Transitioning Red Hat’s Operational and IT leadership

Today, we are sharing news that Carolyn Nash, Red Hat’s senior vice president and chief operating officer (COO), will retire after a 35-year career spanning numerous leadership positions and more than eight years with Red Hat. Bobby Leibrock will step into a combined role of senior vice president, chief operating officer and chief financial officer, effective immediately. Carolyn will remain with Red Hat in an advisory capacity through June 2025 to assist with the transition. As part of this move, Marco Bill has been named senior vice president and chief information officer, reporting to Bobby. 

Since joining in 2016, Carolyn held several key leadership roles at Red Hat, including senior vice president and chief financial officer, and vice president of Global Finance Transformation and Operations. Prior to that, Nash collaborated with the Products and Technologies and Marketing organizations, helping align financial investments to crucial business objectives.

In all of her leadership roles, her hallmark was a vision that brought people, processes and strategy together to drive transformative initiatives and meaningful change. Carolyn has strengthened business controls and risk management while simplifying and automating processes to drive greater efficiency and championing initiatives that set us up for long-term success. Post-retirement, Carolyn will dedicate much of her time to the non profit sector.

Bobby joined Red Hat in 2022 as senior vice president and chief financial officer overseeing the accounting, finance and planning, sales operations, and deal management functions. He previously spent more than 19 years at IBM, holding various roles across the CFO organization with most of that time focused on the software business. Most notably, he was a key member of the leadership team that drove IBM’s acquisition of Red Hat, responsible for the overall project office, finance and operations functions, and driving offering synergies.

Marco has been with Red Hat for nearly 20 years, holding a variety of leadership roles during that time. Most recently, he served as senior vice president of Core Business Platforms, leading the internal transformation of Red Hat's IT application landscape. He led the work to modernize the CRM solution into an end-to-end Sales Cloud solution, making it easier for Red Hatters to do their jobs and better support customer needs. He also held roles in Global Customer Success, Customer Engagement & Experience and Global Support Services.

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Carolyn, Bobby and Marco, along with Matt Hicks, Red Hat’s president and CEO, added these statements on today’s announcement:

Carolyn Nash:

“Working at Red Hat and leading the Operations team has been one of the highlights of my career. I’m so proud of what we’ve accomplished by enabling customer success and ensuring Red Hatters can be effective and efficient in their jobs. As good as our past has been, I’m confident Bobby and Marco, along with our team, will help lead us to new heights.”

Bobby Leibrock:

“I’m humbled and excited to take on this new role, and I appreciate everything Carolyn has done for Red Hat and, on a personal level, for me since I joined the company. Our customers expect market-leading products and services, our partners rely on our collaborative spirit and technical excellence, and the market demands agility and flawless execution. I fully expect my team to do their best work to unlock new opportunities for our 20,000 associates so that they can do their best work, and together we will push to realize even greater successes in 2025 and beyond.” 

Marco Bill:

“This is a fantastic time to be a Red Hatter, and I’m honored to guide the team that will simplify our IT landscape, break down barriers, and execute with speed so that our business peers can deliver on Red Hat’s promise to customers and the marketplace. We’ll achieve that by doing what we’ve always done over the past 30-plus years – using our open source approach to collaborate and co-innovate with each other, the communities we’re in, and customers we serve to reach even greater levels of success.”

Matt Hicks:

“I greatly appreciate everything that Carolyn has done for Red Hat, driving real business value through cross-functional collaboration and bringing a people-first approach to leading. Bobby has proven himself a strong leader with a clear vision aligned with our strategy and deep expertise that will help take Red Hat to the next level. As a long-time Red Hatter, Marco knows what it takes to stay ahead of the changing industry and ensure our infrastructure can support our internal and external customers' needs. The opportunity has never been greater for open source technology and for Red Hat, and I’m confident that these leaders can help accelerate Red Hat’s mission to help our customers take advantage of open source innovation while helping us more readily adapt to dynamic market conditions.”