In totally non-awkward move, VentureBeat’s Camille Ricketts joins Tesla Motors

At VentureBeat, we take pride in turning our writers, who are often fresh talents, into sought-after industry experts. Sometimes we do too good a job.

Camille Ricketts, our lead GreenBeat writer, is leaving to take a communications job at Tesla Motors, Silicon Valley’s iconic electric-car startup. In the course of covering the cleantech revolution over the past two years, she realized she couldn’t sit on the sidelines anymore.

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It’s hard to think of a company in the space that’s faced more public scrutiny recently, from VentureBeat to the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times. Having been in the thick of Tesla’s complex story, Ricketts is supremely well positioned to explain the company’s point of view. (I’m looking forward to her first “no comment.”)

Sadly, she won’t be commuting to Palo Alto in a Tesla Roadster. (If Tesla CEO Elon Musk has any sense, he’ll be giving her one as a bonus soon enough.) In our minds, she’ll forever be cruising down 280 in a green cloud of glory. Press the accelerator, Camille!

In the meantime, we’re going to continue aggressively covering the green space and interpreting the innovative opportunities in cleantech, and we’ll be introducing new writers. Replacing Camille to head up our GreenBeat coverage is Iris Kuo, who can be reached at iris@venturebeat.com. General green story tips should also be copied to greenbeat@venturebeat.com.

Follow Camille on Twitter: @camillericketts. Photo by Dean Takahashi.