Speaker Bio
Aparna serves as Chief Revenue Officer for Verizon Business Markets and SaaS. In this role, she is responsible for the strategy to accelerate 5G growth, new products, go-to-market operations for the company’s small and mid-market wireless & wireline offerings, Verizon Connect and BlueJeans by Verizon. Her P&L ownership for this segment includes the omnichannel expansion of wireless, wireline & IoT solutions through direct and digital sales and Verizon’s partner networks.
Aparna consistently achieves double digit growth for a comprehensive suite of communications & SaaS solutions spanning 5G, Mobile Edge Compute (MEC), security, collaboration tools, IoT and productivity solutions. Under her leadership, the Verizon Business organization has embraced a data-driven culture to transform guided sales, enhance rep productivity and enable truly seamless experiences for business customers.
Aparna leads a team of more than 3,000 sales professionals, who guide customers through digitally transformed journeys with innovative managed solutions for total connectivity, communications and collaboration. Her team is focused on helping to accelerate the digitization of businesses throughout America leveraging the company’s portfolio of technologies and connectivity solutions, including 5G, BlueJeans, OneTalk, VerizonConnect, Fios and more.
Over the course of her 15-year tenure at Verizon, Aparna has held various leadership roles, most recently having served as SVP and President for Verizon Business Markets. Prior to that, she was Chief Customer Officer for the Verizon Consumer Group. In this multidisciplinary role, she was responsible for the end-to-end digital channel sales and service, AI-led business transformation, digital, store and omni-channel experiences, and the data platforms. She also led Verizon’s record improvement in wireless brand NPS and its unprecedented growth in the digital sales and service mix, while successfully executing the company’s digital response to the COVID-19 crisis. Earlier at Verizon, she managed the company’s IoT strategy, including the acquisition of Hughes Telematics, and was Chief Network Officer for the U.S. South, the company’s largest network area.
Prior to joining Verizon, Aparna was Senior Director of Technology Strategy and Engineering at Motorola, where she worked on marquee handset launches that defined the evolution of the mobile experience, including the first flip-phone, the first color-phone, the iconic RAZR, the first open OS phone, the cross-OS UI platform, as well as productizing numerous enabling technologies such as Wi-Fi, NFC, and VoIP. Her seminal work in wireless signal processing ultimately resulted in defining the next generation of standards in mobile handset architecture.
Aparna thrives on solving the most complex business problems in today’s data-rich and tech-heavy environment, while leading groundbreaking transformations and aligning large-team operations to the strategic vision. She strives to be the most objective voice in a room and believes in authentic leadership. Aparna is committed to mentoring women and youth on the importance of speaking up with knowledge and conviction.
Aparna holds an MS in Electrical Engineering from Temple University and a B.S. in Electronics and Telecom from Savitribai Phule Pune University. She obtained several patents, including one for Method and an Apparatus for Eb/nt Estimation for Forward Power Control in Spread Spectrum Communications Systems and Methods and Systems for Providing Multiple Network Services By Way of a Single Machine-to-Machine Gateway Device. In 2021, she was named a “Top Woman in Retail” by Chain Store Age. She serves on the Strategic Advisory Board for Cresta and is an executive sponsor of Verizon’s Employee Resource Group, WAVE, which stands (Women’s Association of Verizon Employees). A global food and travel enthusiast, Aparna loves to experiment with new cuisines, and enjoys travel, fashion, fitness and family board game nights with family.