Cox Communications executive vice president and chief technology officer Scott Hatfield will be leaving the company over the next few days after resigning earlier this week.
Cox spokesman David Grabert said the resignation was a “mutual decision” between Hatfield and Cox. Grabert didn’t have a specific date for Hatfield’s departure but said his last day would be sometime this week.
Cox is performing a search for Hatfield’s replacement, but in the meantime, Percy Kirk will shuttle back and forth between Oklahoma, where he is senior vice president and general manager of that region, and Cox’s headquarters in Atlanta.
Hatfield recently took part in a CTO panel at last month’s Cable Show in Los Angeles, as well as a CTO Roundtable discussion with CED .
Last year, Hatfield was named Expo 2010 Program Committee chairman for the SCTE Cable-Tec Expo this October in New Orleans. SCTE President and CEO Mark Dzuban said this morning that his organization is continuing to work with Cox Communications on preparing for Expo. Marv Nelson, the SCTE’s senior vice president of strategic initiatives, is working with Cox to find a replacement for Hatfield.
“Scott has done an outstanding job,” Dzuban said. “We’re getting great support from Cox to be able to identify who the replacement might be, but it’s been such a short interval. Marv is on the lead to get that done, but we’ve had great collaboration with the Cox senior folks.”
Hatfield took over as CTO after Chris Bowick retired a year and a half ago. Upon Bowick’s retirement, Cox realigned the company by combining its engineering and IT groups under Hatfield. Hatfield started out at Cox as its chief information officer in 1996.
Cox splits Clement’s duties, hiring for another position
Last week, Cox told its employees that Dallas Clement’s title was changed from executive vice president and chief strategy and product officer to executive vice president and chief strategy officer.
Light Reading Cable’s Jeff Baumgartner first reported on Hatfield’s resignation and Clement’s new role yesterday afternoon.
With the new title, Clement will be in charge of the long-term vision for the company’s products and services, but Cox is now looking to hire someone to lead the day-to-day product management duties. Clement previously handled both roles for Cox.
“With strategy and product management, we believe it makes the most sense to have those two things separate,” Grabert said. “With Dallas as our EVP and chief strategy officer, he can focus on our vision, where we’re going, the future of our products and services. The product management role will be more of the day-to-day management of the product; things like deploying the product, insuring its functionality and feature set.”
Clement will continue to report to Cox President Pat Esser, as will the person who is hired for day-to-day product management.
“Our business is complicated and very competitive,” Grabert wrote in an e-mail. “Other large companies don’t have strategy and product management together, and it no longer made sense for Cox.”
