John Gillam joins as Chief Technology Officer, George Glass as VP Architecture & APIs, Denise Fink as Legal Counsel and Jon Coleman as Director of Product Management

PARSIPPANY, NJ— September 25, 2018—TM Forum is bolstering its staff team with four senior appointments to extend its focus on digital transformation and to support membership collaboration.  The new joiners start between September and November and will be immersed in projects to help the Forum’s 850 members thrive in a rapidly digitizing world. 

Nik Willetts, Chief Executive Officer said, ‘Our ability to attract global talent reflects the veracity of our work in digital transformation. John, George, Denise and Jon will make strong contributions to our members’ success and to the life of the Forum, which is entering a new phase as the members it serves digitize even further.’

John Gillam has been appointed Chief Technology Officer of TM Forum. He joins from BT Global Services where he was CTO of Portfolio Development for BT Compute.  John led and delivered the business and technology architecture of the ‘Business Platform as a Service’ within the BT Compute Management System, which provides a fast track for organisations wanting to adopt digital business models to compete with digital natives or ‘unicorns’ without compromising on the maintenance of existing legacy business.  John also led the digital transformation of the Global Services Compute portfolio developing and launching many new, innovative and often award-winning services to the global market, covering application performance management, cloud computing & storage, multi-cloud application deployment and most recently digital business services.  Before joining BT, John spent several years with Infonet Services Corporation as Senior Product Manager leading on Application Performance management services. He has contributed to numerous TM Forum Catalysts and has over 20 years’ experience within the IT and telecommunications industry.

John said, ‘I’m delighted to be joining TM Forum and look forward to working with the members in defining the industry direction, bringing together established elements such as Frameworx and the Open Digital Architecture along with new technologies such as machine learning and blockchain’.

George Glass has been appointed VP Architecture & APIs.  George joins from BT, where he was Chief Systems Architect, leading a community of 900+ architects and designers, responsible for architectural transformations within BT for over 15 years.  George has over 30 years’ experience in all aspects of software engineering and was one of the original authors and creators of BT’s Service Oriented Architecture, built on TM Forum standards, which has persisted and evolved, enabling the transformation of BT from a telephone company to the digital service provider that it is today.  George is an SOA evangelist, regularly speaking at conferences and presenting to customers on architectural transformation.  He holds world-wide patents for a pricing engine developed as part of BT’s billing transformation and for three years was Chief Billing Architect in Concert, BT’s joint venture with AT&T.  

‘I have always been a strong advocate of industry collaboration and have worked with many teams within TM Forum including Digital Architecture and Transformation, Platform, API and Virtualisation groups. Earlier this year I was delighted to be honoured as a Distinguished Fellow of TM Forum, and I’m looking forward to supporting the Forum’s members worldwide as our industry transforms from being the communication service providers of the last century to the digital service partners of this century’.

Denise Fink has been appointed as Legal Counsel. She is an attorney focussed on technology, telecom, IP and privacy issues for global clients, with nineteen years of corporate experience working at multinational Fortune 500 companies including: AXA; Bank of America/Merrill Lynch; Citigroup and UBS. Denise launched her private law practice to support technology start-ups in a broad range of commercial legal matters.   “In my legal practice, I am a firm believer in keeping pace with the evolving landscape of Technology. I’m constantly updating my knowledge-base to provide effective guidance to my clients. It’s exciting to have the opportunity to support TM Forum as a transformative environment for the communications and digital services community.”

Jon Coleman has been appointed as Director of Product Management. Jon joins from VIAVI Solutions and has twenty years’ experience in global mobile telecommunications, with leading providers of cellular infrastructure. Jon has held various product management roles covering software, hardware, services and complex solutions, amassing extensive experience in the leadership of professional, global teams in a complex multinational environment, as well as in the design of new organizations and processes for global product management. Jon is technically astute, commercially aware, customer focussed and a great problem solver.  ‘I’m delighted to be joining TM Forum at this time of rapid industry transformation.  5G stands to open-up many new business models, but monetizing new digital ecosystems requires large-scale simplification and automation of IT and Operations. I’m looking forward to overseeing the management of products and services that will help the Forum’s members make the most of the opportunities the next decade will bring.’

-ENDS-

About TM Forum

TM Forum is an association of over 850 member companies that generate a combined US$2 trillion in revenue and serve five billion customers across 180 countries. We drive collaboration and collective problem-solving to maximize the business success of communication and digital service providers and their ecosystem of suppliers. We support our members, as they navigate their unique digital transformation journeys, by providing practical and proven assets and tools to accelerate execution, and by creating digital and physical platforms that facilitate collaborative problem solving and innovation. Learn more at www.tmforum.org.