LINTHICUM, Md. -- Ciena Corporation (NASDAQ: CIEN), the network specialist, today announced that Rick Dodd has joined the company as Senior Vice President, Global Marketing, reporting directly to President and CEO Gary Smith. In this role, Mr. Dodd will oversee the field, product, solutions and corporate marketing organizations and provide strategic support to Ciena's global field operations and global products group.

With nearly 20 years working with innovative networking firms, Mr. Dodd was most recently at Infinera, where he served as Vice President of Corporate Marketing and earlier as Vice President of Product Marketing. Prior to that, Mr. Dodd was an Associate Partner at venture capital firm Kleiner, Perkins, Caufield and Byers, where he was focused on networking and semiconductor startups. Earlier, Mr. Dodd was Director of Strategic Marketing at Ciena, which he joined through the company's acquisition of Lightera Networks in 1999. He was also previously in product management at Cisco Systems and held engineering and sales roles at WilTel.

"With his deep experience and industry knowledge, we expect that Rick will play an integral role in further refining Ciena's value proposition and ensuring that our brand and unique positioning are effectively conveyed to the market and our customers," said Mr. Smith. "We look forward to his participation in leveraging our current momentum to continue building Ciena as a global leader."

Ciena Corp. (NYSE: CIEN)