Vantage Data Centers Appoints New CPO and COO for AI Growth

Vantage Data Centers is strengthening its leadership team as it expands hyperscale data centre campuses to meet rising demand for cloud and AI workloads.

The company has appointed Emma Jeffries as Global Chief People Officer and Michael Fränkle as Chief Operating Officer for Europe, the Middle East and Africa.

The appointments come with the aim to scale infrastructure, operations and workforce capability.

Emma, the company's new CPO, will be based in Denver leading global human resources. This includes talent acquisition, leadership development, organisational design and total rewards, meaning compensation and benefits.

She will report to Sureel Choksi, President and CEO, focusing on building the workforce and culture required to support increasingly complex data centre deployments.

Michael will operate from Frankfurt, overseeing operations, reliability engineering and customer experience across Europe and Africa. Reliability engineering ensures systems perform consistently and without failure.

Reporting to David Howson, President for the region, Michael will concentrate on operational performance and service consistency across Vantage’s growing footprint.

Leadership to support hyperscale growth

Both hires will be central to Vantage's ability to deliver hyperscale capacity.

“Emma is a proven leader at the intersection of culture, talent and scale,” says Sureel Choksi, President and Chief Executive Officer at Vantage Data Centers.

“Her experience building high-performing global teams and leading transformation across complex enterprises will help us strengthen our operating model as we grow and continue attracting the specialised talent our customers rely on.”

“Michael brings decades of experience running and modernising mission-critical infrastructure,” Sureel adds.

“As we expand across EMEA, his disciplined approach to operations will be key to delivering the reliability, consistency and customer experience required for fast-growing AI and cloud workloads.”

Building teams for complex infrastructure

Emma is joining Vantage with experience in scaling global organisations.

At ATOMS, formerly City Storage Systems, she built a people function to support international expansion.

Before that, she served as Executive Vice President and Chief Human Resources Officer at Iron Mountain, where she led strategy for more than 25,000 employees across 60 countries.

Her work included mergers and acquisitions integration and organisational redesign, meaning restructuring teams and workflows to improve efficiency.

These abilities are relevant for data centre operators expanding into new regions and integrating new facilities.

“Vantage is scaling at an important moment for digital infrastructure,” says Emma Jeffries, global chief people officer at Vantage Data Centers.

“I look forward to partnering across the business to strengthen leadership development, support high-impact teams and evolve the employee experience as we grow to meet customer demand.”

Operational focus across EMEA footprint

Michael brings more than 25 years of experience across telecoms and digital infrastructure. His background includes leadership roles at Tele Columbus AG, TDC Group, M-net Telekommunikations GmbH and Telefónica o2.

In these positions, he led network, technology and operations teams while improving service quality and platform reliability. His experience in modernising national networks translates into managing large-scale data centre environments.

“EMEA is a critical growth region for Vantage, and my focus is on our customers’ success,” says Michael Fränkle, Chief Operating Officer, EMEA at Vantage Data Centers.

“My priority is to partner closely with customers to deliver the reliability, transparency and responsiveness they need, helping them expand AI and cloud services with confidence as our platform grows across Europe and Africa.”

The two appointments highlight how data centre providers are combining infrastructure investment with leadership capability to support global expansion and the growing demands of AI-driven workloads.