Avaya Chairman and CEO Elected Chair of WPI’s Board of Trustees

Donald K. Peterson ’71, chairman and CEO of Avaya Inc., a leading global provider of communications networks and services for busi-nesses, has been elected the 20th chair of the WPI Board of Trustees. He succeeds F. William Marshall, who has served as chair since 2003.

Peterson will lead the university’s 35-member board in its role as owner and overseer of the university. He brings a strong business, management, and financial background to the post, chiefly in the telecommunications industry.

Peterson became president and CEO of Avaya when it was spun off from Lucent Technologies in 2000; he was later named chairman. In 2002, he was recognized as “CEO of the Year” by Frost & Sullivan, a strategic marketing consulting and training firm. The award lauded Peterson for leading Avaya through an outstanding year while the telecommunications industry as a whole contracted sharply. Since leading Avaya through its launch as a fully independent company, Peterson has restructured the firm for fiscal stability, invested in key growth areas, and led a successful effort to extend market leadership by building a new global brand.

“Don Peterson’s impressive career of achievement and entrepre-neurial leadership, in roles of global reach and profound importance to the communications industry, makes him extremely well suited to lead this distinguished university and to provide a standard against which our students can model their own career aspirations,” said President Dennis Berkey. “A loyal alumnus and active member of the Board of Trustees, Don understands well the uniqueness and value of our project-enriched approach to education centered on engineering and science, the importance of our research programs, and WPI’s role in regional economic development. We are honored and most fortunate to have him as our new chairman.”

Peterson began his career in telecommunications with Nortel Networks and advanced through a number of key financial, sales, and general management positions in the United States and Canada, serving as CFO until his appointment to president of Nortel Communications Systems Inc. Later, he served as CFO of AT&T’s Communications Services Group until AT&T divested Lucent and he became its CFO.

A native of Worcester, Peterson earned a B.S. in mechanical engineering at WPI and an MBA at the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth College. He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and the World Economic Forum, the board of overseers of the Tuck School, the board of trustees of Teachers Insurance & Annuity Association of America (TIAA), and is a trustee for the Committee for Economic Development.

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Last modified: Aug 25, 2005, 13:46 EDT