Robyn Denholm


Robyn M. Denholm, is an Australian business executive. She succeeded Elon Musk as chairman of Tesla, Inc. in November 2018.

Early life

Denholm was born on May 27, 1963 in Milperra, New South Wales. She was raised there, where her parents owned a service station. Working at her parents' service station, Denholm handled the financial accounts, repaired cars, pumped petrol and became interested in cars.
Denholm received a bachelor's degree in economics from the University of Sydney, and a master's degree in commerce from the University of New South Wales in 1999. She is a member of Institute of Chartered Accountants in Australia and New Zealand.

Career

After graduating, Denholm worked in accountancy for Arthur Andersen in Sydney. This was followed by seven years at Toyota Australia. Denholm worked at the IT companies Sun Microsystems, and then Juniper Networks for nine years in finance and operations roles, rising to chief financial officer of Juniper. In 2014, Denholm became a non-executive director of Tesla, Inc. In the following four years as a non-executive director of Tesla, including as chair of the audit committee, Denholm received $17 million in Tesla stock options.
In early-2017, Denholm was appointed as chief operations officer of Telstra, Australia's largest telecoms company, subsequently becoming chief financial officer on 1 October 2018. Denholm resigned after only 5 weeks in the role and ended her responsibilities on 6 May 2019.
In November 2018 Denholm became chairman of Tesla, with a plan to transition to full-time within six months.