Another Telarus Alum Joins Scott Forbush at Upstack

Another high-ranking Telarus executive has joined the Upstack team.

Paula McKinnon is now vice president of vendor relations at the direct selling agency. She will oversee relationships with hundreds of vendors, whose contracts Upstack will hold directly and through master agents. McKinnon will recruit, negotiate contracts with and onboard service providers.

Upstack’s Paula McKinnon

“I’m excited to join an organization that is transforming the industry by rethinking both the telecom agency model and the technology buying experience for their business customers,” said McKinnon. “I’m eager to leverage my experience, relationships and expertise to bring new service providers to the Upstack platform and coordinate closely with our master agents to ensure our joint partners and their business clients are well served.”

McKinnon spent 11 years at Telarus. She rose the ranks from from post-sales support manager to vice president of supplier management. She will work on the same team as Scott Forbush, who also recently moved from Telarus to Upstack.

Upstack’s Christopher Trapp

“We’re thrilled to welcome Paula to the Upstack team,” Upstack CEO Chris Trapp said. “Paula’s track record for success and her extensive connections and years of experience managing vendor relationships will help us build a vendor portfolio spanning the tech stack – from colo and network to UCaaS and security – that’s second to none.”

Forbush was Telarus senior vice president of global sales; now he works as Upstack’s chief revenue officer.

Upstack announced a $50 million investment from Berkshire Partners last month. The agency is using part of the investment to acquire other agencies, including consultancy Cloudnexion. Trapp, a veteran of data center/colocation, founded Upstack partly because he saw that glaring lack of agent colocation sales. Now colocation accounts for approximately 40% of Upstack’s residual revenue.

Telarus Hires

Meantime, Telarus, former home to McKinnon and Forbush, has announced several hires of its own this month. The Utah-based tech services distributor built up its sales engineering team with Jason Kaufman in the Southeast and JW Stanley for the Midwest. In addition, Telarus tapped Jason Lowe as a contact center solution architect.

Telarus also signed a supplier agreement with Ericsson, which recently bought Cradlepoint.

The company landed a private equity investment from Columbia Capital late last year and used some of that money to buy Philadelphia-based consultancy and master agency Chorus Communications.