Verizon announces organization evolution to accelerate efficiency and growth

NEW YORK, N.Y. - Today Verizon announced the formation of a new, enterprise wide, shared services organization, advancing their strategy for 2023.

Chief Administrative Officer and General Counsel, Craig Silliman, will be taking on a new role leading the company's new central support services operations, as President, Verizon Global Services (VGS). Craig and VGS will be responsible for most shared services teams within Verizon including Real Estate, Sourcing, Supply Chain, Fleet, Finance Operations, Global Technology Solutions, Reporting and Insights, Learning and Development, Public Policy and Information Security. Craig and VGS also will be responsible for bringing a holistic approach to Verizon’s partner ecosystem, which consists of tens of thousands of vendors providing services to the company, to ensure seamless and efficient business processes.

In announcing these changes today, Verizon Chairman and CEO Hans Vestberg said, “This is a logical evolution of our strategy. These moves will accelerate our efforts to drive efficiencies, enabling us to reinvest savings in network superiority and customer growth.”

Verizon will discuss the economic benefits of establishing Verizon Global Services in its 3Q earnings communications on October 21.

Craig Silliman brings the experience of seeing the entire Verizon business from his current CAO role, as well as an increasingly critical role navigating the past few unprecedented years. Hans and the board have repeatedly called on Craig to tackle the company’s most strategic and difficult challenges, from Work from Home mobilization to supply chain to spectrum and other acquisitions to various strategic negotiations.

“Over the past 2 plus years, under unprecedented circumstances, we’ve learned a lot about how we deliver our services to customers.” Vestberg added, “It has given us new insight and unlocked a number of new opportunities. VGS will enable us to consolidate what we’ve learned and scale it for the entire organization.”

As Craig steps into this new role, effective immediately, Vandana Venkatesh, will assume his responsibilities as Chief Legal Officer.  In this new role, Vandana will report to Hans Vestberg and lead the company's legal, privacy, and corporate security functions.  Vandana is currently SVP and General Counsel for the Verizon Consumer Group (VCG).  She has led a variety of leadership roles in the company supporting Enterprise, Public Sector, Information Technology, and Sourcing business units. 

"Vandana is a proven leader with extensive experience across a variety of legal functions and business units,” said Vestberg, “and will be a key member of our leadership team during this transformative time.”