As one of the world’s leading communications technology providers, Lumen is always finding better ways to deliver the fastest, most secure platform for next-gen applications and data to their customers. Richard Batelaan, EVP of North American Operations, has led Lumen through its own digital transformation, streamlining and accelerating the delivery of services in an effort to drive better customer experience. Join Richard and Chris Wade, CTO of network and cloud automation leader, Itential, for a discussion on Lumen’s platform strategy, and the automation and orchestration that enables their enterprise customers to rapidly respond to changing market demands through agile, on-demand network and edge cloud services
Richard Batelaan is Executive Vice President of North America Operations for Lumen. In this role, he is responsible for North America’s operations strategy and planning, network planning and access management, network implementation, field operations, service delivery, service assurance and advanced services operations.
Richard has nearly 30 years of experience in the telecommunications and information technology industries. Prior to joining Lumen, Richard held several leadership roles with AT&T. He also served as Chief Operations Officer for Cbeyond, Inc., BroadRiver Communications and BellSouth.net.
Richard has a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering from Georgia Institute of Technology and a master’s degree in information networking from Carnegie Mellon University.
Richard believes that an amazing digital experience helps businesses realize Lumen’s value. “It’s easy to recognize challenges; the secret is finding the hidden opportunities that will help us all emerge stronger than before.”
At home in Atlanta, Georgia, Richard enjoys playing golf and spending time with his family.
Chris co-founded Itential in 2014 to simplify and accelerate the adoption
of network automation and to transform network operations practices.
Using a model-based approach, Chris leads the innovation and
development of the company’s flagship software portfolio of dynamic
network automation applications.