Lenovo names new North America president in reorg; no layoffs coming

Lenovo’s North America organization has a new president after the world’s largest PC seller and a top provider of mobile and server technology goes through another reorganization.

Also, a Lenovo spokesperson says the structural changes will not result in any layoffs.

“Our new President of North America is Emilio Ghilardi, an industry veteran who has been serving as North America Chief Operating Officer.,” says Lenovo’s Milanka Muecke, who is director of PR, customer center and community relations.

Ghilardi is a veteran tech industry executive, having worked at HP and AMD before signing on with Lenovo. (See bio below.)

“Emilio joined Lenovo North America last July as VP and Chief Operating Officer, and has had responsibility for Lenovo PC and enterprise businesses in Canada and the United States.”

Just a year ago, Lenovo named Aymar de Lencquesaing to lead North America after Jay Parker quit to go to work with Dell. (Full details of the reorganization are available at the story linked with this post.)

“His vast technology experience spans across sales and marketing, product development, supply chain, distribution and channel management in multi-billion dollar semiconductor, personal computing and printing businesses,” Muecke says of Ghilardi.

Muecke also says the changes were not about saving money, thus no job cuts.

“There are no layoffs planned as part of this announcement,” she points out. “Today’s announcement is more about how we go-to-market and better serve our customers, rather than cost savings.”

Backstory on changes

The changes outlined by Lenovo early Friday are extensive, involving a departure (top Motorola executive, co-presidents of mobile operations (including de Lencquesaing) and much more.

Muecke says all the moves are part of a commitment to become a more “customer-centric company.” Lenovo has gone through several changes since acquiring IBM’s x86 server business and Google’s Motorola Mobility two years ago.

“Last year, we laid out a clear strategy to transform ourselves into a more diverse, customer-centric company,” Muecke explains. “We took steps forward to establish our foundation, integrating two major businesses – System x and Motorola Mobility.

“Our strategy to win across all 3 of our growth engines – PC, mobile and enterprise – is clear.

“Now we must accelerate our transformation while focusing on execution and driving even stronger results. We have often stated that one of the keys to our continued success is how quickly we can transform from a product-centric company to a customer-centric company, and the changes we announced today will help accelerate that process.”

Lenovo’s new North America president

Emilio Ghilardi as profiled at LinkedIn

Summary

Proven senior executive leader with experience in building high performance teams and orchestrating cross functional work in areas like product & solution development, marketing, sales, channels and services. Global experience in growing the business by engaging partners and customers with focus on people, processes and the bottom line. Broad global experience and expertise in Sales & Marketing (B2C and B2B), Operations Management, Planning, Product Line Management and Engineering, as well as General Management. Experienced in managing large multi-regions-global teams and P&L’s in excess of $10B with proven results in growing share, expanding margins, reducing costs and attracting, keeping and developing talents. I love my family, sports and reading about old history.

Experience