A useful way to follow Sowmyanarayan Sampath’s career is to watch where the work gets stuck. A customer wants a different phone plan. A service agent needs an answer buried among products and policies. A business needs its devices to talk to one another. By September 2026, the question had acquired another scale: how to connect the computing infrastructure behind AI. Sampath became Zayo’s chief executive on September 1, succeeding Steve Smith. After years at Verizon, he was moving closer to the physical routes that carry the promises of the digital economy. The cloud, for all its airy branding, has considerable baggage on the ground.
Twelve years, seven jobs
When Sampath left Verizon, he counted his experience in twelve years and seven roles. His farewell emphasized the change from consultant to operator, the work in the field and the colleagues who had taught him. That is a more revealing description than a ladder of promotions. Advising a business and running one produce different kinds of knowledge. The operator eventually meets the consequences of the recommendation.
He joined Verizon in 2014 as senior vice president of business transformation. His work included Network Transformation and OneFiber, initiatives that helped prepare the company’s infrastructure for the next generation of wireless service. He became chief product officer, worked on finance and transformation at Verizon Media, and went on to lead Global Enterprise. As chief revenue officer for Verizon Business, he was responsible for the commercial side of an organization whose customers bought connectivity to keep their own organizations functioning.
In July 2022, he succeeded Tami Erwin as CEO of Verizon Business. By April 2023, he had moved to the Consumer Group. The change meant dealing with a different kind of complexity: households choosing plans, stores explaining offers and customers deciding whether a familiar service was worth its price. Each role supplied another view of the same network.
Business transformation
Chief executive
Chief executive
Chief executive
Kolkata, accounting and the space between teams
Sampath grew up in Kolkata with an emphasis on education, respect and humility. His parents helped finance his education. He studied commerce at St. Xavier’s College, qualified as a Chartered Accountant and earned an MBA at Boston University. Before Verizon, his career included KPMG and Boston Consulting Group, where he became a partner and led global telecom consulting work. His education joined accounting to strategy; his subsequent jobs added the awkward business of getting decisions carried out.
He has a compact phrase for part of the executive’s job: “friction management.” In his telling, that means clarifying responsibilities so work does not remain suspended between people. He also described an escalation rule: colleagues with all the data who remain deadlocked for more than three days should bring him the decision; he will decide within 24 hours. One can see the incentive. A discussion becomes rather more urgent when it might shortly belong to the boss.
“One of my biggest roles is friction management.”
Sowmyanarayan Sampath
A port is a useful place to test a promise
His enterprise years offer an example far removed from the phone shop. Describing work with Associated British Ports in 2022, Sampath explained that a private 5G project began with an ordinary complaint: poor Wi-Fi on site. Verizon Business replaced more than 200 Wi-Fi access points with seven network nodes. The port example made connectivity concrete. An installation had to work in a particular place, for particular tasks.
The customer then began considering real-time analytics, connected devices and machine learning. The sequence matters. A practical problem brought the partners together; other possibilities followed once the connection was in place. In that account, the new applications emerged from fixing an existing irritation. Technology had earned a further conversation.
In another 2022 discussion, Sampath stressed the need for partners across cloud and communications. He urged businesses to understand how 5G could change their workflows. That is an operator’s question: what becomes possible during the working day? A warehouse scanner, a production line or a port offers a firmer answer than an adjective attached to a network.
The operating question
An editorial reading of his enterprise examples, rather than a measured performance model.
The customer gets a pencil
In May 2023, Verizon introduced myPlan. Customers could choose a connectivity plan, add selected perks and change those choices. The offer became available on May 18. Sampath presented it as a response to demand for control and flexibility. Anyone who has tried to extract one wanted feature from a bundle of unwanted ones will recognize the appeal. The customer was being handed a pencil to edit the package.
At an investor conference that month, he described a more individualized approach to buying service. It also gave Verizon flexibility in managing its customer base. The same structure could serve a household making a choice and an operator trying to match an offer to demand. That is the commercial calculation inside customization.
He linked the product changes to field execution: local marketing, a regional market structure and sales incentives. A new plan still required people who could explain and sell it. The May 2023 discussion is useful because it puts the offer beside the operating changes. A company cannot make the buying experience simpler merely by announcing that simplicity has arrived.
A complaint lands on the executive desk
By 2025, Sampath was talking about access from the other direction: how a dissatisfied customer reaches the company. He publicly made himself reachable and discussed customer complaints with interviewer Shep Hyken. His explanation was direct: “Getting feedback is a gift. I want to hear what’s not working for our customers.” The inbox, in this view, contains a rough map of the places where the organization has failed to join up.
He supported giving complicated cases a customer champion who could take ownership and follow through. First-contact resolution remained the aim, but a problem involving several departments could require continuity beyond one call. A customer should not have to become an amateur project manager simply to get an answer.
He also argued for choice among stores, digital channels and telephone support. A usable system allows different people to reach it in different ways. That principle connects the service conversation to myPlan: the company has to accommodate the customer’s preferences in the purchase and in the repair of the relationship afterward.
AI with a human at the other end
Sampath’s interest in AI was already visible in 2023. He wanted Verizon to become a company known for applying the technology. The ambition centered on practical use: helping employees, improving operations and making service easier. It was a useful distinction of responsibility. A telecom operator has a large existing business in which new tools can either reduce the work or add another layer to it.
In 2025, Verizon launched Project 624, named for its June 24 launch date. Sampath described customer care as a major opportunity for AI because agents had to keep so much information in mind: rates, plans, technology and devices. The aim was to move some of that burden into tools while retaining the agent’s ability to understand the person asking for help.
He also described work with Google and an assistant that could handle tasks such as explaining a bill or arranging roaming. When a problem moved to an agent, the history should move with it. In his account of the program, the handoff mattered as much as the first answer. Anyone who has repeated a story after being transferred knows why that small detail deserves a place in a technology strategy.
A student gets a turn at the questions
Some of the more personal episodes in Sampath’s public life involve being willing to learn in rooms where he is the experienced executive. On returning to Boston University for a leadership event, he singled out questions and dinner with students as a highlight. Their views on technology and the future of business interested him. He did not describe the evening solely as an opportunity to dispense advice.
He also appeared in a web interview hosted by Zachary Glatt, then a junior at Millburn High School. In sharing it, Sampath called interactions with younger people opportunities to learn. The local connection gave a student access to an executive whose business reached millions of households. It also gave the executive an interviewer outside the usual circuit.
On a visit to Verizon India, he described returning to the country where he grew up while meeting colleagues in a professional capacity. He highlighted a hackathon involving 1,000 participants working on customer experience and sales. The account joins personal roots to a working interest: what people elsewhere in the organization are figuring out.
His reflections on careers include thinking in three-year chapters. On the Take Command podcast, he discussed karma and the value of steadiness through good and difficult periods. The philosophy asks for effort without a guarantee of reward. For someone managing businesses that are measured constantly, that is an interesting way to keep a longer view.
The next book is built in the ground
Verizon’s filings record that Sampath stepped down from the Consumer role in February 2026 and left after an advisory period in March. His farewell post ended by looking toward a new book. In July, Zayo announced his appointment. Smith would retire as CEO and remain on the board. Sampath’s assignment would include enterprise growth and the connectivity demands accompanying AI.
He inherited expansion commitments already in motion. Before his arrival, Zayo had expanded its supply agreement with Corning to secure a substantial portion of the cable needed for its planned buildout through 2030. The plan called for 15,000 additional route miles, including more than 8,000 miles of new long-haul fiber in collaboration with NVIDIA. These are plans for construction, with materials and execution behind them.
In October 2026, Boston University’s Mehrotra Institute welcomed him to its board. The educational connection continues alongside the new operating job. His career now runs from commerce and accounting through consumer choices to the infrastructure between computing sites. The latest title changes the scale of the work. The practical questions remain recognizable: who needs a connection, what is obstructing it, and who will take responsibility for making it work?