Meet Channel Futures’ Top 20 EMEA Channel Leaders for 2023
See who made Channel Futures' Channel Leaders list for Europe, the Middle East and Africa in 2023.
![2023 EMEA Channel Leaders 2023 EMEA Channel Leaders](https://eu-images.contentstack.com/v3/assets/blt10e444bce2d36aa8/bltf9d41d7016a30cfa/6537c25e30b08a885240398f/2023-EMEA-Channel-Leaders.jpg?width=700&auto=webp&quality=80&disable=upscale)
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Name: Sam Callaghan
Job Title: VP of EMEA Sales at ConnectWise
Tenure in Role: 1 year, 8 months
Responsibilities: Responsible for leading the EMEA sales team, helping translate the US business into the UK and EMEA markets
Previous Experience: SAS, Autotask
Key Accomplishment: Played a critical role in driving the growth of ConnectWise’s IT Nation outside of North America.
What Makes Him a Leader: Continually motivates both his team and partners to ensure they.re moving towards greater success.
Name: Sean Collins
Job Title: VP of EMEA channels and inside sales at Extreme Networks
Tenure in Role: 2 years
Responsibilities: Leading the EMEA teams through a “period of evolution” for Extreme as the firm grows and develops its channel base.
Previous Experience: Seventeen years at Cisco before moving to Extreme Networks.
Key Accomplishment in Role: Driving Extreme’s partner-led business across EMEA, accounting for a scalable growth engine in five regions. Extreme’s top 100 partners have grown 30% and the firm now provides better support to new partners with an inside sales organization.
What Makes Him a Leader: Collins’ ambition is to build and inspire the leadership journey for the next generation of salespeople entering the business. “Be candid with feedback, share personal experience, and recognise the smallest success in changing for the future.”
Name: Paul Eccleston
Job Title: SVP, EMEA, Exclusive Networks
Tenure in Role: 2 months
Responsibilities: Leading the EMEA team and organisation; continuing to evolve, transform and further scale the EMEA business. Member of Exclusive Networks executive committee.
Previous Experience: Founded Nuvias in 2015, leadership roles at Computacenter, SCC, SDG, Tech Data
Key Accomplishment: Overseeing strong performance across the region in H1 23 with year-on-year sales up 19% and profitability up by 27%. As of the end of June, the EMEA region accounted for 78% of Exclusive’s global sales.
What Makes Him a Leader: An entrepreneurial business leader, Eccleston says his leadership style is authentic with a determination to realise the true potential from the team around him.
Name: Emily Fallon
Job Title: Regional VP international channel marketing & partner programs, RingCentral
Tenure in Role: 6 years
Responsibilities: Dedicated to supporting and empowering international partners and the channel team to achieve their business goals and unlock their true potential.
Previous Experience: Computerlinks, Arrow, Check Point
Key Accomplishment: Instrumental in building the RingCentral partner program and overall company success in regions outside North America over her six-year tenure, with steady growth in both revenue and partner engagement. In Q3 of 2022, the channel saw a record number of quarterly leads generated and were part of over 60% of $1 million+ TCV deals. In Q4 of 2022, worldwide channel leads increased by 30% year over year, and the company saw almost triple the number of international $1 million+ TCV deals versus the prior year.
What Makes Her a Leader: Fallon guides her team to consistently deliver results quarter after quarter. She demonstrates her knowledge, experience, and expertise of the nuances of the channel to develop programs and partnerships that continually evolve in this ever-changing industry landscape.
Name: Tim Griffin
Job Title: CEO, Exertis IT
Tenure in Role: 10 months
Responsibilities: End-to-end business management of Exertis
Previous Experience: Dell Technologies, NCR, BBC
Key Accomplishment: Completed more than 15 acquisitions and doubled the size of DCC Technology, now approaching £6 billion ($7.3 billion) and in 21 countries.
What Makes Him a Leader: Studying psychology and business, says Griffin.
Name: Justin Griffiths
Job Title: Managing director at Infinigate UK
Tenure in Role: 3 years
Responsibilities: Responsible for a team of 200 cybersecurity and networking professionals, driving revenue growth through the IT channel, developing Infinigate’s network of vendor solutions and technologies.
Previous Experience: CMS Distribution, Insight
Key Accomplishment: Spearheaded the expansion of Infinigate UK following the merger of three disruptive distribution companies, making it one of largest leading security VADs in EMEA.
What Makes Him a Leader: Thirty years of IT industry experience, understanding of all things channel, from sales and marketing to senior level negotiation and supplier management.
Name: Thomas John
Job Title: VP partners EMEA & international, Five9
Tenure in Role: 2 years
Responsibilities: Leads strategy for Five9’s EMEA and international regions, ensuring top partners in the industry are signed up, onboarded, enabled and sustained.
Previous Experience: A 23-year track record in technology and communications. More recently John has been a subject matter expert in AI, digital migration and journey.
Key Accomplishment: Focused on EMEA, John describes the Five9 partner ecosystem as “a balanced, powerful and successful route to market.” Globally today, 80% of deals done with Five9 have a partner attachment.
What Makes Him a Leader: John believes in servant leadership, and that a true leader should not be measured by how many followers they amass, but more by how many leaders they have helped create.
Name: Greg Jones
Job Title: VP of business development, EMEA, Kaseya
Tenure in Role: 1 year, 2 months
Responsibilities: Responsible for expanding and driving the success of Kaseya’s partner program and managed service provider (MSP) ecosystem across EMEA.
Previous Experience: Aabyss (MSP), Liverpool City Council. Plus, current advisory and executive roles at the Channel Executive Council, CompTIA and Alder Hey Children’s Hospital Charity.
Key Accomplishment: Overseeing and deploying the rollout of Kaseya’s revamped partner program, driving record EMEA channel partner growth – currently growing at over 30%. Help and support with sales/marketing and increasing business operation maturity with Kaseya’s partner base in EMEA.
What Makes Him a Leader: Jones has dedicated himself to supporting the European MSP community and he plays a pivotal role in intensifying Kaseya’s partner program in the region.
Name: Aleksandra Lubavs
Job Title: VP, Europe Commercial and Channel Business, Cloud Software Group, Citrix
Tenure in Role: 10 months, since the group’s inception in January 2023
Responsibilities: Responsible for go-to-market sales, partner management, business development and technical teams to drive European commercial and channel business for the Citrix, NetScaler and Tibco business units of Cloud Software Group.
Previous Experience: More than 20 years of experience in the financial self-service technology industry in sales and marketing leadership roles in both North America and EMEA for Diebold, International (now Diebold Nixdorf), and NCR
Key Accomplishment: In 2023 Lubavs’ newly formed team pulled together to deliver against its objectives. She says the team outperformed its targets while settling into a new structure.
What Makes Her a Leader: Experience in strategic development of both well established and new markets, building and leading teams during and through complex transformations.
Name: Neil Macdonald
Job Title: HP channel director UK & Ireland at HP Inc.
Tenure in Role: 2 years
Responsibilities: Responsible for the go-to-market strategy and performance of HP’s print, personal systems, services and solutions in the UK and Ireland markets. Leads the commercial, consumer and distribution sales teams.
Previous Experience: Nikon and Sony
Key accomplishments: Prioritised the development of HP’s people to make it easier for them to be successful and have impact. Actively worked on making HP simpler to engage and deal with from a customer and partner point of view, and shifted the mindset of teams, and the critical relationships of partners, to focus on growth and new business.
What Makes Him a Leader: Focused on team and helping leaders across all levels at HP to have an impact. Macdonald also prioritises diversity and inclusion at HP and aims to ensure the viewpoints of the company are reflective and representative of society. His ambition is to drive the business to be a leader in the industry through strategic partnerships in the channel.
Name: Emily Masterton
Job Title: Interim EMEA channel chief and regional VP, EMEA channel sales, 8X8
Tenure in Role: 1 month as interim EMEA channel chief, 2 years 10 months as regional VP, EMEA channel sales
Responsibilities: Overseeing all channel relationships, ensuring 8×8 is meeting what channel companies need and ensuring all relevant targets are being met.
Previous Experience: Atos, Unify, Oak Telecom
Key Accomplishment: Ensured 8×8’s partner programme, Elevate, evolved to meet partner demands. She helped take a new version to market, that evolved from one based on financials to one that understood holistic challenges of operating in the channel. Elevate now measures bookings, levelling up skills/certifications, and customer acquisitions/expansion, giving it an emphasis on longer-term relationships.
What Makes Her a Leader: When Keith Jackson announced he was leaving 8×8 as EMEA channel chief recently, Masterton stepped up, continuing to work with clients and partners to ensure needs are met.
Name: Sonya Mathieu
Job Title: Senior director, partners, NetApp UKI
Tenure in Role: 10 months
Responsibilities: Leading NetApp’s enablement, engagement and execution strategies for channel, distribution and GSI.
Previous Experience: Joined NetApp from Dell Technologies UK where she was director of data protection and cyber resilience.
Key Accomplishment: Mathieu is tasked with transforming NetApp’s UKI partner organization, both in alignment and focus. Her impact has led to NetApp increasing its market share, moving into the IDC #2 position last quarter.
What Makes Her a Leader: Mathieu’s experience in leadership has concentrated around transformation. She is focused on taking teams on a journey from legacy approaches, adopting modern methods to maximise new market opportunities.
Name: Harald Nuij
Job Title: CEO, Pax8 EMEA
Tenure in Role: 1 year, 2 months
Responsibilities: Nuij leads the overall operations and corporate decision-making for in Pax8 EMEA.
Previous Experience: Alpha International and ALSO. Nuij was also a managing partner at Resello, which was acquired by Pax8 in July 2021.
Key Accomplishment: Doubling the number of Pax8 active partners, expanding Pax8’s operations to more than 30 European countries.
What Makes Him a Leader: Nuij says he’s dedicated to bringing the best localised support in cloud services to every MSP and service provider in Europe.
Name: Michael O’Hara
Job Title: Group Managing Director, DataSolutions
Tenure in Role: 23 years
Responsibilities: An accountant by trade, O’Hara is responsible for ensuring the company is growing from a revenue perspective. He also takes a lead role in engaging with vendors and partners.
Previous Experience: RSM Farrell Grant Sparks
Key Accomplishment: Last year DataSolutions increased group revenues by 29%, hitting £109 million ($133.6 million) for the year ending March 2023. The figures are supported by growth across two key divisions of the business: cybersecurity and cloud. O’Hara is also co-founder, and Membership Ambassador of Techies Go Green, with 400 businesses from across the UK and Ireland IT/channel that are committed to decarbonising their businesses.
What Makes Him a Leader: O’Hara says a leader allows people to thrive and helps to develop their skills. The average tenure of a DataSolutions employee is 10 years. He says people stay with the distributor because they develop their skills in an environment where people want to work hard toward the same goal.
Name: Anna Otterberg
Job Title: IT channel director, Secure Power Division, Northern Europe, Schneider Electric.
Tenure in Role: 3 years
Responsibilities: Leading the organization’s IT channel salesforce across the region, and for driving growth among partners. Also responsible for driving distribution sales in Northern Europe, which includes key countries such as Germany and the UK.
Previous Experience: Otterberg began her career at APC 25 years ago, moving from finance and services into the IT channel team after its acquisition by Schneider Electric in 2006. Thereafter she worked with distribution partners across the region.
Key Accomplishments: Schneider’s channel business has grown year-on-year for the past eight years.
The vendor has also worked to move the sustainability agenda forward in the Nordics, helping partners to decarbonize.
What Makes Her a Leader: Otterberg’s leadership philosophy is rooted in coaching and empowering team members to make informed decisions. This empowers her team to work proactively and she says it has been a key factor in the company’s success.
Name: Penny Philpot
Job Title: VP EMEA partner ecosystems, Red Hat
Tenure in Role: 5 months
Responsibilities: Driving an ecosystem-first mindset and continuing to expand Red Hat’s footprint across EMEA through partners.
Previous Experience: Senior leadership roles at Microsoft, Cisco, Palo Alto Networks and Oracle where she worked for 25 years and was the youngest female VP in Oracle EMEA.
Key Accomplishment: Leading the EMEA business, leveraging Red Hat’s ecosystem partners to bring scalable and incremental growth and driving transformation of Red Hat’s partner programme.
What Makes Her a Leader: Philpot’s goal is to expand all partner routes to market and increase mindshare within the ecosystem.
Name: Hayley Roberts
Job Title: CEO, Distology
Tenure in Role: 8-1/2 years
Responsibilities: Value creation planning, strategy development (and world domination!)
Previous Experience: Thirteen years in channel, previous roles include NETconsent, Arrow ECS, Altimate UK (formerly Codework).
Key Accomplishment: Founding Distology and growing the business across three regions in Europe. Securing PE investment in 2021. Leading the first acquisition for Distology in 2022. Averaging 30% YoY growth of the business.
What Makes Her a Leader: “Standing on her soap box” about the power of channel, empowering her team through autonomous decision-making and visible action, demonstrated by the creation of Distology’s company values and career progression opportunities.
Name: Samantha Sene
Job Title: Channel leader, Western Europe, Nordics, Italy at A10 Networks
Tenure in Role: 2 years
Responsibilities: Growth of A10 Networks Partner & Alliances Ecosystems across UK/IE, Benelux, Nordics, Italy
Previous Experience: Kemp Technologies, Infinigate Group
Key Accomplishment: Leading partners to become successful sales and technical ambassadors through advocating A10’s Channel Ambassador Program.
What Makes Her a Leader: Sene says: “People are my passion – the channel is a people business and I enjoy seeing my partners succeed and grow.”
Name: Chrissie Tarbitt
Job Title: EMEA channel director at Nasuni
Tenure in Role: 1 year, 10 months
Responsibilities: Establishing and building Nasuni’s channel partnerships in EMEA.
Previous Experience: DellEMC, Compellent, EqualLogic
Key Accomplishment: Developing channel partnerships that brought in 65% of new customers for Nasuni over the last year.
What Makes Her a Leader: Proven track record of innovation in channel partnerships; skilled at building long-term, trusted and successful partnerships.
Name: Alex Walsh
Job Title: Channel and alliances director, UK and Ireland at Veeam
Tenure in Role: 4 years
Responsibilities: Leading a team of channel sales professionals that manage go-to-market across distribution, service providers, VARs, GSIs, professional services partners and strategic alliance partners. Working to agreed revenue goals throughout the financial year focusing into the SMB, commercial, enterprise and public sector sales segments.
Previous Experience: AppSense
Key Accomplishment: Four years of double-digit growth across the UK and Ireland region through a 100% two-tier channel model.
What Makes Him a Leader: Leading a team of different types of people with a focus on personal individual development. Engaged with channel partners, distribution, and alliances on strategic planning. Working with colleagues within the channel around mentoring and engaged in mentoring programs within Veeam.
Name: Alex Walsh
Job Title: Channel and alliances director, UK and Ireland at Veeam
Tenure in Role: 4 years
Responsibilities: Leading a team of channel sales professionals that manage go-to-market across distribution, service providers, VARs, GSIs, professional services partners and strategic alliance partners. Working to agreed revenue goals throughout the financial year focusing into the SMB, commercial, enterprise and public sector sales segments.
Previous Experience: AppSense
Key Accomplishment: Four years of double-digit growth across the UK and Ireland region through a 100% two-tier channel model.
What Makes Him a Leader: Leading a team of different types of people with a focus on personal individual development. Engaged with channel partners, distribution, and alliances on strategic planning. Working with colleagues within the channel around mentoring and engaged in mentoring programs within Veeam.
Channel Futures is back with our second annual set of lists of prominent channel leaders making waves in various technologies, regions and business types.
Channel Futures’ Channel Leaders lists recognize top leaders at vendor companies that span the channel spectrum. These are sometimes the top channel executive at a given company, but they can also be a “leader” within the channel organization who works in the trenches and has a profound impact on partners’ daily and weekly activities. We strive to identify the most future-minded, influential and impactful channel leaders across various technologies and business types, including cybersecurity, cloud, distribution, unified communications and more.
This fall, in the slideshow above, we begin with the best and brightest that Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA). (They are listed alphabetically.) In it, you’ll discover top EMEA channel leaders hailing from software, security, networking, unified communications, hardware companies and more — it runs the gamut of channel leaders with expertise in many areas.
What they all have in common is that they are spearheading channel growth across EMEA. They are all fierce advocates for partners, and continuously work to develop and maintain those relationships.
Want to contact the author directly about this story? Have ideas for a follow-up article? Email Christine Horton or connect with her on LinkedIn. |
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