Louis D’Ambrosio: Moving On

There are people who just seemed destined for the big-time. They are at the top at what they do. These kinds of talents get recognized and many doors are opened for which other will not have the opportunity to pass through.

This can be said of Louis D’Ambrosio. His academic credentials put him in the exclusive lane of career high fliers. Louis earned his MBA from Harvard Business School and a Bachelor of Science from Pennsylvania State University, Summa cum laude and Valedictorian.

After college he joined IBM and worked there for 16 years. He left IBM in August 2002, by that time Louis was responsible for worldwide sales and marketing for the company’s $12 billion software group. Having reached this high level of work responsibility and experience it was only natural that he would be dealing with companies will multi-billion dollar sales.

Louis next became involved with business communications company Avaya. He was head of Avaya’s $2 billion Global Services business unit composed of 7,000 professionals across the full life-cycle of services, including network consulting, integration, maintenance and managed services. Louis then became President of Global Sales and Marketing.  He finally got the top positions of President and CEO of Avaya in July 2006.

While this would have been a life-time goal or achievement for some; as for Louis he moved on and joined Sears Holdings in February in 2011 as CEO.  This firm operates 2,600 stores in the U.S. and Canada with its Sears and Kmart chains.

This was a challenging job as Sears Holdings was for years experiencing declining sales. As mentioned by the Chairman of Sears, Louis helped Sears become a more customer-focused company. Sales though did not improve and in fact continued to decline. Share price of the company was beginning to rise despite losses.  Due to health issues involving his family Louis decided to step down in February 2012.

It was a short stint at Sears but he had now moved on and it was publicly announced on August 19, 2013 that he will assume the role of Chairman of the Board of Sensus “a leading provider of clean-technology solutions” based in Raleigh, North Carolina.