Polycom and Siris Capital Group have announced that Mary McDowell will succeed Peter Leav as Polycom’s CEO after Polycom’s merger with an affiliate of Siris Capital.

Peter Leav will remain as CEO and a board member until the transaction is closed, which is expected to be in September or October 2016.

McDowell is currently an Executive Partner at Siris Capital.  Prior to that, she was EVP, Mobile Phones at Nokia, where she held global P&L responsibility for the feature phone business and associated software and digital services. She joined Nokia in 2004 to lead the Enterprise Solutions business and later served as Chief Development Officer. She has also held senior positions at Compaq Computer and Hewlett Packard. She serves on the boards of Autodesk, Bazaarvoice and UBM.

“Polycom is a powerful global brand and is strongly positioned to help organisations of all sizes raise the bar on collaboration to drive higher levels of productivity and deepen employee engagement,” said McDowell. “I’m looking forward to working closely with the Polycom team to build on the history of innovation and strong track record of creating best-in-class products and services that meet the needs of more than 400,000 companies, institutions, and channel partners, as well as deepening partnerships to enable the evolving Unified Communications ecosystem.”

“Mary has a unique combination of technology and management experience leading multi-billion-dollar consumer and enterprise technology businesses in mobile, telecom, and enterprise sectors that make her a great fit for this role,” said Frank Baker, co-founder and managing partner, Siris Capital.  “Her track record in architecting winning volume product portfolios is exceptional and will be an excellent fit with leading the Polycom team.”

Leav has served as Polycom’s CEO since December, 2013 and will leave Polycom to pursue other opportunities.

Article courtesy of Inavate.