Leadership

Rich Schroder is a communications veteran with over 35 years of telecom industry experience and 15 years of enterprise experience with a focus on high speed deep fiber technologies. He previously held positions of Chief Operating Officer, VP/GM and VP of engineering at Tellabs. Prior to his engagement at Tellabs, Rich held the position of VP of engineering at AFC, VP Access Business Unit at Marconi along with other executive leadership roles at RELTEC, DSC, and Siemens. Rich has a broad technical and business background developing and successfully launching new products into the telecom and enterprise markets including: Passive Optical LAN (POL), Passive Optical Networking (PON), FTTC, FTTP, and was key to the launch and continues to drive the strong growth of the Tellabs Optical LAN (OLAN) business. He has years of experience building and running global multi-site organizations in China, Europe, India, and across the USA. Rich has been part of a number of strategic partnership developments and M&A activities, he successfully merged multiple global acquisitions into a single cohesive business while keeping a keen focus on optimizing business operations for profitability.

Susan Merrill, J.D., MBA, is a seasoned financial executive with deep expertise in strategic planning, operational optimization, and guiding organizations through complex transitions such as mergers and acquisitions. She has held senior leadership roles across technology, media, logistics, and manufacturing industries, most recently serving as CFO and Chief People Officer at Premier Logitech, LLC. Throughout her career, Merrill has driven performance and long-term growth through data-driven financial strategies, regulatory compliance, and treasury management. Her experience spans multi-entity operations and organizational restructuring, consistently delivering measurable results and operational excellence.

Karen Leos is a native Texan. She grew up in a small 24X7 family business leading her to pursue a Bachelor’s degree in Business Administration from Texas A&M – Commerce. Following graduation, Karen joined a telecom start-up in Richardson, TX which sparked her interest in Technology and formed Engineering relationships that eventually brought her to Tellabs 17 years ago.

During her time at Tellabs, Karen has led departments focusing on areas that improve the tools, processes, metrics, training and incident management initiatives utilized to enable success for Tellabs customers. Karen has leveraged her love of technology, customer service experience and drive for continual improvement to care for Tellabs customers in her role as Director of Global Technical Services. In this role, she is responsible for the services portfolio through every phase in the lifecycle from scoping and understanding customer needs through implementation, maintenance support, optimization and refresh.