ARLINGTON, VA.— PBS President/CEO Paula Kerger has announced the appointment of Mario Vecchi as the network's new chief technology officer.
Vecchi will report directly to PBS Chief Operating Officer Michael Jones and serve as a member of PBS’ senior leadership team. Effective Jan. 27, 2014, he replaces John McCoskey, PBS’s head of technology for six years, who has accepted a position as executive vice president and chief technology officer at the Motion Picture Association of America.
In his new role, Vecchi will oversee 120 full-time staff members in distribution operations and engineering, media management, interconnection engineering, information technology, Web and new media applications/systems, as well as technology strategy and planning.
Vecchi is currently president of P&A Development, Inc., a development and consulting firm for new products and new businesses. From 2007-2011, he served as president of Apex Technologies, a company he created within the Grupo Ferre Rangel consortium that integrated IT operations and product development.
Prior to GFR, Vecchi served as senior vice president of AOL Global Technologies, senior vice president of AOL Services Development and vice president of AOL Consumer Electronics/Broadband Development.
During his tenure at Time Warner Cable, Vecchi co-founded Road Runner, the company’s pioneering cable modem online service, as senior vice president/chief technical officer, Road Runner Group. He began his work at Time Warner as vice president of network engineering.
Earlier in his career, Vecchi served as director of applied research at Bell Communications Research, founder of Xynertek CA,and head of the semiconductors laboratory at the Instituto Venezolano de Investigaciones Cientificas and as chairman of the Electrical Engineering Department at the Universidad Metropolitana in Caracas. He was also the co-inventor of the simulated annealing algorithm at the IBM Watson Research Center.
Vecchi is a senior member of the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers and a member of the Society of Cable Telecommunications Engineers.
