Mary McDowell - Top Women in Wireless

Mary McDowell

Executive vice president and chief development officer at Nokia

After spending 17 years at HP-Compaq, Mary McDowell decided to make the foray into wireless in 2004 when she joined Nokia as executive vice president and general manager of the company's enterprise solutions group. During her time there, she oversaw the development of the Nokia Eseries of mobile devices.

In her current role, she heads the corporate development office and oversees many areas including mobile software sales and marketing and IT. With Nokia's growing emphasis on applications and software, McDowell is now on the forefront of many company initiatives, including Nokia's recent $410 million acquisition of the remaining interest in Symbian and its plans to make Symbian's software into an open source platform and make it available to members for free.