Infinera CEO to step down after 17 years
Tom Fallon will be stepping down and David Heard, the company’s COO, will be succeeding him
Infinera has announced a succession plan to transition its leadership in the coming months. Tom Fallon will be stepping down as Infinera’s CEO and David Heard, the company’s COO, will be succeeding him. This transition is expected to take place by the end of 2020 on a date to be determined. Fallon, in his 17th year with Infinera and 11th as CEO, will remain on the board of directors.
“I couldn’t be more pleased with the board’s selection of David as Infinera’s next CEO and I have the utmost confidence in his ability to successfully lead the company in its next phase of growth,” said Fallon, Infinera CEO. “When David joined Infinera three years ago, our objective was to bring onboard a COO who would be positioned to take over as CEO at the right time. David’s contributions since joining the company have been substantial, making us more scalable as he led us through a major acquisition, driving synergies through operational improvements, aligning our product and service portfolio and focusing our investments on the highest value areas for our customers and shareholders.”
Having served as Infinera’s COO since October 2018 and led a publicly traded company as CEO in the past, Heard has over 25 years of industry experience in executive leadership roles that span a wide breadth of technology companies, including JDS Uniphase, BigBand Networks (now part of CommScope), Somera (now part of Jabil), Tekelec (now part of Oracle), and Lucent Technologies (now part of Nokia). He holds an MBA from the University of Dayton, an MS in management from the Stanford Graduate School of Business, where he was a Sloan Fellow, and a BA in production and operations management from Ohio State University.
In conjunction with this transition, Infinera is also announcing that Kambiz Hooshmand will be stepping down as chairman of the board on the same date as the CEO transition, while remaining on the board. Hooshmand has served as chairman since October 2010. George Riedel, a current member of the Board, will succeed Hooshmand as chairman.
“Together with the entire Board, I want to thank Kambiz sincerely for his longstanding and dedicated commitment and service to Infinera,” said Tom Fallon. “We are very fortunate to have someone of George’s industry experience, knowledge and strategic leadership abilities step into the chairman role and partner with David as he assumes the CEO mantle later this year. These succession changes have been thoughtfully planned and we anticipate a smooth transition. I am deeply appreciative of the opportunity to serve as CEO over the past decade and I look forward to helping Infinera in the next phase of our journey.”
