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.

Norm Burke is responsible for the overall financial management of the company. He is an experienced finance executive with over 30 years of global financial leadership spanning both private and publicly owned multi-national companies. Prior to being appointed Tellabs Chief Financial Officer he served as the Corporate Controller for the company from January 2016 through March 2019. Prior to Tellabs Norm held senior level finance positions focusing on financial planning and strategy with MoneyGram International and General Electric / Dresser amongst other experience. Norm is a CFA® charterholder, a licensed Certified Public Accountant in Texas and has a B.S. in accounting from Wilkes University

Karen Leos, a native Texan, grew up in a family business, leading her to earn a Business Administration degree from Texas A&M – Commerce. She joined a telecom start-up in Richardson, TX, sparking her interest in technology and forming relationships that brought her to Tellabs over 20 years ago.

At Tellabs, Karen has led departments focusing on areas that improve the corporate tools, processes, metrics, training, and incident management initiatives utilized to enable success for customers. Her deep technology knowledge, customer service experience, and drive for continual improvement empowered her role as Vice President of Services. In this role, Leos was responsible for the global services portfolio including technical support, training, and professional services. Presently, Karen serves Tellabs Customers as Vice President of Global Sales and Professional Services where she oversees the sales process, from scoping customer needs to implementation, support, optimization, and refresh.