Here are some of the latest executive hirings, promotions, and staff changes that happened in August. If you’d like SDxCentral to report on your company’s movers and shakers, or if you’ve got a tip about layoffs and restructuring, please send the information to Sydney Sawaya ([email protected]) for inclusion in the monthly headcount column.

Nokia’s new CEO Pekka Lundmark settled into his role confronting multiple challenges, including a double-digit decline in sales, underperforming and high-cost 5G equipment, the ongoing COVID-19 crisis, and lingering questions about one of its flagship operator accounts in the U.S. market.

Lundmark replaced former CEO Rajeev Suri, who spent 25 years with the company, leading its networks division from 2009 and later oversaw the company’s acquisition of Alcatel-Lucent as CEO of a company that experienced dramatic upheaval to its once-market-leading mobile phone business in the previous decade.

The Finnish vendor’s new leader hadn't worked at a telecommunications company for 20 years, but previously held multiple executive positions at Nokia from 1990 to 2000.

Amazon announced plans to create 3,500 new technology and corporate jobs at its hubs in Dallas, Detroit, Denver, New York, Phoenix, and San Diego.

The cloud and e-commerce giant said it will invest more than $1.4 billion in offices and staff located in the six U.S. cities to support multiple divisions. Various roles for cloud infrastructure architects, software engineers, data scientists, product managers, and user experience designers will be added, according to the company.

Amazon is adding more than 100,000 square feet of space and 600 jobs in Dallas, acquiring more than 25,000 square feet of office space in Detroit for an additional 100 jobs, and adding 20,000 square feet of office space in Denver to support 100 new jobs. Amazon also acquired the Lord & Taylor Fifth Avenue building in Manhattan where it plans to open a 630,000 square-foot office to support 2,000 new jobs.

In the Southwest and West Coast, Amazon said it is expanding its Phoenix hub by 90,000 square feet to add more than 500 new jobs and adding more than 40,000 square feet of office space in San Diego to support 200 new jobs.

Nutanix CEO Dheeraj Pandey announced he will be leaving the company he co-founded in 2009. The hyperconverged infrastructure (HCI) vendor shared the news amid a flurry of other announcements, including its fourth-quarter 2020 earnings five days ahead of schedule, and a $750 million investment from Bain Capital Private Equity.

He plans to continue in the role until a successor is selected by the company’s board of directors. “Guided by a vision of making IT infrastructure so simple that it becomes invisible, our team has built Nutanix into a leader in cloud software and a pioneer in hybrid cloud infrastructure solutions,” Pandey said in a statement.

SlashNext announced that former Panzura CEO Patrick Harr has joined the company as its new CEO.

Paul Hunter was appointed as HPE’s managing director for North America

NetApp welcomed Michelle Rudnicki to her new post as VP of the U.S. Public Sector team.

Karthik Madhava, founder of Lavelle Networks, will take up a new post as the company's CTO.

CloudBolt Software added two names to its executive team with the appointments of Nick Mansour as CRO and Larry Kraft as SVP, global channels and alliances.

Enterprise data cloud company Cloudera promoted Sarah Shin to the new role of chief diversity officer.

Nadav Peleg was appointed CloudShare’s new CRO.

Mid-market corporate performance management (CPM) software provider Prophix Software promoted president and COO Alok Ajmera to CEO.

Adaptiv Networks welcomed former ELFIQ Networks executive Frederick Parent to his new post as CTO.

Fortinet added former CFO Ken Goldman to its board of directors.

Former Microsoft senior executive and Ignition Partners managing partner, John Connors, joined Symend's board of directors.

Data management provider StorCentric named Rob Eggers as the company's new CFO.

Enterprise big compute company Rescale announced the additions of Terry Denzer, the company's first CRO, and Gerhard Esterhuizen, vp of engineering, to its senior executive team.

Extreme Networks appointed Katy Motiey to a new role as the company's first chief sustainability officer, in addition to her current position as chief administrative officer. Extreme also named Kimberley Basnight as head of diversity and inclusion, in addition to her role as chief of staff/office of the CEO.

Hosting provider Leaseweb named Marilou van Doorn COO of Leaseweb Global.

Leah Sweet joined the BMC board of directors.

Vast Data welcomed former NetApp president and vice chairman Tom Mendoza as the company’s first independent board member.

Former Hootsuite and Yammer executive, Dee Anna McPherson was appointed as Invoca's CMO. And Jennifer Lovette, following executive roles at Citrix and Imperva, was named svp of customer success.