Avaya Holdings Corp. has appointed Kieran McGrath the Senior Vice President and CFO of Avaya effective February 15, 2019 and Pat O’Malley will transition to serve as Senior Vice President, Growth Initiatives. McGrath and O’Malley will both report to Jim Chirico, Avaya President and CEO.
McGrath has thirty-plus years of technology industry financial, operational and transformational experience in software as a service, cloud computing, and technology services. He most recently served as Executive Vice President and CFO at CA Technologies from July 2016 until the company’s acquisition in November 2018. During McGrath’s tenure at CA Technologies, the company returned to consecutive years of revenue growth primarily driven by software as a service cloud revenue.
Prior to CA Technologies, he served in several key finance and operations leadership roles during a lengthy career at IBM, including six years as the Vice President of Finance for the IBM Software Group. McGrath will be responsible for financial governance and management of Avaya’s financial operations, including overall responsibility for the controller organization, financial planning, treasury, tax and investor relations.
“Kieran is an outstanding addition to our leadership team, bringing a wealth of experience and proven performance to Avaya as we continue our transformation and invest for our future growth,” said Jim Chirico, Avaya President and CEO. “He is well-known and respected in the financial community and the technology industry and has demonstrated success in leading global organizations. We are pleased to have Kieran at Avaya and are highly confident that his focus will further our objective to drive value for shareholders.”
Joining Avaya in 2017, O’Malley led the financial transformation of the company as it sought to restructure its financial position and transition to a publicly-traded company. O’Malley oversaw achievement of a number of strategic objectives in 2018, including strengthening the balance sheet, driving revenue stability and investing in innovation while maintaining the company’s industry-leading financial model.
In his new role, O’Malley will be responsible to accelerate strategic, cross-functional initiatives that are fundamental to Avaya’s primary objective of revenue growth in fiscal 2019.
“Pat has consistently demonstrated superior leadership and done a masterful job managing our transition to a public company,” said Chirico. “He has been instrumental in achieving credibility, predictability and consistency in laying a solid financial foundation for Avaya, and I look forward to the contributions he will make in his new role.”
In addition to its CFO transition, Avaya announced that Laurent Philonenko, Senior Vice President, Innovation, will be departing the company this month to assume the role of Chief Executive Officer for a customer experience management organization that is a business partner to Avaya.
“Laurent has significantly advanced Avaya’s capabilities in bringing new, disruptive solutions to the market, especially in the areas of artificial intelligence, mobility and security,” Chirico said. “While we regret he is leaving Avaya, a CEO role is a great opportunity for Laurent and we wish him tremendous success. We will build on and extend the Innovation Incubator that Laurent has established here, to continue delivering innovation that enhances our position as a technology leader.”
