Mary T. McDowell

Mary T. McDowell is an American telecommunications executive. At Nokia, she oversaw new product development, and was in charge of its mobile phones, as well as strategy. Before Nokia, she worked at Compaq/Hewlett Packard from 1986 to 2003, where she was at one point in charge of its server division as well as serving as a chief strategist. At Compaq, McDowell grew its ProLiant server business. In 2004, McDowell was in charge of 2,000 employees at Nokia. She described Nokia in 2011 as being "clogged with bureaucracy" and pushed decision-making to local levels to speed up product development. In 2012 she was described as one of ten "disruptive individuals" reshaping the mobile phone industry. In 2016, she was chosen as CEO of Polycom, a firm which makes technology to help humans work together to create content.