Another Indian bags the top job at an American company. Sowmyanarayan Sampath has been appointed Executive Vice-President and CEO of Verizon Business, effective July 1, 2022. Sampath is currently the Chief Revenue Officer. He will succeed Tami Erwin, who will become Strategic Advisor to the CEO till the end of the year.
Sampath joined Verizon in 2014. “He has been a decisive driving force behind the organisation’s commercial success, its culture of shared success and relentless focus on customer needs,” said a press note from the company.
Over the years, Sampath has served in strategic roles. He joined as SVP of Business Transformation, and created two of the company’s largest core initiatives — Network Transformation and OneFiber. As Chief Product Officer for the Consumer and Enterprise businesses, he led joint initiatives across networks, IoT, next-generation video, and developing the 5G product portfolio. Sampath then became Chief Financial Officer at Verizon Media Group, and, later, President of Global Enterprise, where he spearheaded the commercial launch of Verizon’s 5G networks and multi-access edge computing (MEC) solutions.
“I come to this role from a very diverse background, a mindset to constantly learn and a mission to lead with kindness and integrity during this critical moment of radical digitisation for our customers,‘‘ said Sampath. “The Verizon Business team is absolutely the best in the business and I am committed to ensuring we continue to build on the momentum and success we have shared together thus far. The time is now to disrupt the industry and stay laser focused on transformational outcomes for our customers and how Verizon serves their needs.”
In recent years, several Indians have been elevated to top positions in the tech world, from Google’s Sundar Pichai to, most recently, Parag Agarwal at Twitter.