FierceTelecom presents its inaugural class of Rising Stars

Linda Hardesty editor's corner

At the risk of being obvious — the world of telecom is changing rapidly. Everyone knows that consumers are cutting their landlines and their cable subscriptions. But at the same time, they have an insatiable demand for better, faster broadband. And while telecom operators and vendors scramble to meet the changing customer demand, they’re also faced with historic changes in networks, which they're virtualizing to look more like the big West Coast hyperscalers. And speaking of those hyperscalers, their ecosystems are blending with telecom networks as more workloads are moved to the public cloud.

Our inaugural FierceTelecom Rising Star winners are executives who are making names for themselves in this shifting landscape and whom their own companies consider shining stars. These people have ascended into the spotlight as they lead the charge to next generation telecom.

We're proud to present our first class of FierceTelecom Rising Stars. Here are the 2019 winners, in no particular order: 

Verizon’s Kevin Smith

Kevin Smith

Cisco’s Kishen Mangat

Kishen Mangat/Cisco

Google’s Prajakta Joshi

Prajakta Joshi

Juniper Networks’ Anand Athreya

Anand Athreya/Juniper

AT&T’s Amy Wheelus

Amy Wheelus/AT&T

VMware’s Gabriele Di Piazza

Gabriele Di Piazza/VMware

Dell EMC’s Kevin Shatzkamer

Kevin Shatzkamer/DellEMC

Microsoft’s Rimma Nehme

Rimma Nehme/Microsoft

CenturyLink’s Shaun Andrews

CenturyLink's  Shaun Andrews


We're also doing a poll so you can vote for your favorite top executive to watch in telecom. We’re using Crowdsignal.com for the actual voting. You’re welcome to cast your vote in the poll window below. Repeated voting is prohibited with a block to cookies and IP addresses. The poll will stay open for one week, and after that week is over we’ll close the poll and announce the winner on October 7. Feel free to use social media to promote your favorite exec. Happy competing!