Nortel’s new management infusion continues

Upper management changes at Nortel Networks keep coming under Mike Zafirovski, who became chief executive of the equipment vendor last November with plans to turn it around.

The company’s two most recent executive hires, announced this month, are both former IBM employees. Yesterday the company named IBM veteran Lauren Flaherty its new chief marketing officer, about a week after naming another IBM alum, Dietmar Wendt, its new president of Global Services.

The company’s first and former CMO, Clent Richardson, resigned effective March 1, 2006--less than two years after he joined Nortel.

In recent months, Zafirovski, who is a veteran of both Motorola and General Electric, has hired a few GE alums to rebuild Nortel’s management team. In February, Nortel named former GE man Joseph Flanagan its new vice president of Order Management. In January it hired 40-year GE veteran Don McKenna as vice president of Global Manufacturing Services and Dennis Carey--who, like Zafirovski, has worked for both GE and Motorola--as its executive vice president of Corporate Operations.

Also in February, Nortel appointed ex-Juniper Networks executive George Riedel its new Chief Strategy Officer, longtime Nortel employee John Haydon its new Chief Procurement Officer and U.S. Air Force Brigadier General Denis Brown as the new executive vice president of strategic business development for Nortel Government Solutions.

The company announced the resignations of longtime Nortel executives such as Brian McFadden and Sue Spradley within a few weeks of Zafirovski’s arrival at Nortel.