Telstra appoints Optus’ Michelle Gara as executive director of Telstra Media
Australia’s biggest telco has hired Optus executive Michele Garra to the role of executive director of Telstra Media.
The move comes in the wake of a major restructure by Joe Pollard, group managing director, media & marketing at Telstra, within the telco’s media business, which saw director of digital media and content Adam Good, IPTV boss Eric Kearley and Telstra TV MD Ian Davis all depart the business.
Garra is moving across from Optus where she has been vice president retail for nearly two years and has previously held senior positions as Virgin Australia, Microsoft and Sony Pictures.
The appointment comes less than two months after Telstra ramped up its media offering with the launch of IPTV offering Telstra TV.
“Given the importance of the media business to Telstra, in October, Joe Pollard restructured the business to position it for future growth,” said a Telstra spokesman.
“This included a restructure of the group to strengthen the focus on product development and go to market capabilities. Existing teams will align to this new structure and Michele will join Telstra in March 2016.”
Nic Christensen
Knowing Telstra there’ll be at least one corporate restructure before March!
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Best of luck Michelle! You will be the asset to Telstra and not vice versa 😉
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Great operator & a great appointment by Joe!
Well done Michelle.
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Pollard in, 3 men gone and a women in.
No comment from Cindy Gallop on these events.
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Finally someone who gets stuff done! Telstra won’t know what hit them! All the best! 🙂
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Hopefully a breath of fresh air… the legacies at Telstra are well known with an inability to make decisions and keep suppliers in the dark. You can ask almost anyone in any department …. who will make the final decision on this and the answer is 99% of the time… I do not know.
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Congratulations Michelle! Telstra are so privileged to have you on board.
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Congrats Michele! Fantastic news!!
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Telstra persists in pretending to have a media business when what it actually has is a distribution business. It has completely failed even to make its sports rights work as a streaming option. In fact most of its content management is outsourced to Foxtel. They might as well take the saving and shutter it.
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Congratulations Michelle.
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