Telstra has appointed Robyn Denholm to the role of chief operating officer, relieving acting COO Brendon Riley following the exit of Kate McKenzie in July.
The new appointment comes as the telco begins to fill the void of a deserted boardroom, after losing multiple C-level ranking executives in the space of three months following the departures of McKenzie, alongside CTO, Vish Nandlall and CIO, Erez Yarkoni.
Effective January 2017, Denholm joins from networking vendor, Juniper Networks, where she most recently served as executive vice president, CFO and COO.
Denholm served at Juniper Networks from 2007 to mid-2016 where she was a “driving force” in the vendor’s 2014 restructure and turnaround with record revenue and profitability performance in 2015.
Telstra CEO, Andrew Penn, said the company has made a “world class appointment” in Denholm to oversee the next generation development of its operational environment.
“Robyn has a proven track record as a global COO in a business focused on telecommunications networks," he said.
"She has overseen business model transformation, supply chain and broader business process re-engineering. She has been a senior executive and director in a range of complex technology environments which make her ideally qualified for the role, leading a highly capable team within Telstra.
"She also brings strong understanding of the Australian market and Telstra as the leading networking provider, as Juniper has been a valued partner of Telstra."
Prior to Juniper, Denholm served 11 years at Sun Microsystems in both Australia and the US - her most recent role was senior vice president of corporate strategic planning based in Sydney.
Upon starting in the role next year, Riley will return as group executive global enterprise and services and Acting GES group executive David Burns will return to his role as group managing director network applications and services.
Penn said the internal arrangements that followed the boardroom exodus demonstrates the “depth of the management team”.
‘I am grateful for Brendon and David for their outstanding work in their acting roles and I look forward to continuing to work closely with them in their permanent roles,” he added.
