Shaygan Kheradpir

Early life and education

Shaygan Kheradpir was born in London and grew up in Iran. His father was an ear, nose and throat doctor. Kheradpir moved to the United States for university, earning a bachelor's, master's and doctoral degree in electrical engineering from Cornell University.

Early work

Kheradpir's first job was at GTE Laboratories in 1987. There he worked on network routing, management, and control. He eventually became chief information officer at GTE Corporation, "earning respect for delivering new products on schedule," according to The Wall Street Journal.

Verizon

In 2000, GTE merged with Bell Atlantic to form Verizon Communications. Kheradpir initially served as the president of Verizon's e-business division, before becoming the company's first CIO/CTO. At Verizon, Kheradpir contributed to the company’s diversification into a broader range of telecommunications services, as well as the automation of operations.

In 2001, Kheradpir formed small teams that were each responsible for coming up with and developing new products. Kheradpir implemented a 30-day prototype cycle to rapidly test and modify new technologies in development. His team of approximately 10,000 staff often worked late hours, but positions at Verizon were in high demand, because of the department's rapid pace. According to InfoWorld, he led technology development for strategic initiatives such as FiOS(fiber to the home), process and systems transformation, and many new customer-facing products." In 2003 his team created iobi, which manages address books, caller ID and other features across devices over the internet. The Verizon One, a combination phone, router, modem and smart portable device, was developed from his department the following year. His division also reengineered many of Verizon's core network systems, including call center, website, automated customer service systems, and integrated formerly separate systems from predecessor companies GTE, Bell Atlantic and NYNEX.

During Kheradpir's tenure at Verizon, the company reduced its information technology budget from six percent of revenue (the industry average) to four percent. From 2000 to 2003, he reduced IT staff by 20 percent and reduced purchasing from technology vendors by 30 percent. He negotiated aggressively with vendors to reduce prices and lobbied Verizon to eliminate its policy against purchasing IT equipment being auctioned on eBay by failed dot-com businesses. Many contract programming positions were out-sourced to lower-cost labor in India. Additionally, new software was installed that improved Verizon's utilization of IT hardware.

Barclays

In January 2011, Kheradpir joined Barclays as the Chief Operating Officer of the Global Retail & Business Bank, where he oversaw technology innovations such as Pingit mobile payments app and the use of iPads to improve customer service in bank branches. In March 2013, Kheradpir was promoted to Chief Operations and Technology Officer of the Barclays Group, leading the operating and technology aspects of the bank's strategic transformation initiatives across retail, corporate, card and investment banking sectors. It was the first time a technology executive sat on the executive team at Barclays.

Juniper Networks

Kheradpir became CEO of Juniper Networks in January 2014. He developed and executed a restructuring and cost-cutting plan that Juniper called its Integrated Operating Plan (IOP), in response to pressure from activist investors at Elliot Management. The plan included $160 million in cost cutting and returning $3 billion to shareholders over three years by buying shares and increasing dividends. It also consolidated many product and R&D groups, putting a major emphasis on the market segments of Web 2.0, Cloud-Builder & High-IQ Networks. According to Network World, Elliot Management was pleased with the plan.

Coriant

In September 2015, Kheradpir was announced as the Chairman & CEO of Coriant. During his tenure, he completed integration of the predecessor companies of Tellabs, Nokia-Semens Optical and Sycamore into Coriant. He also led the launch of a series of new products in packet-optical networking across long haul, metro, mobile back haul and data center domains

Other activities

From 2010 to 2013, Kheradpir served on a board of the United States National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), known as the Visiting Committee on Advanced Technology. From 2007 to 2010, Kheradpir served on the Advisory Board of the YMCA of Greater New York. Kheradpir is a member of the Cornell University Engineering Council.