Steve Alexander

Steve Alexander is Chief Technology Officer at Ciena. He says the company focuses more on people—both members of the Ciena team and the customers they serve—than product. The Ciena story, says its Chief Technology Officer, is about creating the capacity and the connections that enable people to communicate. In 1994 he joined Ciena, a start-up at the time, as one of its first employees. Before rising to CTO, Steve managed teams in a variety of areas at Ciena, including Transport and Switching, Data Networking, and Lightwave Systems. Now he sits on the board of several prominent telecom groups and has won several industry honors, including the IEEE Communications Society Industrial Innovation Award. Steve earned his bachelor’s and master’s degrees in Electrical Engineering from the Georgia Institute of Technology. He honed his skills and launched his career at MIT’s Lincoln Laboratory, which develops advanced technologies for the U.S. Department of Defense.