Alan Masarek (Alan Masarek)

Alan Masarek (Alan Masarek)

Biography

2022: Appointment as CEO of Avaya

On July 28, 2022, communications provider Avaya Holdings will appoint Alan Masarek as its new president and CEO.

Masarek joined the company on August 1, 2022, succeeding Jim Chirico, who will also leave his post on the board. Chirico worked at Avaya for 15 years, the last five years he served as CEO of the company. Prior to that, he was Chief Operating Officer of Avaya and Head of Global Sales.

Masarek was previously CEO of Vonage America, where he took over the company in October 2014 and left his post in June 2019. During this time, he completely transformed the company. When he joined Vonage, the company had nominal revenue from commercial activities, which it used to develop its consumer business.

Masarek will join the company on August 1, succeeding Jim Chirico, who will also leave his board post

At Vonage, Masarek methodically began to change the company through a multi-step process that began with changing the culture and turning the company into a place where people would like to work. The next stage was the stabilization of the business, and he did so through a series of strategic acquisitions. The company acquired a number of unified communications providers as a service, or UCaaS, such as iCore, SimpleSignal, Telesphere, and gUnify. Ultimately, this led to the fact that Vonage was acquired by Ericsson for more than $6 billion, the deal was closed in the second half of July 2022 under the leadership of the general director Rory Read.

Some of the challenges Masarek will face in the new post are that while the Avaya brand is strong, it is associated with local communications. In addition, even if the switch to subscription and cloud was the right decision for the company's long-term well-being, it slowed revenue growth.

In addition, the company bears debt: hundreds of millions in short-term debt and more than $2 billion in long-term debt. Debt can be managed if the company can grow. Otherwise, the ratio of debt to revenue becomes too large to be managed. This makes profitable growth a top priority for Masarek.^[1]

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