Telefónica people moves: O2 Germany installs new Business Sales chief

Group

• Miguel Basterra Martínez de San Vicente was named Head of Legal for Mergers & Acquisitions (M&A) at Telefónica Group. It marks a slight change for the former Legal Director, M&A. Elimena Junquera Blanco was named M&A Legal Director earlier in the year.
• Marina Martín García, Director of Strategic Projects at Telefónica, was named Head of Corporate Strategy at the Group. She joined in 2013 from rival Vodafone Spain, and has held a number of strategic project leadership positions in the years since.
• Clara Ruipérez de Azcárate, former Netflix legal affairs expert and current Director of Legal Content Strategy at Telefónica, was appointed General Secretary of the Board of Directors at Telefónica Audiovisual Digital, the content production and management services business that oversees pay-TV platform Movistar Plus+. She reports directly to Pablo de Carvajal, Telefónica Group General Secretary. Her predecessor, Nicolás Enciso Oriol, has left the board but has not confirmed his next move.

Infra-Tech

• Michael Coutanche, Head of Cloud at Telefónica Tech UK&I, took on an updated remit as Head of Cloud & Edge.
• Jordan Donley, Information Security Team Lead, was named Head of Security Operations at Telefónica Tech UK&I.
• Ricardo Fioretti was named Head of Business Transformation at Telefónica Cybersecurity & Cloud Tech. He was previously Head of Products for Worldwide Markets at the division.

Core Markets

• Brazil: Telefónica|Vivo Senior Legal Manager Nathalie Leite stepped up to become Director of Corporate Affairs at the operator.
• Daniel Tortosa Illana moved to Vivo as Director of Internal Audit. He was previously at Telefónica Group, where he was Senior Manager for Internal Audit, focused on data analytics and big data. Before Telefónica, Tortosa was an audit manager at EY.
• Germany: Markus Agel, Director of Wholesale & Partnership at Telefónica Deutschland (O2 Germany), was appointed Director of Business Transformation at the operator.
• Boris Goncharov, O2 Germany’s Director for Business-to-Business (B2B) Sales, left the Group to join health-tech services provider DOCTOLIB as Vice-President (VP) for Sales & Partnerships. He spent five years at O2 Germany, during which time he “founded and scaled” Telefónica Business Sales, a B2B corporate startup established within O2 Germany. Lars Körner stepped up as Managing Director of the startup and took a new title as General Sales Manager for Inside Sales, New Channels. He was previously General Sales Manager for Customer Base at the operator. Mareike Mesloh, formerly joint-Managing Director at Telefónica Business Sales alongside Goncharov, pivoted into a Manager role at the unit.

• O2 Germany named Nikolaos Kalivianakis Director of Business Solutions. He joined from operating system provider Workato, where he was Regional VP for Central Europe. Previously, he managed the Deutsche Telekom account at Oracle.
• Cornelia Radke, Head of Service Delivery Management at O2 Germany, was named Head of Business-to-Consumer (B2C) Channels.
• Peter Vargas-Sotomonte and Stefan Günnel swapped roles. Vargas-Sotomonte was appointed Head of Infrastructure Partnerships at O2 Germany, while Günnel pivoted to become Head of Mobile Telco Players.
• Miriam Wirsing, Head of Growth Marketing at Munich food-tech startup YFood Labs, joined O2 Germany as VP for Portals, one of the operator’s five channels hosted under the Telefónica Germany Retail subsidiary.
• Spain: Octavio Castellanos was appointed Head of Telefónica Soluciones de Outsourcing, a Telefónica España networks management subsidiary. He was previously Strategy Manager at Telefónica España, working within the operator’s operations and networks functions.
• Antonio Dvorák Pérez was appointed Head of Cloud & Connectivity Business Development within Telefónica España’s B2B unit, working with large companies. He was previously Head of Value Proposal, Communications & Innovation Centre for B2B at the operator.
• Telefónica Consumer Finance Chief Executive (CEO) Cristina Perea left the Group after eight years in charge of the Telefónica España–Caixa Bank joint venture. Her move comes just a month after the launch of Telefónica Renting, a new joint venture between the two businesses. Perea was named Managing Director at hotel bookings marketplace Roiback. A replacement at Telefónica Consumer Finance has not been named.

• Telefónica España reportedly established a new Digital Channels department and brought in Rafael Sánchez Sendarrubias as frontman. The new Head of Digital Channels was previously Chief Customer Officer at grocers Dia España, before which he was Director of E-Commerce at Dia rival Carrefour España, having spent 18 years in the retail sector.

• Carlos Tejedor Perez, formerly Business Manager for Spain’s State Administration at Telefónica España, stepped up to become Business Director for the same account.
• UK: Siddharth Dixit, Global Operations Strategy Director at food delivery service Deliveroo, joined Virgin Media O2 (VM O2) as Director for Commercial Strategy.
• Raj Gill was named Director for Financial Planning & Analysis at VM O2. He was Head of Finance for Operations, Sales & Marketing at the operator before the change, having spent several years at Virgin Media pre-merger.
• Nicola Grenville joined VM O2 as Head of Finance for Wholesale Mobile. She was interim Finance Director at Economist Intelligence Unit, a subsidiary of The Economist, since May this year, before which she was Head of Contract Accounting for Commercial Finance at Vodafone Global Enterprise. She also has time at BT Wholesale on her CV.
• Terence Hartnett, Technology Consulting Manager at Accenture, moved to VM O2 as Director for Digital Architecture Transformation.
• VM O2’s Corporate Communications Director James Lusher switched to Director of External Communications.
• Richard Makhlouf was promoted to Director of Corporate Strategy, having spent a year as Head of Corporate Strategy at VM O2.
• Alejandro Maximiliano Salevsky, Chief Analytics & Data Science Officer at Telefónica Hispam, moved to VM O2 as Senior Planning & Strategy Director in the operator’s Chief Information Office. He was replaced, in part, by Myriam Porras at Telefónica Hispam (see below).
• Alexander Mühlendorfer, Senior Digital Transformation Manager at VM O2, stepped up to Head of Digital Transformation. He joined earlier in 2022 from McKinsey, where he was a Senior Consultant.
• Simon Ryder, who was named interim Director of Hardware & Hardware Services at VM O2 in March 2022, was handed the permanent position. He was Head of Hardware Category Management before he took on the new title. In turn, Tom Entract, the former Handset & Tablet Portfolio Manager who filled in for Ryder as Head of Hardware Category Management on an interim basis, also took the role on a permanent basis.
• Kieran Watson was appointed Head of Digital Technology Delivery at VM O2. He joined from travel agency TUI, where he was Global Head of Technology, Marketing. On arrival at VM O2, Watson flagged management vacancies within his Digital Technology team.

Hispanomérica

• Telefónica reorganised the corporate leadership of its Hispanaomérica division, with a new chair and refreshed Board of Directors, reflecting the Group’s tighter management and oversight of its disparate regional businesses. Foremost among the changes was the appointment of Hispam CEO Alfonso Gómez Palacio as Chairman. He replaces Miguel Iglesias, Tax Director for Latin America at Telefónica Group, in a move indicating the operator wants a broader lens on Hispam activities beyond mere financial affairs. Elena Maestre, Hispam Chief Financial & Strategy Officer, and Martha Elena Ruiz, Hispam General Secretary, have been appointed to the board as Vice-Chair and Secretary respectively. Alejandrina Patiño, Corporate Counsel at Telefónica, has been named Deputy Secretary. Javier Campillo (Director of Capital Markets & Treasury) and Diego Colchero (Telefónica Tech General Counsel) both stepped down from the board.

• Myriam Porras was appointed Chief Analytics Officer at Telefónica Hispam, an apparent partial replacement for the VM O2-bound Maximiliano Salevsky (see above). Porras was Chief Data Officer at the regional division before the change, having joined Telefónica after two decades in the banking sector.
• Argentina: Juan Manuel Blanch, Head of Operational Big Data Reporting at Telefónica Argentina, pivoted to become Head of Digital Business Intelligence & B2B, supporting the operator’s data-driven, digital transformation initiatives and working to implement visualisation tools with Teradata and Hadoop, according to a LinkedIn post.
• Ecuador: María Auxiliadora Olivares, Senior Data Scientist at Telefónica Ecuador, was appointed Chief Data Scientist.
• Peru: Elena Lacambra Calvet, long-serving Human Resources (HR) VP across Telefónica Group, retired. She held the title at Telefónica Peru most recently, before which she was VP for HR at Telefónica Venezuela and HR Director at Telefónica España and Vivo.

Alumni

• Carlos Pedraz Rodríguez was appointed Head of Business Development at the Global Certification Forum, an independent wireless device certification scheme. He was Senior Technology Consultant at Capgemini before the move, having left Telefónica in 2021 where he spent 14 years, most recently as Head of Future Readiness within the Group Devices Unit.
• Former HR Director Aisling Teillard at O2 Ireland was added to the Executive Team at cloud-based rewards solutions provider Beqom, where she was named Chief Customer Officer. She left Telefónica in 2015 after nine years at the operator. She has been CEO at workplace experience services specialist Our Tandem in the years since.