PM’s top spokesperson takes job at Microsoft

OTTAWA — Kate Purchase, the chief spokeswoman for Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, said on Tuesday she was leaving her job to work at a senior role in Microsoft.

Purchase is the latest top adviser this year to announce she was leaving Trudeau’s office.

In an email, she said she would be working as a senior director in chief executive officer Satya Nadella’s office to boost Washington-based Microsoft “through communications and other vehicles.”

“It’s been a wild and inspiring ride,” she said in a tweet, adding leaving was bittersweet.

Purchase has been with Trudeau for six years and before that worked for former interim Liberal leader Bob Rae.

“Kate Purchase worked for me during my time as a federal MP and she is a great person,” Rae tweeted Tuesday night.

In February, Gerald Butts, principal secretary to Trudeau and a long-time friend, quit at the height of the SNCLavalin affair, although he said the scandal had nothing to do with his departure.

However, he returned to help with Trudeau’s re-election campaign.

Mike McNair, the executive director of policy in the PMO and a member of Trudeau’s leadership campaign, announced two weeks ago that he was leaving at the end of the year.

In a profile of Purchase last year, Maclean’s magazine described her as the “narrator” of Trudeau’s messaging during the 2015 campaign.

As a trained Shakespearean actress, Purchase was credited with helping craft Trudeau’s speeches.

She was also responsible for vetting posts to the prime minister’s website and social media.