Empathy in Action

Tony Bates has led multiple billion dollar companies with a simple ethos of ¿know your customers¿. Tony Bates, CEO of Genesys, leads the company¿s strategy, direction and operations in more than 100 countries, overseeing a global team of more than 5,000 employees. With decades of experience steering B2B and B2C companies through major market transitions and rapid scaling, he is a passionate technologist at heart. Beginning his career in network operations and internet infrastructure, Tony taught himself to code on his daily train commute. Swiftly gaining the business acumen, he advanced into trusted executive roles at some of the world¿s most respected global SaaS companies. Tony led Ciscös Service Provider business and then grew its Enterprise and Commercial division to over $20B in annual revenue and he served as Skype¿s CEO, expanding the business to over 170M connected users. When Microsoft acquired Skype Tony, as president, was responsible for unified communications and then served as EVP of business development and developers. In addition, Tony is on the board of directors at VMWare and eBay.