Harmonic Announces Key Executive Appointments

Harmonic has made key appointments to its executive team and board of directors. Peter Alexander, the company’s new senior vice president and chief marketing officer, drives Harmonic’s global corporate marketing initiatives. Krishnan Padmanabhan, named senior vice president of video products, leads the management of Harmonic’s extensive video product and solutions portfolio.

Alexander and Padmanabhan will be fundamental in Harmonic’s efforts to accelerate its success in broadcast and IP-based video production, playout, and all delivery service provider markets. Joining Harmonic’s board is Mitzi Reaugh, senior vice president, strategy and business development at Miramax, a leading independent film and television studio.

Harmonic’s Nimrod Ben-Natan now heads up the company’s new Edge and Access business unit as senior vice president and general manager. In this role, Ben-Natan will oversee R&D and product management for Harmonic’s market-leading edge and access products, including its emerging CCAP initiative, with the goal of leveraging the company’s market position and increasing footprint and revenue. For the past five years, Ben-Natan has successfully led Harmonic’s product marketing, solutions, and strategy group.

“To continue to drive our market leadership and scale our business in light of the many new opportunities in our markets, we are sharpening our focus on key growth initiatives, including expansion in new media and in IP-based infrastructures and applications,” said Harmonic President and CEO Patrick Harshman. “The new senior management team’s experience in scaling tech businesses, as well as their expertise in engineering, marketing, and sales, combined with the media and entertainment industry perspective that Mitzi brings to our board, position Harmonic to pursue this growth strategy aggressively.”

Alexander joins Harmonic with more than three decades of experience in sales, marketing, and engineering hardware and software solutions for the telecommunications industry. A proven marketing executive with broad experience managing multibillion-dollar product lines, as well as executing global marketing strategies, he spent 15 years with Cisco Systems, where he served as vice president of worldwide field marketing. Alexander earned his B.Eng from the University of Bradford and his MBA from the University of California, Berkeley.

Padmanabhan joins Harmonic after having most recently served as vice president and general manager of the Manageability and Ecosystem Integration business unit at NetApp, where his organization focused on storage management solutions, as well as integration of storage infrastructure with business-critical applications. Padmanabhan earned his BSE in aerospace engineering from Princeton University and his M.S. and a Ph.D. in mechanical engineering from Stanford University.

Both Padmanabhan and Alexander will be based in San Jose and report directly to Harshman.

Reaugh leads business development and key strategic initiatives for Miramax, including international opportunities and digital business extensions. Reaugh previously served as senior vice president of client solutions at The Nielsen Company, where she developed business strategies for worldwide media leaders and contributed to Nielsen’s global growth strategy. As part of NBC Universal’s Digital Media organization, Reaugh was a core member of the team that founded Hulu.com and was later appointed General Manager of the NBC Digital Health Network. Reaugh holds a Bachelor of Arts in Economics from Claremont McKenna College and an MBA in Finance and Strategic Management from The Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania.