Management
Ramesh Jayaraman serves as President and Chief Executive Officer of Daktronics, bringing more than two decades of global leadership experience across technology-driven industrial sectors, audiovisual, and integrated solutions, as well as global manufacturing and services businesses. He has built his career across Asia Pacific, Europe, and the United States. He has a strong track record of driving transformational change, delivering significant organic growth, and successfully leading organizations through a strategic focus, operational execution, customer-centric innovation, and high-performance team development.
Ramesh most recently served as Senior Vice President and Americas Integration Leader for Bosch Home Comfort. Throughout his career, he has led large-scale businesses and global teams through major strategic shifts, enhancing financial and operational performance while driving enterprise-wide value creation initiatives.
During his tenure at Bosch, Ramesh held several senior leadership roles across the company’s global Energy & Building Technologies portfolio, driving major strategic initiatives across business units. Earlier in his career, he led the Asia Pacific business for Harman Professional Solutions, served as Managing Director for Ariston Thermo Group’s APAC operations, and held a series of commercial, operational, and strategy roles at Tyco/ADT. He began his career in consulting and business analysis before moving into operational leadership.
Known as a relationship-driven, people-first leader, Ramesh believes great teams achieve great things together. His leadership philosophy centers on customer focus, open communication, collaborative decision making, and empowering teams to think big. He is passionate about developing talent and enabling others to grow, a mindset shaped through years of global leadership and his personal commitment to coaching and mentoring.
Ramesh brings a global outlook to Daktronics’ next chapter. He is energized by the opportunity to guide the company’s transformation, expanding how the company defines its impact in the world through experiential and critical communications solutions. He believes in focusing on what matters most, aligning teams around shared priorities, and driving progress through disciplined execution.
Ramesh serves on the Board of Directors for Rain Bird Corporation and participates in several professional and community initiatives. He serves on the advisory council for an international organization helping youths from deeply disadvantaged backgrounds as they prepare to leave their homes and orphanages and enter the world of work.
He considers himself a foodie who enjoys nature, walking, volunteering, his Christian faith, and coaching youth activities. Ramesh enjoys spending time and sharing experiences with his four children. He graduated from the Delhi College of Engineering with a BS in mechanical engineering and earned an MBA from the University of Illinois Chicago.
Howard Atkins is filling the role of CFO and Chief Transformation Officer at Daktronics. Howard is a seasoned financial executive who currently owns and operates a consulting company that helps businesses improve their operating margins and develop/execute company-specific growth strategies.
He is a former Chief Financial Officer of Wells Fargo where he helped successfully lead the bank through the 2008 financial crises and where he organized the acquisition of Wachovia Bank, creating the most prominent coast-to-coast bank in the US at that time.
Previously, he was CFO of New York Life Insurance Company, where he helped identify and acquire non-US insurance organizations as part of NYLife’s international expansion strategy, CFO of Midlantic Bank which successfully completed a top-to-bottom financial restructuring, and Corporate Treasurer of Chase Manhattan Bank where he was responsible for several of that Bank’s markets businesses in the US, Europe and Asia.
Howard has extensive experience as a Board member, having served as a Director of Occidental Petroleum (a large energy exploration and carbon sequester company), Ingram Micro (the world’s largest tech distributor), and Express Scripts (the country’s largest pharmacy benefits manager).