Channel People on the Move: Comcast, Telarus, Mitel, TBI
You also get new hires and promotions at Spectrum, Rackspace, Fusion and more.
![Comcast's Brittany Fuller Comcast's Brittany Fuller](https://eu-images.contentstack.com/v3/assets/blt10e444bce2d36aa8/blta20d946ef9401389/652503402de618fa212c02df/Fuller-Brittany_Comcast_-gallery-feature-2.jpg?width=700&auto=webp&quality=80&disable=upscale)
TBI
Many of these faces at the master agent are probably familiar to you. They're all taking a step forward with the company with a promotion.
Clockwise from top right: Seth Woodward, senior manager of business development; Vanessa Patsavas, senior director of human resources; Mike Onystok, senior VP of operations; Adam Knudsen, VP of sales operations; Bryan Reynolds, director of sales operations; and Pete Shah, senior VP of finance.
Learn more about them here.
Spectrum's Brian Snortheim
Former Channel Partners VP of sales Brian Snortheim is the new director of enterprise channel sales within the Spectrum Enterprise channel team. He left Channel Partners last summer to lead agent channel marketing at Avaya.
Now Snortheim returns to his cable roots. He spent 15 years at Time Warner Cable Business Class (now part of Charter), wrapping his run there as national director of marketing for partner channels in 2016.
Learn more about what's in store for Snortheim at Spectrum.
Comcast Business' Brittany Fuller
Brittany Fuller is a new senior filed engagement manager with the Comcast Business indirect program. She has 10 years of channel marketing experience under her belt at Time Warner Cable, Broadview Networks and most recently, Windstream.
Fuller will work directly with master agents and the cableco's platinum and gold partners on go-to-market campaigns, business development and field engagement.
Telarus' Rich Goates
Everyone could use a good lawyer — and Telarus got one. The master agent hired Rich Goates as in-house general counsel to give the company's subagents an "extra layer of protection." He'll handle the legal side of supplier agreements, agent contracts and base rolls.
Most important to partners, he'll see to the legal details of those that haven't received their due commissions.
Read what Goates has to say about having partners' backs.
Rackspace's Sandy Hogan
Sandy Hogan is the new executive vice president and managing director of the Americas for Rackspace, the managed cloud provider. She'll focus on executing a "customer-centric, go-to-market approach aimed at accelerating revenue and customer growth."
Her most recent position was senior VP and GM for the Americas at HERE Technologies. Before that, she spent almost 15 years at Cisco.
Mitel's Daniel Farrar
Mitel tapped Daniel Farrar as the new executive VP and general manager of its UCaaS business unit. He comes to Mitel from Switchfly, an e-commerce platform, where he was CEO.
Farrar will lead operations for the unit, focusing on the requirements for selling, supporting and succeeding in UCaaS. He has more than 25 years of corporate management and strategic-development experience.
Read why Mitel's CEO says Farrar is a good fit.
Fusion's Bill McLeod
In an exclusive Channel Partners Q&A, Bill McLeod, the new senior director of channel programs at Fusion, said he's in charge of making sure partner integration goes smoothly following the company's acquisitions of MegaPath and assets from Birch Communications.
"I’m excited about the challenge and opportunity of integrating three channel programs and portfolios into one top-tier company," McLeod told our Edward Gately.
McLeod has worked for startups as well as $20 billion-plus companies.
Megaport's Brian Tasker
Brian Tasker is the new head of channel at Megaport, the connectivity provider. He's responsible for building and strengthening relationships with master agencies and key strategic partners across North America.
Tasker is known for previous roles at CenturyLink, Zayo and XO Communications.
Cisco's Rick Snyder
Snyder, the top executive in Cisco's Americas Partners Organization, is sailing into retirement in July. A replacement is yet to be named.
Snyder has spent the past four years in his current role, with nine at Cisco overall. He joined the tech giant when it acquired Tandberg, the maker of TelePresence, in 2010, for $3.3 billion. His first job at Cisco was overseeing the Tandberg integration.
Learn more about Snyder's accomplishments.
Equinix
It's a trio of promotions for Equinix, the data center and colocation provider, reflecting what it says is a shift to customer-centric operations.
Karl Strohmeyer (right) moves from president of the Americas to chief customer and revenue officer. He'll lead an organization that handles all of the company's customer-facing business. That includes its partner community.
Cara Baack (upper left) becomes chief product officer; her previous title was chief marketing officer. Baack's organization develops the company's portfolio of services and its data-center platform.
Eric Schwartz (lower left), previously president of EMEA for the company, is now its chief strategy and development officer. He'll oversee various strategies for growth and hyperscale initiatives.
Learn more about these fine folks.
Scale Computing's Dan Pierce
Scale Computing has a pair of new faces making their way around the office. One is Dan Pierce (pictured), who represents the edge computing, virtualization and hyperconverged solution provider as its VP of strategic sales. He's responsible for the company's rapidly growing global OEM business and leading sales efforts in emerging markets. His background includes managing relationships with Dell, Microsoft, HP and others.
Marlena Fernandez (not pictured) joins Scale as VP of marketing. She previously held leadership roles at Symantec, Oracle and more.
Get to know them here.
Ripcord's Christopher Blake
Just a couple months after hiring a VP of channels to lay the groundwork for a partner program, Ripcord, which bills itself as a robotics-digitization company, appointed Christopher Blake as senior vice president of sales. His background includes stints at Dell EMC and Oracle.
Blake will initially be responsible for managing the company's sales and marketing direction, and driving revenue. Over the long term, he'll be tasked with building a sales team capable of managing a fast-growing customer base and developing a "thriving pipeline."
Ripcord says it's actively pursuing new customers and partners around the world.
Zerto's Jim Ortbals
Ortbals, formerly a channel exec with VMware and Cisco, is the new VP of worldwide channel and cloud sales at Zerto, the disaster-recovery and IT resiliency provider, where he will lead a single, unified partner strategy.
With 20 years of experience in tech, Ortbals looks forward to helping his new employer grow.
It’s a great opportunity, at this point in our trajectory, to come in and set the strategy, implement it and execute on it by knocking down some of the obstacles that stand in the way of how cloud providers engage with resellers and vice versa," said Ortbals.
Learn why he thinks his experience in the IT business world prepared him for this new post.
Highfive's Greg Popham
Highfive, the video-conferencing provider, unveiled a new channel program and appointed Greg Popham to lead it.
Popham, whose title is VP of global channel sales, is a Hewlett-Packard Enterprise veteran. Highfive is working to enable more VARs to sell directly to customers with full whitelisting and provisioning capabilities, empowering its partners with "speed, an ease of doing business and plenty of potential for scale."
Read why Popham calls the new program a "win-win."
HiveIO's George Nealon
George Nealon is the new vice president of global sales and chief revenue officer for HiveIO, the software-defined data center provider. He has more than 20 years of experience in sales and API integration from his days at IBM, Apigee and more. He'll be instrumental in "crafting mutually beneficial customer relationships."
“My goal is to take a value-based approach for our customers," said Nealon. "It’s not just about the features and capabilities; it’s about the personal and business benefits that can be derived from a partnership with HiveIO."
HiveIO's George Nealon
George Nealon is the new vice president of global sales and chief revenue officer for HiveIO, the software-defined data center provider. He has more than 20 years of experience in sales and API integration from his days at IBM, Apigee and more. He'll be instrumental in "crafting mutually beneficial customer relationships."
“My goal is to take a value-based approach for our customers," said Nealon. "It’s not just about the features and capabilities; it’s about the personal and business benefits that can be derived from a partnership with HiveIO."
Cable companies, master agents, UCaaS providers … oh my!
March was another big month for new hires and promotions in the channel. As you’ll see, they come from every nook and cranny of the partner universe.
Telarus and TBI represented the master agents well, with the latter promoting no less than a half-dozen of its people to loftier positions. The big cable players were just as busy, with Spectrum Enterprise bringing back an industry veteran and Comcast hiring a Windstream alum.
Looking for more? We’ve got it. Take Mitel, for instance, which got a new leader for its UCaaS business unit, and Fusion, which named a key leader to make the partner experience smooth as it integrates recent acquisitions.
In all, we feature 22 people here who have improved their work experience by joining a new company or getting the nod within one where they already reside. As usual, these are the people working hand in hand with partners as well as those making key decisions that will trickle down from the C-suite.
Scroll through our gallery below to get caught up on all of this moving and shaking. Can’t wait for this update to roll around every month? We’ve got you covered in a page dedicated to people on the move! It’s updated regularly.
Missed last month’s “people” gallery? Click here to see who was on the move in February.
Follow executive editor @Craig_Galbraith on Twitter.
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