Windstream taps Chairman Paul Sunu as president-CEO, effective immediately, succeeding Tony Thomas, departing from company and vacating his board seat ... BlackBerry announces John Chen will retire as executive chair-CEO, effective Saturday, and taps Richard Lynch, a BlackBerry board member since 2013, and former Verizon chief technology officer, to succeed Chen as board chair, also naming him interim CEO ... Inseego 5G edge cloud company appoints Steve Harmon, ex-Sierra Wireless, as chief revenue officer, newly created role ... Sidus Space promotes Lindsey Waitt to LizzieSat program manager in anticipation of Sidus’ LizzieSat constellation launch with SpaceX beginning in first quarter of 2024; Jamie Adams departs as Sidus chief technology officer and vacates his board seat; with Waitt and others assuming CTO duties, Sidus eliminates the CTO role.
Geospatial intelligence company Maxar Intelligence hires Riverbed Technology’s Dan Smoot, also former Salesforce, Cisco and VMWare, as CEO, effective Nov. 6; interim CEO Daniel Jablonsky moves to Maxar’s board with Smoot’s arrival ... SmartNews, global information and news discovery company, names co-founder Kaisei Hamamoto CEO, moves outgoing CEO Ken Suzuki to executive chair, both effective Wednesday, and hires Google's Cory Ondrejka, also ex-Meta, as chief technology officer.
BuzzFeed promotes Executive Vice President-Finance and Treasurer Matt Omer to chief financial officer, effective Nov. 6; current CFO Felicia DellaFortuna leaving BuzzFeed before the end of November ... Adobe adds Qualcomm CEO Cristiano Amon to its board, expanding it to 12 members.
Hill + Knowlton forms new Intelligence + Technology business unit under leadership of Chief Technology Officer Grant Toups, and names Allison Spray global head-Intel + Tech innovation, in addition to her continuing research and data intelligence role in the U.K., and Elliott Gauthier global head-Intel + Tech products and services, in addition to his continuing research and data intelligence role in Canada ... Charter Communications announces that Tom Rutledge will move to board member emeritus when his previously announced retirement as executive chairman takes effect Nov. 30; Charter board also appoints President-CEO Chris Winfrey to the seat that Rutledge will vacate, and names lead independent director Eric Zinterhofer nonexecutive chairman, both also effective Nov. 30.
Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., Senate Select Committee on Intelligence chairman, promotes William Wu to committee staff director and Maria Mahler-Haug to deputy staff director ...Senate confirms Michael Whitaker as FAA administrator (see 2310250041) … Nintex intelligent process automation company, hires Sean Goldstein, ex-Lucid Software and Salesforce, as chief revenue officer, and adds Asana's Neeracha Taychakhoonavudh to board … Entravision adds CEO Michael Christenson and former Snap Chief People Officer Lara Sweet to its board; Juan Saldivar von Wuthenau resigns his board seat but remains Entravision’s chief digital, strategy and accountability officer ... Flexxon, hardware-based cybersecurity solutions company, adds former Intel and Microsoft executive Ravi Agarwal to its advisory board.
Nexstar promotes Steven Blanchard to vice president-general manager of its broadcasting and digital operations in Richmond, including WRIC-TV and wric.com, plus their related digital and social media channels ... Plume, SaaS platform for communications service providers, hires Palo Alto Networks’ Valerie Buckingham as chief marketing officer and Adrian Fitzgerald, ex-Sandvine and Oracle, as chief revenue officer ... Machine learning company SiMa.ai taps Amazon Web Services’ Elizabeth Samara-Rubio, also former Accenture, as chief business officer ... Media analytics firm Toluna promotes Dixit Chanana to managing director of the India offices of Toluna and MetrixLab, the market research company that Toluna acquired in June; Ravi Radhakrishnan departs as MetrixLab India managing director.
Altice’s Optimum appoints Jennifer Garrett, from Charter Communications, as chief marketing officer … Alphawave Semi, high-speed connectivity chipmaker, hires Rahul Mathur, Avantus, as chief financial officer, effective Oct. 30 ... ZenCase, legal software solutions developer, taps Olivia Mockel, ex-PCLaw | Time Matters, as president-chief operating officer.
Tech9 software development company names DataBased’s Nate Richard, also ex-Qualtrics, chief revenue officer … BAI Connect, hybrid fiber/wireless internet services provider, names BroadVoice’s Kevin Connor chief financial officer ... Graybar, data networking products distributor, promotes Brad Lee to district vice president-California ... USTelecom announces newly elected officers and board members: Chair Jason Williams, Blackfoot Communications; Vice Chair Jeff England, Silver Star Communications; Secretary Melissa Mann, Lumen; Treasurer Rusty Moore, BBT; directors Tom Maguire, Brightspeed and Harold Zeitz, Ziply Fiber; Leadership Committee Chair Jennifer Prather, Totelcom Communications; Vice Chair Becky Scott, Epic Touch; and Secretary Josh Descant, REV Broadband.
FCC Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel announces retirement of Public Safety Bureau’s Sharon Weigel after more than 46 years with the agency … The Goodfriend Group, which lobbies on behalf of media, tech and telecom, and healthcare lobbying firm Emmer Consulting relaunch as I Street Advocates, with Goodfriend’s David Goodfriend as president, Emmer’s Sue Emmer as founder, and Sports Fan Coalition’s Brian Hess and Brian Young, ex-American Postal Workers Union, as vice presidents.
PacketFabric network-as-a-service company announces Vincent English, ex-Megaport, as CEO … Sigmoid data engineering and AI consulting firm appoints Shankar Viswanathan, ex-Procter & Gamble, chief commercial officer ... Spectrotel, communication services provider, names Observe.ai’s Robert Fish, also ex-Intelisys, vice president-south region channel sales ... Riedel Communications names European Media Group’s Lucy O’Brien director-customer success, Europe, the Middle East and Africa ... Truecaller, global communications platform, names MetaMap’s Ogochukwu Onwuzurike country manager-Nigeria, and Uber’s Nicolas Vargas country manager-Colombia.