Sprint CEO Claure looks mostly outside of company for newest group of regional presidents

Sprint (NYSE: S) announced it hired another six new regional presidents -- executives charged with running the company's operations in locations stretching from Denver to New York -- a move that pushes Sprint one step closer toward completing the upper-level management for its new corporate structure. Most of the company's newest regional presidents are new Sprint employees.

Sprint late last year announced it would restructure the company under the One Sprint initiative into four geographic areas -- West, Central, Northeast and South -- with presidents devoted to the company's 17 top regions. Under CEO Marcelo Claure, the company has since been working to fill those positions -- mostly with new faces from outside the company.

Sprint's latest round of executive hires include:

  • Johan Chung, Sprint's new president of its Northern California and Nevada Region, who was previously an LG executive.
  • Jim Mills, Sprint's new president of its Illinois and Wisconsin Region, who was previously a Vonage executive.
  • Glen Flowers, Sprint's new president of its Michigan, Kentucky and Indiana Region, who was previously a GWF Consulting executive.
  • Conrad Hunter, Sprint's new president of its New England Region, who was previously an executive with Tranlin.
  • Greg Post, Sprint's new president of its Mountain and Southwest Region, who was previously a Recipero executive.
  • Karen Paletta, Sprint's new president of the New York City, New Jersey, Central Pennsylvania and Delaware Region. Paletta is Sprint's only new regional president receiving a promotion; she is currently Sprint's regional vice president for consumer sales in the Northeast. Sprint said though she will remain in her current position until Sprint's new regional structure is rolled out next year.

As the Kansas City Business Journal pointed out, Sprint initially promised to break up its markets into 19 regions, but it has since reduced that number to 17. The publication noted that Sprint has named a total of 11 new regional presidents. Some of them are new to the company and some have been promoted.

Sprint's 17 regional presidents will report to the carrier's four area presidents. Sprint has so far named two of its four area presidents: Kevin Crull, president of Sprint's Central area (and previously Sprint's CMO), and Jamie Jones, president of Sprint's South area (and previously the head of Sprint's Postpaid and General Business organization).

The front-office shuffle comes as Sprint prepares to slash thousands of jobs in an effort to save the company as much as $2.5 billion.

"The priority is pretty simple," CFO Tarek Robbiati said of Sprint's strategy for 2016 at an investor conference earlier this week. "It's cost cuts, cost cuts, and then cost cuts. We simply have to stop doing things that make no sense."

For more:
- see these six different Sprint releases
- see this Kansas City Business Journal article

Related articles:
Sprint replaces Crull with Solé as CMO in front-office shuffle
Sprint to move to 4 regional hubs model, streamline sales organization as part of restructuring
Sprint brings in former Bell Media exec Kevin Crull as its new CMO