Telstra CIO Erez Yarkoni to depart in October

Telstra’s CIO, Erez Yarkoni is departing the telco in October to move back to the United States.

Erez’s wife, Charlotte Yarkoni, is also leaving her position as president of Telstra Software Group, a Telstra spokesperson confirmed. Charlotte is also the co-founder of Telstra’s startup accelerator muru-D.

Erez Yarkoni moved across to the CIO role last February from his position as executive director of cloud, replacing Patrick Eltridge.

The Telstra spokesperson said after developing and leading the telco’s refreshed IT strategy and realigning the IT operating model, Erez had made the decision to move permanently back to the US to join his family.

“He departs Telstra with a clear roadmap for us to execute and deliver on our vision to become a world-class technology provider,” the spokesperson said.

“Erez will be in his role until October 2016 to ensure a smooth transition of his leadership. A replacement will be announced closer to this time,” they added.

Erez was appointed as cloud director at Telstra in October 2013 with responsibility for cloud across in Australia and overseas. He has continued to lead this function as CIO.

Before Telstra, Yarkoni was division president at software firm Amdocs, and prior to that spent five years at T-Mobile USA as CIO.

Charlotte has also been with the telco since March 2013, splitting her time between Sydney and Seattle in the United States. She was previously senior VP, cloud services at VMware in the US.