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| Samsung Electronics' Seocho office in Seoul. / Korea Times file |
By Baek Byung-yeul
Having a good representation of hardworking and young leaders in big organizations like Samsung Electronics is essential because they constantly bring passion, enthusiasm and even optimism to work.
In a statement, Samsung Electronics said it has promoted 162 executives including 14 senior executives who rose to the rank of senior executive vice president.
The number of promoted executives increased compared to the 2018 reshuffle in which 158 climbed the ranks, but 59 less than the 2017 personnel changes which promoted 221.
Samsung highlighted it gave extra credit for young talent. "Through the reshuffle, Samsung has promoted young leaders who are full of potential and have achieved excellent business performance in a bid to increase our future CEO candidate pool," the press release said.
The key focus was how these young executives can help the tech firm keep the growth momentum alive amid growing challenges because it's been asked to better handle the rise of Chinese rivals and narrow the gap with F.A.N.G. (Facebook, Amazon, Netflix and Google) companies in the race for the development of "something next."
The statement added newly-promoted younger executives were mostly from its core businesses, a demonstration of its willingness to support them. Samsung is the world's largest supplier of computer memory chips and televisions.
The youngest senior executive vice president is Choi Won-joon. The 50-year-old led Samsung's flagship R&D team in the mobile communications division and helped the company become the world's first device maker to commercialize 5G network-enabled smartphones in 2019. Plus, Choi Yong-hoon, a display technology expert and head LED development group, became a new senior executive vice president of the company's visual display division, which supervises the TV business.
Samsung officials said these promoted are ideally-positioned to understand next-generation trends and challenge assumptions. Additionally, they are fast-learners and are technologically adept.
Samsung elevated nine foreign and female executives.
Pranav Mistry, chief of Samsung Research America leader of think tank team of Samsung Research America, which entirely handles Samsung's strategies in exploring its next growth engines, was moved up to senior vice president thanks to his contribution to help Samsung get better hands in fifth-generation (5G) and artificial intelligence (AI) technologies. Mathieu Apotheker became the new vice president of business management and support of Samsung Electronics.
"Mistry contributed Samsung to secure core technologies for robotics and pushed forward to develop an AI technology-based service. Apotheker is a seasoned M&A expert and contributed to the company by assessing possible acquisitions of companies specialized in emerging technologies such as 5G and AI," the firm said.
Ahn Soo-jin became its semiconductor business' first female senior vice president. Ahn is one of the two female executives who were promoted to senior vice president positions. The newly promoted SVP was responsible for the development of the firms' sixth-generation V-NAND flash chips, which has the industry's fastest data transfer rate by using 3D memory technology to stack memory cells vertically in multiple layers.
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