Polycom names Billie Hartless, former Nokia Human Resources Leader, as Chief Human Resources Officer

Press release

Published January 16th, 2017 - 08:00 GMT

Billie Hartless- Polycom Chief Human Resources Officer

Polycom, a global leader in helping organisations achieve new levels of teamwork, efficiency and productivity by unleashing the power of human collaboration, is pleased to announce that Billie Hartless has been named Chief Human Resources Officer. Hartless will succeed the company’s former HR leader Laura Owen, who is leaving Polycom to pursue a new opportunity.

Hartless is a global HR executive with nearly 25 years of experience working in all aspects of HR at Nokia. Most recently, she served as the Vice President of HR for HERE, an innovative leader in location based cloud technology.

“I’m thrilled to have Billie join our executive team to lead our global HR function,” said CEO Mary McDowell. “She has a strong track record of leading diverse teams, organisational change, cultural transformation, and defining effective strategies to realise business results.”

As the newest member of the executive team, Hartless joins McDowell, who joined Polycom in September 2016, and CFO Laura Durr, who has been with Polycom since 2004 and served as CFO since 2014, to add to the strong line-up of women executives at the Bay Area-based company. With 27 percent of its executives being women, Polycom surpasses both the national and technology industry average of just 19 percent, according to the 2016 Women in the Workplace report from Leanin.org.

“I am excited about joining Polycom because their brand promise of ‘defying distance’ resonates with me after spending so much time on airplanes and in airports throughout my career,” said Hartless. “Polycom is revolutionising the way work gets done and how distributed teams can truly connect with superior voice and video technology that enriches the experience and allows the ‘human element’ to come through. I look forward to working with the Polycom team to usher in a new era for Polycom as a private company.”

Hartless will leverage Polycom’s high quality solutions to connect, share and collaborate with teams around the world.

Background Information

Polycom

Poly is the global communications company that powers authentic human connection and collaboration. Face to face, we sift and sort millions of verbal and non-verbal cues to glean meaning. Poly is finding new ways to inject these cues into audio and video communication to replicate the face to face experience. To build intimacy. To break walls and span distance. To nurture the simplicity and beauty of human connection.