Lorna Donohoe was just named Playboy’s senior vice president, global strategic marketing. Here’s her background:

from www.independent.ie- This is the young Dublin woman who has become one of the linchpins of Hugh Hefner’s Playboy empire in the US – without shedding a single garment for the billionaire.

Lorna Donohoe, from Clondalkin [Ireland], is now heading up Playboy ‘s massive €160m-a-year marketing and merchandising enterprise which is fast becoming a brand as big as Coca Cola.

She arrived in Manhattan in 1997 with US$150 in her pocket and no job, but within years she had become one of the city’s top PAs.

Now she is working as Vice President of Global Retail Marketing and Merchandising for Playboy Enterprises and lives a Sex and the City lifestyle in the Big Apple.

Her mum Mena Donohoe tells RTE TV show Made in America that she was stunned when her daughter first told her that she was working for Playboy.

“I had never even seen the magazine but when I heard the news it was the magazine that came to mind. It was the sort of thing that men would go and buy in England then come home and hide under their mattresses in Ireland,” she says.

But Lorna soon convinced her that she wouldn’t be moving into the Playboy mansion and dressing up as a bunny.

“When mum came to meet everyone she realised that what I do is like working for any other company. It is business,” she says.

Lorna tells how she worked her way up the corporate ladder in Manhattan after first landing a job as assistant to the CEO of Conde Nast Publications. There she worked and played hard for three years before quitting to give herself a rest. Within three months she was back on the job hunt and earned herself a low level post in Playboy promotions.

Once in the company headquarters on snazzy Fifth Avenue she rose through the ranks and has since played a pivotal position in the repositioning of the Playboy brand. Lorna says she always longed to be part of New York’s hectic life and knew the day she arrived that it was home.

“I grew up in Crumlin and then moved to Clondalkin when I was 16. I always liked school and loved going to the library. I used to love studying and exams and I even did all my friends’ homework.

“I remember wanting to be a writer. I always had little copybooks with me. Things were always too small for me – I always wanted to try something bigger.

“When my friends went to local bars I always found a way to get into town to the middle of the action.”

Days after her 18th birthday, Lorna moved into the city centre and started a college course but she dropped out within two years and moved first to Germany before deciding to chance her luck in New York. She now owns her own $600,000 apartment in one of Manhattan’s most affluent areas and spends months of the year travelling around the world organising Playboy promotions.