Channel People on the Move: 8x8, TBI, Telarus, Microsoft, IBM, More
Now featuring big new hires and promotions in the telecom and IT channels.
![Fusion Connect's Rick Ribas Fusion Connect's Rick Ribas](https://eu-images.contentstack.com/v3/assets/blt10e444bce2d36aa8/bltad24aa09b834f647/65245221322ab67f46c564c9/Ribas-Rick_Fusion-gallery-March-2021.jpg?width=700&auto=webp&quality=80&disable=upscale)
Amritesh Chaudhuri is 8×8‘s new VP and chief marketing officer. He comes to the company from rival RingCentral.
Before his gig as RingCentral’s top marketer, Chaudhuri led marketing for Oracle’s Cloud Platform portfolio.
Former 8×8 CMO Marge Breya is sticking around as a consultant.
Our recurring feature — every month for 10 years and counting on Channel Partners Online — proved to be a massive hit in its Channel Futures premiere.
Packed with new hires and promotions in both the telecom and IT channels, you gobbled this up like a kid eating candy on Halloween.
This edition featured Rick Ribas, Fusion Connect’s new channel chief, and about four dozen other movers and shakers in the channel. Personnel changes at 8×8, Microsoft, TBI, Telarus and more also caught your eye.
We’ve already published a more recent edition since then. You can stay up to speed with that here.
We sat down for a Q&A with new Microsoft channel chief Rodney Clark, and you tuned in.
Read what he had to say about filling Gavriella Schuster’s shoes, ties with the IAMCP, the growth of digital marketplaces and more.
Remove the word “interim” from Duane Barnes’ title.
The longtime channel veteran is now CEO of RapidScale, the Cox Communications company. He gets a general manager and VP title at Cox to go with his chief executive status.
Barnes, a Windstream and Intelisys alum, was instrumental in the launch of RapidScale’s identity as a service and managed device as a service.
You know him from such channel stops as Talkdesk, inContact and Corvisa, where he built channel programs. Now, Jon Heaps has taken on a new challenge as VP of channel at Observe.AI.
Observe.AI is a provider of contact center artificial intelligence.
Terry Richardson retired after six-and-a-half years at HPE, but decided he needed a new challenge.
In walked semiconductor company AMD and an offer he couldn’t refuse. Richardson has taken over as the company’s new North America channel chief.
He is responsible for all partner types in the region and across the AMD portfolio.
Telarus was among the biggest movers and shakers in terms of personnel last month. Some stemmed from the master agent’s acquisition of fellow master agent Chorus Communications.
Clockwise from upper left: Rob Molinaro, former Chorus VP, now senior partner development manager for Pennsylvania; Paul Harris, VP of EMEA; Roger Blohm, who retired from the company as EVP of strategy after five years; Christie Hamberis, VP of supplier management, who joined the master agent after 24 years at ScanSource; Chris Whitaker, the Sierra Wireless vet who takes the role of VP of business development for IoT; and Dan Cronin, former Chorus president, now senior partner development manager in the mid-Atlantic for Telarus.
Did you see Denny Doherty is a new partner development manager at Bigleaf Networks? If not, it’s probably a good thing we included him in this slideshow.
Doherty’s previous employers include Torchlight, Poppulo and Constant Contact.
The largest cloud vendor‘s new CEO is Adam Selipsky.
The move to replace Andy Jassy with Selipsky came as a surprise to some in the partner community, who thought AWS might go with an internal candidate.
Nonetheless, it’s Selipsky, the former boss at Tableau, who takes the reins and will guide the ship of a company that has relied on its partner community big time over the past several years.
Scott Donohoe’s new job is national channel manager at NetFortris. The company sells cloud, network and security services exclusively through the channel.
Donohoe’s former employers include Vonage, Jive Communications, Sungard AS and Oracle.
Andrew Down is the newest member of the Vendasta leadership team.
Vendasta, which bills itself as the end-to-end e-commerce platform for companies serving digital solutions to local businesses, hired Down as director of sales for IT channel, MSPs and VARs.
A 13-year industry vet, Down will lead efforts to extend Vendasta’s SaaS platform through a go-to-market strategy for MSPs and VARs.
Pete Cordero signed on with Cyber Defense Labs as managing director of the company’s professional services business.
Cordero spent 27 years in federal law enforcement, with multiple roles in the FBI’s cyber division. His job will be to help manage and expand the professional services team and services as Cyber Defense “continues to grow and partner with companies to proactively identify, mitigate and reduce cyber risk.”
Master agent TBI made several personnel moves of note. Three are channel managers new to the company, while the fourth is an in-house promotion.
Left to right: Nicholas Amelang, channel manager for Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas and Arkansas (previously with Nitel and CallTower); Aram Kelekian, mobility-focused channel manager (a Verizon and Brightstar alum); Matt Turczyniak, VP of sales for OmniCenter and channel sales enablement (promoted); and Amy Gordon, channel manager for the East (previously with Ronco Communications).
GTT, the cloud networking company, named Dave Salustri (right) as division president, Americas, and Tom Homer (left) as division president for Europe.
It’s a promotion for both men. Salustri previously was SVP of enterprise sales, Americas, while Homer was SVP, Europe, leading GTT’s sales operation in that region.
Before GTT, Salustri worked at Time Warner Cable, XO Communications and Verizon. Homer is an alumnus of Telstra.
Eric Hernaez is the new chief executive officer at RabbitRun Technologies, one of the “companies to watch” in our 2021 Channel Influencer digital issue.
RabbitRun, the SD-WAN product manufacturer, decided Hernaez was the man for the job after his successful run as founder and president of SkySwitch.
That there is a quadrant of new hires at Cradlepoint, the wireless WAN and networking equipment provider.
Clockwise from top left: Lisa Wight, VP of global distribution and partner program (most recently with VMware); Darryl Brick, VP of partner sales for EMEA (cam from Infoblox); Krissy Kelley, VP of global partner and field marketing (a Fortinet and Citrix alum); and Steve Benvenuto, partner sales lead in the Americas (a 21-year Cisco vet).
More personnel moves here.
You’re watching IBM’s IT infrastructure spinoff, for now dubbed “NewCo,” carefully. That includes who’s going to be running it.
Two of those people are Elly Keinan, group president, and Maria Bartolome Winans, chief marketing officer. Both are tech industry veterans and experience IBM’ers.
Get to know more about them and NewCo’s direction.
That’s a picture of Robert Brower, the new SVP of worldwide partners and alliances at cloud storage provider Druva.
Brower will lead Druva Compass, the company’s partner program, and oversee strategic partnerships with AWS and VMware.
Other stops on Brower’s career train include Tealium and Commvault.
NIMBL Techedge Group, a large system integrator and SAP-based MSP, named Robert Jerome its new VP of strategy and innovation for North America.
NIMBL offers cloud services, data analytics and more.
Sinequa, the enterprise search platform, tapped Bob Lewis as its new senior vice president of North America operations.
Lewis started his career at IBM, following that with stops at ERP pioneers SSA, Baan and SAP. He also was CEO of four early and midrange startups.
Lauri Martinez, formerly senior director of North America field, channel and customer marketing at PGi, is new to Broadvoice. She will be VP of channel marketing for the UCaaS provider.
She has 20 years of B2B marketing experience, and is tasked with ensuring the company’s partner program aligns with Broadvoice’s overall growth strategy, delivering value to partners.
Imperva, the cybersecurity company, got its new channel leader from Akamai.
Micheal McCollough is Imperva’s new global VP of strategic growth. His job is to further develop and grow the company’s partner community and create new partnerships.
Before Akamai, he was at Dell for seven years.
These gentlemen are new hires at master agency Telecom Consulting Group (TCG).
On the left is Andrew Csutor, national channel manager. You might know him from previous gigs at New Horizon Communications, Cogent Communications, AT&T and Time Warner Cable.
On the right, that’s Michael Feldman, VP of channel sales for the Northeast. He most recently worked for Connect Technology, the consultancy, but he’s also a Momentum Telecom and Cbeyond vet.
In the middle is Gerry Davis, VP of cloud and solutions engineering. His previous employers include Intelisys, Windstream Hosted Solutions and Sandler Partners.
Trustifi, the email security provider, named Peter Eastman its new chief revenue officer.
Eastman, most recently with HPE, has also worked at Avaya, Cisco and Siemens, as well as a number of wireless networking and security manufacturers.
He is tasked with building Trustifi’s brand and expanding its customer base.
AireSpring, the managed service provider with a focus on UC, managed IT and network services, added Steve Mooney to its channel sales team.
Mooney started his telecom career at ICG Communications (now part of Lumen) back in 1997. He joined TPx (then TelePacific) in 2003 and spent 18 years there before making the move to AireSpring last month.
Alation, the data intelligence platform provider, looked to Steve Neat as its new VP of sales for EMEA. His job will be to develop new sales channels and contribute to strategy.
He has 35 years of experience in sales team management, CRM, analytics, ERP and more. Previous employment stops include Oracle, SAS and SAP.
Nextiva looked to a someone with a heap of experience at a distributor (who else?) to hire its new senior director of global distribution.
Rob Moyer’s (left) last gig was VP of global channels at Automation Anywhere, but it’s his role as Synnex’s SVP of cloud, mobility and IoT for which he is best known.
In his first month, Moyer says he will learn from customers, partners and his Nextiva teammates.
Also new at Nextiva are longtime industry veteran Al Campa (bottom right), chief marketing officer, and Andy Keller, director of national solution providers (top right). Keller previously worked at Aruba and its parent company, HPE.
Coming off a reverse merger that takes the company public, High Wire Networks CEO Mark Porter is now the CEO of Spectrum Global Solutions.
Porter held the chief executive role at High Wire, the IT service management company, for nearly 19 years.
Amy Regan’s new job is channel sales manager for Ooma, the communications platform provider.
Her last job in the channel was senior channel sales manager, Southwest, for Office Depot. Other previous gigs include nexVortex, 3CX and Technifax Office Solutions, all out of Texas.
Yellowbrick Data, which bills itself as a “modern data warehouse,” hired Jonathan Reid as its chief revenue officer.
Reid, who has 25 years of experience, will focus on the adoption of Yellowbrick Data Warehouse within enterprises and commercial companies. He’ll also build partnerships with Yellowbrick’s community of resellers and business partners.
Reid is the former SVP of global sales and business development at AppDirect. He also is a Cisco alum who spent 11 years at BroadSoft.
Adam Day is now Telstra‘s VP of enterprise and technology sales for the Americas. It’s a promotion for Day, who helped establish the Australia-based carrier’s U.S. agent channel business as head of enterprise sales strategy in 2015-16.
Day is a 14-year veteran of the company.
Peter Campisi is the new North American channel chief for Paessler, the network monitoring software provider. His new title is regional manager, channel sales, North America. His job is to help partners expand beyond traditional technology monitoring “as the convergence of IT/OT and industrial IoT become more prevalent.
It’s a promotion for Campisi, who joined the Paessler team as an inside sales manager four years ago.
Domo, the business cloud company, brought in two new execs to support its growth effort.
That’s Shelley Morrison on the left. Coming from Accenture Interactive where she established demand programs for large B2B tech companies such as Adobe, SAP and Amazon, Morrison is Domo’s new VP of demand center.
On the right is Vita Shannon, who joins as VP of partnerships and ecosystem. Shannon’s most recent employer was KPMG; there, she was senior director of advisory services.
Cameyo, which provides secure virtual application delivery “for any digital workspace,” called on Brad Rowland to be its new VP of channel and strategic partnerships.
Rowland isn’t new to Cameyo, having been on its board for nearly a year. Previous employers include Southwestern Bell, Wyse, Symantec and more.
Oracle hired Doug Smith, a 16-year Microsoft veteran, as SVP and head of strategic partnerships. It’s a new position at the company focused on partner strategy development.
Smith’s role at Microsoft revolved around developing partnerships for Azure and included work with partners.
Ntirety sells hybrid managed services for secure multicloud solutions. In a move to sell more, the company just hired Jason Stein as senior director of channel sales for North America.
There’s a good chance you know Stein from his days at Kaspersky and Effortless Office.
Ntirety is shifting to a 100%-channel model.
Cybersecurity provider Malwarebytes named Mark Strassman its new chief product officer.
He comes to the company from LogMeIn, where he was general manager of that company’s UCC product portfolio.
The leadership team at Talkdesk is bigger, with three members of its team getting promotions.
Left to right: Marco Costa, previously EMEA general manager, now international COO; Kieran King, Talkdesk’s new chief customer officer, who joined the company a year ago as VP of customer success; and Tony Barbone, the company’s first chief revenue officer. He will lead all global sales, channel, sales development reps, solution engineering and customer experience strategy teams.
Mark Ash is the new CRO for the UK group at Konica Minolta Business Solutions, one of our 2020 MSP 501ers.
It’s a promotion for Ash, who the company says will continue to break down product and solution silos, drive multichannel engagement into growth areas and oversee the company’s transformation beyond print.
Mark Ash is the new CRO for the UK group at Konica Minolta Business Solutions, one of our 2020 MSP 501ers.
It’s a promotion for Ash, who the company says will continue to break down product and solution silos, drive multichannel engagement into growth areas and oversee the company’s transformation beyond print.
We celebrate the coming together of Channel Futures and Channel Partners Online with one of the latter’s staples — Channel People on the Move. Appearing every month for the past 10 years, this has been one of our most popular recurring articles.
More than almost anything else, you want to meet the movers and shakers in the channel. You want to know which of your friends, peers and rivals took new jobs or received promotions.
To recognize the blending of the IT and telecom channels, we offer you this jumbo version of Channel People on the Move. Here on the Channel Futures platform, you’ll find it much easier to navigate. There’s no delay as a page refreshes between headshots of channel people. You can see photos and learn about these folks climbing the corporate later in a lickety-split fashion.
Microsoft got a new channel chief. 8×8 hired a new CMO. Master agents Telarus, TBI and TCG were among the master agents going hog-wild with new hires and promotions. AWS named a replacement for Andy Jassy. A ton of security companies beefed up their channel leadership.
Everyone you see in the slideshow above has their hands in channel business. From CEOs all the way down to channel managers, we’re covering the spectrum of moves in March.
Don’t forget: While we love that you peruse our gallery, you don’t have to wait until the first of every month. We have this page dedicated to people on the move around the clock. (Yep, that made the move from Channel Partners Online as well.)
Follow executive editor @Craig_Galbraith on Twitter.
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