[7] Zafirovski spent 24 years with General Electric, starting in 1975, where he went through GE's Jack Welch-style leadership training programs and served in various management positions.

His success in the PCS division among other achievements at Motorola, seemed to make him a perfect candidate for the CEO position but the title went to Edward Zander on January 5, 2004.

[citation needed] When Zafirovski was chosen to head up Nortel Networks in early October, Motorola filed a suit against him, alleging that his new position would break the terms of the non-disclosure agreement he had signed.

[2] Zafirovski announced he was stepping down as CEO of Nortel on August 10, 2009, following the sale of the company's CDMA and LTE businesses to Ericsson as part of a bankruptcy restructuring process.

[10][11] During Zafirovski's entire career at Nortel his email and company profile were compromised by hackers, most likely working for the Chinese Government.