Orange Group has appointed current Schneider Electric EVP Christel Heydemann as the operator’s new chief executive.
Heydemann is taking the helm at Orange, effective April 4. She’s served on the board of directors for five years. Current chairman and CEO Stéphane Richard, who’s headed the company for 12 years, will stay on as chief executive until Heydemann takes over. He will remain non-executive chairman until May 19 the latest.
The board previously decided to split to role of CEO and chairman, the latter which still needs to be filled.
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Last year Orange had said it would find a successor to Richard by the end of January after a Paris appeals court convicted him of complicity of misuse of public funds, according to Reuters.
In her current role, Heydemann leads the French energy equipment giant’s Europe operations and is a member of the executive committee. She’s been with Schneider Electric since 2014, first as director of Strategic Alliances. Prior to that she spent 15 years in the telecom industry, with roles at Alcatel and Alcatel-Lucent. Heydemann is a graduate of France’s Ecole Polytechnique and the Ecole Nationale des Ponts et Chaussées, and started her career at Boston Consulting.
“I would like to thank the Board members for their confidence. As a member of the Board for nearly five years, I have gained a solid understanding of the technological challenges and opportunities that lie before us,” Heydemann said in the announcement. “I know that these are significant, but it is equally a huge honor to be able to contribute to the development of one of the leading players in our industry and Orange will have my total commitment as we set about this task.”
Orange is a leading operator with 263 million customers worldwide as of Q2 2021, including 218 million mobile customers and 22 million fixed broadband customers. Based in France, Orange Group has a presence in 26 countries and nearly 140,000 employees.
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Richard, in a statement welcoming Heydemann, also pointed to her board member involvement and long experience at Alcatel and Schneider Electric as arming her with knowledge of challenges and opportunities of the digital future.
“I am certain that her vision, her pragmatism and her ability to bring out the best in every situation will be of enormous value to Orange,” Richard commented.
Schneider Electric also isn’t a stranger to 5G or Orange. In 2020 Schneider Electric was the first to trial industrial 5G at a factory in France, where Orange deployed an indoor private network. This past summer, Nokia and Orange added support for network slicing in a 4G/5G private network implementation at the plant in Le Vaudreuil.
In other leadership changes at Orange, last month chief executive of Business Services Helmut Reisinger said he would leave the company to pursue other opportunities. Aliette Mousnier-Lompré, EVP of Operations and Customer Service, was named interim chief executive of the business segment.