AFC COO calls it quits as of June 30

Greg S. Steele, senior vice president and chief operating officer for Advanced Fiber Communications, has announced his resignation from the company effective June 30.

AFC indicated it will interview both internal and external candidates for the position of senior vice president of operations but will not fill the COO vacancy.

“As a practical matter, in the real structure of the company, Greg didn’t truly perform as a classic COO,” said John Schofield, president and CEO. “Typically, all of the operating functions--sales, marketing, engineering and manufacturing--would all report to a COO, but we had split the functions here.”

Instead, AFC will employ a three-pronged organizational structure where the company will have senior vice presidents covering finance, sales and marketing, and operations.

Schofield indicated that he was not surprised by Steele’s decision to leave the company, which he classified more as a retirement than a resignation.

“I’ve known about this for a while. This is all part of Greg’s plan,” he explained. “He’s a very focused family person. He has two young boys and, quite frankly, he is financially sound, so he wants to take time off for the next several formidable years of his sons’ growth so he can devote a lot of time to them. Having the kind of job he’s had with AFC hasn’t allowed him to do that.”

Steeles’ love for charitable work was also a factor in the decision.

“He’s a very socially conscious and civic-minded sort of guy and he really wants to devote some time to that area,” Schofield said. “When he moves into his next career, it is likely to be in the not-for-profit arena.”

Schofield made it clear that AFC owes Steele a debt of gratitude. As AFC went through some difficult times a couple of years ago, its CEO resigned, forcing founder and chairman Don Green to come out of retirement. Because Green wanted to focus on the search for a new CEO, he created the position of COO and promoted Steele into it.

“Greg stepped, quite frankly, into the breach at a difficult time,” Schofield said. “The company had lost its key senior leadership. As someone who had been with the company for a couple of years, he provided stability.

“When I joined the company and started looking at what needed to be done to turn it around, Greg was there as a pillar of strength that I could build certain parts of the company around. I immediately sensed he was someone who I could trust and someone who had a lot of integrity and work ethic.”

Steele’s announcement comes on the heels of the company’s best quarter ever. Fourth quarter 2000 revenue were $117 million, a 40% increase over the year previous. Nevertheless, Schofield isn’t concerned that Steele’s resignation will slow the company’s momentum.

“He’s built such a good organization underneath him that is now performing extremely well and in no measure needs his day-to-day active involvement,” Schofield said. “So the short answer is that I don’t expect to lose any momentum at all.”