Dell Hires Bain Exec As New Co-COO To ‘Shape The Future’ Of Dell
‘Together Jeff, Chuck and I will shape the future of the company and accelerate the outcomes we can drive for customers,’ says Dell Technologies CEO Michael Dell.
Dell Technologies will have two chief operating officers for the first time with the hiring of Bain & Company’s Anthony Charles “Chuck” Whitten for the newly created position of Co-Chief Operating Officer in a move the company said will drive “Dell’s next phase of growth.”
Whitten, a longtime top advisor for Dell while working at Bain & Company, will report directly to Dell CEO and founder Michael Dell. Dell Technologies’ current Chief Operating Officer Jeff Clarke will become Co-Chief Operating Officer while still keeping his vice chairman role.
“Coming off a record FY21 and first-quarter of FY22, we are growing and our opportunity is growing even faster. Chuck joins the company at a pivotal time to give us greater leadership capacity to cover more ground, assess more opportunities and speed decision making to best serve customers,” Clarke said in a statement today. “As our top advisor, Chuck has been an integral part of the team for a long time working across strategy, transformation and operations. I couldn’t be happier to have him as co-COO to capture big growth opportunities across our portfolio as the world becomes more digital and data driven.”
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Whitten will join Dell from Bain & Company, where he spent the last 22 years. Over the past decade he focused exclusively on the technology sector. Whitten worked alongside Dell’s leadership team in recent years to help shape Dell’s strategy and growth initiatives.
“With technology at the center of the world’s recovery and what’s next, we have tremendous growth opportunity across our core infrastructure and PC businesses and in high-priority areas including hybrid and private cloud, edge, telecom and APEX,” said Michael Dell in a statement. “Together Jeff, Chuck and I will shape the future of the company and accelerate the outcomes we can drive for customers. Chuck’s leadership, energy, knowledge and humanity make him the obvious choice to join our team and strengthen our industry leadership.”
Whitten will become Co-COO effective Aug. 16, upon which he will serve as principal operating officer of Dell, according to a filing by Dell today with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). He could not be reached by press time.
Whitten will resign in July from his positions as Senior Partner and a member of the board of directors of the global management consulting firm Bain & Company, according to the SEC filing.
Whitten began his career at Bain in 1998 and was elected to a partnership in 2010. He has been a member of Bain’s board of directors since 2018.
Dell, the $94 billion Round Rock, Texas-based IT infrastructure and PC giant, is currently transforming itself by selling or spinning off several businesses including VMware, Boomi and RSA to focus on high priority market segments. The company is also pushing a new as-a-service sales motion with its Apex offering.