London-headquartered EXA Infrastructure, the largest dedicated digital infrastructure platform connecting Europe and North America, has appointed Carrie Cushing as chief people officer to lead on talent strategy and culture development across the business. She will be based in London.

Cushing has more than 20 years of experience in HR leadership roles across multiple industry sectors, including software, healthcare, financial services and energy. She joins EXA from General Electric, where she most recently led the human resources function for the GE Digital International business across 60-plus countries.

With a broad range of human resources expertise across transformational change leadership, talent development and management, and international employee relations, Cushing will lead the strategic development of talent management and further cultural development for EXA, which has more than 400 employees across Europe and the US.

Prior to GE, she worked for Baker Hughes (which at the time was backed by GE) in the UK, where she was responsible for global learning strategy. She started her career at Barclays, working for both the domestic and international businesses.

“The quality, commitment and deep expertise of our people is at the heart of EXA’s resolution to be very easy for our customers and partners to do business with,” said Martijn Blanken, chief executive officer of EXA Infrastructure. 

“Carrie has an exceptional track record of nurturing workplace environments that drive meaningful growth and innovation. At EXA we aspire to develop our collective capabilities well beyond the point we ourselves did not even think was possible only a little while ago. Carrie’s appointment underlines how serious we are in achieving that goal.”

“EXA has a closely-knit team that continues to be enhanced by new senior talent, and a growth strategy that puts our people at the heart of how we differentiate, how we service customers and how we get the most out of the vast network assets at our disposal. This is an exciting time for me to be joining the business as we drive this next era of growth,” added Cushing.

Cushing holds an MSc in International HR Management from Cranfield School of Management and a BA in Economics and Business Administration from the University of Kent at Canterbury, UK. She is also a Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development.

Wholly-owned by I Squared Capital, EXA supports 1,500 customers across 103,000 kilometres of fibre network that connects 300 cities. The network features more than 500 Points of Presence (POPs), spanning 31 countries, 14 Tier 3-equivalent data centres and 300 co-location facilities, as well as three wholly-owned transatlantic subsea cables including the lowest latency route between Europe and North America.