NBN exec reshuffle splits chief customer officer role

NBN Co has unveiled an executive reshuffle that sees it split its chief customer officer role in two, switch its chief strategy officer and elevate network deployment and corporate affairs functions.

The new organisational structure comes into effect at the beginning of next month and essentially expands the number of ‘chief’-level roles reporting into CEO Bill Morrow from eight to ten.

Among the biggest changes is to the chief customer office role, presently held by John Simon, which will now be split into two roles covering business and residential respectively.

Simon will be appointed chief customer officer for NBN Co’s business operations, where he’ll lead the business sales and marketing department until he retires in the first half of next year.

NBN Co said Simon had “agreed to extend his stay” at NBN Co “to help establish this new standalone department”; he came out of retirement back in 2013 to take a role at NBN Co.

The other part of Simon’s present role will be taken up by Brad Whitcomb, who until now led strategy, transformation, regulatory and technology. Whitcomb’s new title is chief customer officer for residential.

Whitcomb’s old job will be taken over by JB Rousselot, who has been appointed as chief strategy officer. This differs only from the role held by Whitcomb in dropping ‘transformation’ from the title, though the remit is broadly similar.

NBN Co’s chief information officer John McInerney receives a new title and broader remit. He is now chief systems engineering officer, where he’ll lead “the newly formed systems engineering and operations team comprising the existing IT team combined with the network engineering team focused on the delivery of new network functionality,”, NBN Co said.

Construction of the remaining part of the network has been elevated to a direct C-level report. Katherine Dyer, who until now was an executive general manager within the network engineering and deployment team, is now chief network deployment officer.

A second executive general manager, Karina Keisler, has also been given a ‘chief’ title. She was formerly executive general manager of corporate affairs, and will now be chief corporate affairs officer.

Keisler has also picked up a stakeholder management oversight responsibility.

“Keisler will take on the additional responsibility of NBN-Local, a newly formed group focused on national industry stakeholders and local relationships in remote and regional Australia,” NBN Co said.

Other C-level personnel retain their roles in the reshuffle.