming right out of school. I worked in every aspect of the value chain, manufacturing, product development, sales, marketing, product management. It was a the best possible training ground I ever could have had to take on the role that I had as the chief marketing and sales officer for the biggest market that Nissan has globally.”