Richard S. Cremona

Richard S. Cremona (Rich) was born and raised in the Cleveland, Ohio area. He attended the Ohio State University, Graduating in 1979 with a Bachelors Degree in Communications and Business.

He joined the Bell System / AT&T in 1980. Since beginning his professional career, Cremona held a wide variety of Bell System / AT&T assignments including, Account Executive, Sales Manager, Area Customer Services Manager, General Manager, Human Resources Vice President and Sales Vice President. He has worked in a number of states including Ohio, New Jersey, Maryland, Missouri and Kansas.

From 1991 to 1993, Cremona was International Development Director for AT&T. In this capacity, he supported AT&T’s international product businesses, and traveled extensively throughout the world, working in 22 countries.

In 1997, as part of the restructure of AT&T, Cremona joined the newly established Lucent Technologies. He was General Manager-National Accounts, responsible for Lucents’s (formerly AT&T’s) largest advanced product and applications customers in the central part of the country. The five Branches that he was responsible for served approximately 1,800 clients and generated over $200 million in profitable revenue for AT&T and Lucent Technologies. In 1998, Cremona was appointed Field Services Vice President for Lucent’s Central and Western Regions. He was responsible for leading a services force of 4,600 installation, maintenance and programming personnel that served Lucent’s advanced telecommunications and data networking customers across the western half of the United States.

In 1999, Cremona was appointed Region Sales Vice President for Lucent’s Midwest Region. His organization sold Lucent’s advanced telecommunication products, applications, services and software offers in voice, video, data networking and Internet technologies. He was responsible for generating over $900 million in profitable revenue across the Midwest Region.

In 2000, Cremona left Lucent to join Sprint PCS as its President of Business Sales. In that capacity, he was accountable for Sprint PCS’ combined direct and indirect business sales distribution force that sells advanced wireless voice and data technologies to business clients, nationwide. His 1500 person sales force was responsible for delivering over 2.6 billion dollars in profitable revenue to Sprint. He also led the company’s wireless strategic alliances.

In 2003, Cremona was recruited away from Sprint to join McLeodUSA, a large Midwest telecommunications firm. He was member of the five-person executive leadership team, while serving as Executive Vice President for Strategic Sales (Fortune 1000 / Private 400 companies). Recently, Cremona joined Openwave, a leading software solutions provider of wireless data infrastructure and applications. He is Vice President of Sales for several of Openwave's largest telecommunications carrier customers.

Throughout his career, Cremona has received numerous sales, sales management, customer service and employee leadership awards. He and his family reside in the St. Louis, Missouri area.

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