Today Rosetta Stone announced that its long time CEO Tom Adams has proposed the board a transition plan with him changing the position from President and CEO to Chairman of the Board of Directors. Champion Scott Partners, an executive search firm is assigned to conduct the search for a new CEO by Rosetta Stone.
The transition will take place as soon as the company has found a suitable successor and Tom Adams will replace outgoing Laurence Franklin as Chairman at this point.
During his eight year tenure as CEO, Rosetta Stone’s revenue grew from from $10 million in 2002 to $259 million in 2010.
Rosetta Stone is currently redefining its products from CD-Rom based courses to cloud based learning with community aspect and live coaching and recently launched Rosetta Stone Experience Stores and Kiosks that enable potential customers to test the products similar to Apple Stores.
“While I am very proud of Rosetta Stone’s tremendous accomplishments over the last nine years I believe that even greater opportunities lie ahead as we endeavor to extend our leadership in international markets, and as the company evolves from the CD-ROM based desktop software model to digital services, combining effective self-study with live online conversational coaching in a multi-device platform.”
said Tom Adams.
It will be interesting to see if Rosetta Stone will choose a CEO that is going to take on competitors like Livemocha and busuu more aggressively than Tom Adams did up to now.
Source: Rosetta Stone
