Tony Bates

Mr. Bates serves as Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Genesys Cloud Services, Inc., where he has worked since May 2019 leading the company’s strategy, direction, and operations in more than 100 countries and overseeing a global team of more than 6,000 employees. 

Previously, Mr. Bates served as the Vice Chairman of the Board  of Social Capital LP from 2017 to 2019 and CEO of Growth Equity of Social Capital from 2018-2019, President of GoPro Inc. from 2014 to 2016, and CEO of Skype Inc. from October 2010 to May 2011. While at Skype, he was responsible for expanding the business to over 170 million connected users. Once Skype was acquired by Microsoft, he became President where he was responsible for unified communications before serving as Executive Vice President of business development and developers from May 2011 to March 2014. Prior to Skype, Mr. Bates served as Senior Vice President at Cisco from May 1996 to September 2010 where he led Cisco’s Service Provider business, growing its enterprise and commercial division to more than $20 billion in annual revenue.

A passionate technologist at heart, Mr. Bates began his career in network operations and internet infrastructure, teaching himself to code as a network operator at the University London Computer Centre (ULCC) and quickly gaining the business acumen to advance into trusted executive roles at some of the world’s most respected global SaaS companies.

Mr. Bates also served as a member of the board of directors at VMWare, eBay, GoPro and SiriusXM.