John Baughn, formerly executive VP Global Services at SES Networks, is appointed to the newly created position of chief services officer (CSO).
The position consolidates all customer support and operational delivery, logistics and services related resources across the video and data businesses. It unifies functions across the organisation into a single team charged with delivering exceptional services to its customers.
At the same time, SES has announced Ruy Pinto as the successor to Martin Halliwell as CTO. Pinto, formerly deputy CTO and chief information officer of SES, will lead SES’s global technology organisation including all technology functions currently within the business units and will also retain the leadership of SES’s IT and digital transformation activities. Halliwell will remain part of the senior leadership team and serve as a strategic advisor to the CEO until his planned retirement in May 2019.
Commenting on the strengthening of the leadership team, Steve Collar, president and CEO of SES, said: “I am delighted to bring together our engineering talent and responsibility for our customer services under such strong and experienced leaders. As the demands of our markets evolve, these two teams, configured to serve our customers across both business units, will ensure that we stay ahead.
“Unifying the technical team and creating a consistent customer facing organisation will allow us to offer world class customer experiences around the world, strengthen our focus on successful end-to-end delivery and place business success for our customers at the centre of our focus.”
He added: “I would also like to thank Martin for his enormous contribution to the success of SES for over 30 years. Martin is a true pioneer who was responsible for so many ‘firsts’ for SES, for so much that we have achieved in space and I cannot thank him enough for his leadership, dedication, innovation and achievement as our CTO. Martin’s new mission is retirement and we wish him every success in that endeavour!”
