With all due respect to this new OM, none of decisions at his level are made in a vaccum. No one, I want to believe is so young and dumb to come in and start chopping people who are producing and have brand value. He might have been told to make that move. Good CC employees do as they are told with little questioning or they don't get promoted. They do, however, get blamed if the decision was a poor one.
In this case, sounds like some CC VP said "ok take one female off and put another one on...nobody will notice."