Patricia Russo (born in 1953, in Trenton, New Jersey) is the current chief executive officer of Alcatel-Lucent, one of the worl's largest communication equipment manufacturers. Lucent was a spin-off from AT&T of its Systems and Technology units (AT&T Technologies, Inc., the former Western Electric), and the manufacturing and research and development operations, including Bell Laboratories. On April 2, 2006 it was announced that Russo would assume the CEO role of a new combined company resulting from the merger of the French communications company Alcatel and Lucent. This merger became effective on December 1st 2006. When Russo became the CEO of the combined company, Serge Tchuruk, the former CEO of Alcatel, remained as Chairman.