NBC News said Thursday that it had hired Vivian Schiller, who quit as chief executive of NPR in March, to a new role overseeing the news unit's digital strategy.

NBC News, a unit of Comcast Corp., said Ms. Schiller would take up her role as chief digital officer in mid-July.

Ms. Schiller will oversee NBC News's strategy on websites and mobile devices.

Much of NBC News's Web presence currently is tied up in MSNBC.com, a joint venture with Microsoft Corp.

Ms. Schiller's new job comes just months after she left NPR amid controversy over political bias at the nonprofit broadcaster. A conservative activist in early March set off the firestorm by secretly videotaping NPR's head of fund raising as he made disparaging remarks about Republicans.

Ms. Schiller resigned soon thereafter under pressure from the broadcaster's board, which decided the flap would interfere with Ms. Schiller's ability to do her job.

Last fall, Ms. Schiller endured criticism from conservatives for her firing of commentator Juan Williams, who had made controversial comments about Muslims on airplanes.

Before joining NPR in 2009, Ms. Schiller was an executive at New York Times Co., running the company's nytimes.com website.

Ms. Schiller also has television experience. She ran Discovery Times, a now-ended joint venture between Discovery Communications Inc. and the New York Times, and worked at Time Warner Inc.'s CNN.