Jan 8, 2002 : Lucent Names New President and CEO

📅 January 8, 2002 - Lucent Technologies (lucent.com) yesterday named Patricia F.Russo, formerly of the Eastman Kodak Company, as the company's president andCEO. Russo, 49, succeeds Henry Schacht, 67, who will serve as chairman ofthe company.

Russo most recently served as president and chief operating officer ofKodak. She now returns to Lucent where she was one of the foundingexecutives who helped launch the AT&T spin-off in 1996. Russo has spent 20years in senior executive leadership positions at Lucent and AT&T, managingsome of the business's largest divisions and critical corporate functions.
"Pat brings deep knowledge of our industry and our customers coupled withthe ability to lead a large organization through change," said Schacht. "Sheunderstands and embraces our strategic and restructuring plans, and she canstep in as CEO without missing a beat. She has strong management, operationsand leadership experience. She brings her excellent sales and customerrelationship skills back to Lucent, where she served all of our majorservice provider customers as the head of that business."
"Henry and the team have put in place and are implementing a solid, credibleplan for turning this business around," said Russo. "Lucent and thisindustry have always been a home to me and I look forward to working withthis team to accelerate the execution of our plan."
Schacht added, "Pat has asked me to serve as chairman for an interim periodto ensure continuity during our transition. I have agreed to stay for aslong as I can be helpful, but I can't envision the timeframe being anylonger than a year."
During Russo's tenure at Lucent and AT&T, she served as executive vicepresident and CEO of Lucent's Service Provider Networks division, and hadresponsibility for sales, distribution, installation and development ofproducts and systems for Lucent's service provider customers. This is thesame business that Lucent decided to make its core operation as part of itsrestructuring plans in 2001.
As executive vice president of Lucent's corporate operations from 1997 to1999, she had oversight for corporate strategy, business development, supplychain, human resources and investor and public relations organizations.Russo was also president of the Business Communications Systems division ofAT&T and Lucent from 1992 to 1996. In this position, Russo executed thesuccessful turnaround of a $6 billion enterprise communications business,which was Lucent's second-largest division and was later spun off as AvayaInc.