DENHOLM
Robyn

• 1. Early life
• 2. Career

Robyn M. Denholm is an Australian business executive. In November 2018, Denholm succeeded Elon Musk as chair of Tesla, Inc.

Early life

Denholm was born on 27 May 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 graduated from the University of Sydney with a bachelor's degree in economics, and from the University of New South Wales in 1999 with a master's degree in commerce. Denholm 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 US$17 million in Tesla stock options.

In early-2017, Denholm was appointed as chief operations officer (COO) of Telstra, Australia's largest telecoms company, subsequently becoming chief financial officer (CFO) on 1 October 2018. In November 2018, Denholm gave notice of resignation after only five weeks in the role as a result of stepping into the role of chair of Tesla Inc. Telstra CEO Andy Penn announced that Denholm would end her responsibilities as CFO at Telstra on 6 May 2019.