Ciena Appoints Keri Gilder as Vice President and General Manager for Europe, Middle East and Africa

Ciena^® (NYSE: CIEN) has appointed Keri Gilder as Vice President and General Manager for Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA) to guide Ciena’s customers and partners in the region as they adapt to accommodate high-bandwidth applications and services, such as those needed for data centre interconnect (DCI), cloud-based services and video. Gilder’s focus on business-outcomes will also drive Ciena’s OPⁿnetwork approach in the region; advocating Ciena’s advanced software and networking technologies to facilitate the transformation to open, software-driven networks.

Throughout her career, Gilder has been heavily involved in facilitating mentoring and career development programmes, most recently helping to establish Women @ Ciena, a global internal networking initiative that aims to encourage diversity within Ciena through motivating and inspiring women in the company at all levels and across disciplines.

Francois Locoh-Donou, Chief Operating Officer at Ciena, comments; “Keri’s deep knowledge of the industry and Ciena’s technology combined with a relentless focus on customer experience has gained her respect as a consultant and mentor. She is also a transformational leader; reinforcing the business benefit of a diverse workforce and driving high-performance teams to deliver strong business outcomes for our customers and partners – making her a natural fit for this leadership role.”

“Ciena is focused on helping our service provider and enterprise customers adjust to the pace of change in the ICT industry to meet today’s web-scale demands.  With a great team we can advise and assist customers as they adopt new networking technologies and ensure the transition to open, software-enabled networks is seamless - and profitable. I am looking forward to being a part of Ciena’s success in the region,” stated Keri Gilder, Vice President and General Manager, EMEA at Ciena

Gilder has held several sales leadership roles at Ciena, having joined the company in 2002. Most recently she served as Vice President of Global Account Sales, EMEA. Previously, she served as Vice President, Major Account (CenturyLink) in North America.

Before joining Ciena, Gilder worked in multiple roles for Lucent Technologies and also maintained an S.S.B.I. (Single Scope Background Investigation) security clearance while working for Raytheon as a Network Engineer.

Based in London, Gilder has a Bachelor of Business Administration degree with an emphasis in Management Information Systems (MIS) from New Mexico State University, Six Sigma Green Belt and Dale Carnegie certifications.

About Ciena
Ciena (NYSE: CIEN) is the network specialist. We collaborate with customers worldwide to unlock the strategic potential of their networks and fundamentally change the way they perform and compete. Ciena leverages its deep expertise in packet and optical networking and distributed software automation to deliver solutions in alignment with its OPⁿ architecture for next-generation networks. We enable a high-scale, programmable infrastructure that can be controlled and adapted by network-level applications, and provide open interfaces to coordinate computing, storage and network resources in a unified, virtualized environment. For updates on Ciena news, follow us on Twitter @Ciena or on LinkedIn. Investors are encouraged to review the Investors section of our website at www.ciena.com/investors, where we routinely post press releases, SEC filings, recent news, financial results, and other announcements. From time to time we exclusively post material information to this website along with other disclosure channels that we use.

Note to Ciena Investors
Forward-looking statements. This press release contains certain forward-looking statements based on current expectations, forecasts and assumptions that involve risks and uncertainties. These statements are based on information available to the Company as of the date hereof; and Ciena's actual results could differ materially from those stated or implied, due to risks and uncertainties associated with its business, which include the risk factors disclosed in its Report on Form 10-K, which Ciena filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission on December 21, 2015. Forward-looking statements include statements regarding Ciena's expectations, beliefs, intentions or strategies regarding the future and can be identified by forward-looking words such as "anticipate," "believe," "could," "estimate," "expect," "intend," "may," "should," "will," and "would" or similar words. Ciena assumes no obligation to update the information included in this press release, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise.