/EINPresswire.com/ -- TORONTO, ON--(Marketwired - Jul 28, 2017) - MEF is pleased to announce the results of the 2017-2018 Board of Directors elections at the MEF Annual Members Meeting in Toronto.

MEF Board of Directors

• New Board members include:
  • Shawn Hakl, VP Product and New Business Innovation, Verizon
  • Kevin O'Toole, Senior VP, Product Management, Comcast Business
  • Gabriel Kerner, VP Network Products and Offerings, Amdocs Technology
  • Rami Yaron, VP, Strategy & Business Development, Telco Systems
• Re-elected Board members include:
  • Eric Puetz, Director, Standards and Industry Alliances, AT&T Labs
  • Nan Chen, Executive Vice Chairman, CENX
  • Scott Mansfield, Standardization Researcher, Development Unit Network Products, Ericsson
  • Ralph Santitoro, Head of SDN/NFV Solutions Practice, Fujitsu Network Communications
  • Shahar Steiff, AVP New Technology, PCCW Global
  • Alessandro Talotta, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Sparkle
  • Michael Strople, President Enterprise Networks, Zayo Group

Appointed Officers

• Nan Chen, President
• Mike Strople, Chairman
• Kevin Vachon, Chief Operating Officer
• Pascal Menezes, Chief Technology Officer
• Dan Pitt, Senior Vice President
• Eric Puetz, Treasurer
• Scott Mansfield, Secretary

Appointed Advisory Director

• Huiling Zhao, Director of China Telecom Cloud Research Center

The new Board will focus on expanding MEF's growing community of service providers, technology vendors, and other companies that are committed to driving creation of a global ecosystem of automated networks that deliver agile, assured, and orchestrated services. The Board will guide an ambitious work plan that will enable service providers to achieve a faster time-to-market and time-to-revenue for leading-edge services that provide an on-demand, cloud-centric experience with user and application-directed control over network resources and service capabilities.

"We are thrilled to have these prominent and accomplished senior executives joining the Board, augmenting an experienced team of professionals who are spearheading industry transformation," said Nan Chen, President of MEF. "I personally want to thank our outgoing Board members, Vincent Alesi from Verizon, Allan Langfield from Comcast, Raghu Ranganathan from Ciena, and Lance Hassan from Carrier Ethernet Academy, for their outstanding contributions in helping lead MEF's work towards realizing the Third Network vision."

About MEF
An industry association of 210+ member companies, MEF is enabling service providers to create a global ecosystem of networks that deliver agile, assured, and orchestrated services for the digital economy and hyper-connected world. These services provide an on-demand, cloud-centric experience with user and application-directed control over network resources and service capabilities. They are delivered over automated, virtualized, and interconnected networks powered by LSO (Lifecycle Service Orchestration), SDN, and NFV. MEF produces LSO frameworks, open LSO APIs, software-driven reference implementations, service specifications, and certification programs. MEF's work will enable automated delivery of standardized wavelength, Carrier Ethernet, IP, SD-WAN, and Layer 4-7 services across multiple provider networks. For more information: https://mef.net/.

MEF is the host of the MEF17 (www.MEF17.com) global networking event that will be held 13-16 November 2017 in Orlando, Florida, USA.