Channel People on the Move: TBI, Pax8, Cisco, VMware, AWS, Avant
We've got moves at Forcepoint, LogMeIn, Avant, Zoom, Equinix, Aryaka, Cox Business and more.
![Mitel's Amber Hafterson Mitel's Amber Hafterson](https://eu-images.contentstack.com/v3/assets/blt10e444bce2d36aa8/bltb417ce21b2950b7b/65244d90979cd17edb7c9da4/Hafterson-Amber_Mitel-feature.jpg?width=700&auto=webp&quality=80&disable=upscale)
There’s a lot happening on the personnel front at Mitel.
Clockwise from top right: Amber Hafterson, channel account manager, strategic UCaaS channels (East); Dave Thomas, channel account manager covering southern California; and Tony Burns, channel account manager (Illinois and Michigan).
Their previous employers, respectively, were Forcepoint, Windstream and NetFortris. Thomas is a former Mitel employee.
Kyndryl, IBM’s upcoming managed infrastructure business spinoff, has its first chief information officer.
Michael Bradshaw was at NBCUniversal for five years before taking this new position. He was executive VP and CIO at the company.
Bradshaw’s hire follows the hiring of a CEO, group president and CMO earlier this year.
Learn more about Bradshaw’s background.
You probably know Amanda Jardine from three years as channel programs director at RingCentral. Well, she’s taking her talents to LogMeIn.
Jardine is senior director of channel marketing for the SaaS, collaboration and remote access company.
She’s also an alum of Level 3 and CenturyLink.
Telstra hired Mikoto Anzai to lead key partner relationships in the U.S. and Canada. It’s a newly created position, formally known as director, partners and alliances.
Anzai has a bunch of experience, including 15 years in partner- and business-development management at BT.
PagerDuty, which offers digital operations management solutions, needed a new VP of partnership. Good thing Timm Hoyt was available.
Hoyt joins the “partner-first” go-to-market mission at the company. He will work closely with the company’s product and sales teams to drive more revenue through the channel.
Hoyt most recently was global partner sales and alliances head at Druva.
This is where to learn more about him.
Robert Jimenez represents Viasat as a new national sales manager. It’s a promotion for Jimenez, who was regional sales manager, Southeast, for about two-and-a-half years.
Ashley Johnson is a new regional channel manager for Zoom, operating out of New York. You might know her from her days at Edify and Nice InContact.
Dan Beauregard is ZeroNorth‘s new VP of strategic alliances.
This is a promotion for Beauregard, who just joined the team in October to lead DevSecOps technical advocacy and evangelism, as well as the company’s solutions engineering team.
Jennifer Savage is a new channel manager with TBI, serving northern California and the Pacific Northwest.
You might know her from Ujet and Talkdesk.
The company didn’t fire anyone, but SolarWinds made announced a series of new hires and promotions following the big hack that made national news headlines.
They include (clockwise from upper right) Rohini Kasturi, executive VP and chief product officer; Andrea Webb, SVP and chief customer officer; and Tim Brown, CISO.
Kasturi comes to SolarWinds from Pulse Secure. Webb is a 19-year veteran of SolarWinds, while Brown has been with the company since 2017.
Get more details on this trio.
Rangarajan “Raghu” Raghuram stepped into the big chair left vacant at VMware by Pat Gelsinger, who moved on to Intel.
Raghuram, the company’s new CEO (formerly COO), has been with VMware since 2003.
Zane Rowe has been filling the role since February on an interim basis.
Read what Raghuram had to say about the direction of VMware and its partners.
You’ll want to know these names and faces from master agent Telarus.
Clockwise from right: Anthony Hansen, cloud solution architect, who comes from Lumen/CenturyLink; Jason Kaufman, sales engineer, Southeast, joining the Telarus team from Star2Star; and JW Stanley, sales engineer whose last gig was at Vonage.
Jules Johnston is the new senior vice president of global channels at Equinix, the data center services provider.
Johnston is a five-year Equinix veteran who was previously VP of Americas partner sales.
Equinix didn’t technically have a channel chief before now; Johnston will lead a new integrated partner sales and partner program team.
It was a busy month in the HR department at Forcepoint, the data-first cybersecurity company.
Peter Brant, right, is Forcepoint’s new SVP of North America sales. He has 20 years of experience, most recently atF5 Networks.
That’s Myles Bray, who has the same title as Brant, only in EMEA, in the lower left. Bray’s last job was CRO at Arqit.
Learn more about the two new SVPs here.
Last but not least is Parag Patel, who partners will interact with as SVP of global channel sales. This is where to get the full scoop on Patel’s new role.
Seema Chiodo is the new director of channels, West, at Performive, the VMware cloud and multicloud management provider.
Chiodo’s history in the business includes jobs at Mosaic Networx, Tata Communications and Evolve IP.
Ken Lamneck will retire after 11 years at Insight Enterprises, which was No. 1 on Channel Futures’ 2020 MSP 501 list.
Lamneck will hang it up at the end of the year, transitioning to an advisory role after the company names a successor.
During his tenure, Insight took a giant leap from VAR to the massive intelligent technology solutions company that it is today. Sales have doubled since the day he arrived on scene.
Aryaka partners have a new advocate in chief revenue officer Ian McEwan.
The SD-WAN provider hired McEwan to expand the company’s business, services and markets worldwide.
Prior to Aryaka, McEwan was managing directof and VP of sales, EMEA and APAC, at Binary Tree.
Josh Swenson is the newest senior channel manager at master agent Avant Communications.
Swenson comes to Avant from TPx, where he was a channel manager and senior business consultant.
Luxy Thuraisingam replaced Boon Lai, who left for Google, as head of global partner marketing at Cisco.
It’s a promotion for Thuraisingam, who previously was VP, Americas industry & Canada growth marketing at the company.
John Muscarella, a seven-year-plus veteran of Cox Business, is moving on up.
He just got promoted from senior director of sales and channel programs to executive director, national indirect sales channels.
Application relationship management company vArmour has a new channel leader.
Louise Cooke brings 20 years or experience at companies such as BigID, Cylance and Fortinet.
Read why Cooke says “the top priority is actually in the neame of our program.”
Colt Technology Services named Jaya Deshmukh executive VP of strategy and transformation. Her job will be to manage and drive Colt’s strategy and relationships.
Deshmukh’s last job was head of strategy for EMEA at Google Cloud. Other previous gigs include Microsoft, Cognizant and PwC.
Geoff Haydon’s decisions as Open Systems’ CEO will trickle down to the channel in a big way.
Open Systems, which dubs itself the “cybersecurity service innovator for future-ready enterprises,” is calling upon Haydon to increase share of the managed security market.
You might recognize his name from stops at VMware and Secureworks.
SADA, the Google cloud partner, hired Rich Hoyer to lead its FinOps group.
Hoyer has a long history in the software industry. The company expects this hire will help make it easier for clients to track and optimize their cloud use and spend.
JumpCloud has a new chief product officer.
The company, which offers a cloud directory platform deployed by more than 3,700 MSP partners and customers, hired Jagadeesh Kunda.
Kunda previously led the identity team as VP of product management at Salesforce. He will the product vision for JumpCloud as the company expands its platform.
Nermin Mohamed’s new title is leader, solution architecture, telco, media and entertainment, Google Cloud.
Mohamed spent the last 10 months at MSP Wind River. Her background also includes stints at Ericsson, Tech Mahindra and Huawei.
Adaptiva, which provides endpoint management and security solutions to enterprises, hired Mike Bradley (left) as senior director, alliances and channels. He has 25 years of experience, including stops at Oracle and NetSuite.
That’s Doug Kennedy on the right, whom Adaptiva promoted to chief operating officer. He’s also a former executive at Oracle and NetSuite, as well as Microsoft.
Dave MacKinnon (right) joins the N-able leadership team as chief security officer.
He will be responsible for the entire information security operation at the SolarWinds spinoff kicking off this year. His last job was senior director of security operations and response at AT&T/Warner Media.
N-able also needed a general counsel, so it reached out Peter Anastos, who comes from Access Information Management.
You want to get to know these men better. We just know it.
Stephen Orban is the new head of the Amazon Web Services (AWS) Marketplace. He replaces David McCann, who wanted to change positions after a seven-year run as the leader of the marketplace.
Orban has worked for the cloud provider since 2014. His first job at the company was head of the enterprise strategy division.
Find out what Orban says he’s going to do in his new job.
Sylvain Parent is one of a flurry of hires at TRG, the global managed solutions provider focused on enterprise mobility.
Parent is VP of Canada. He spent the last four years at Apex Supply Chain Technologies.
Lightbits Labs, which delivers software-defined storage, named Carol Platz vice president of global marketing.
Platz is tasked with running inbound and outbound marketing, demand generation, corporate communications and channel marketing.
Her last job as at WekaIO; before that, her experience includes runs at Western Digital, Cloudian, SGI and Panasas.
25-year IT industry veteran David Powell is the new president of Prodoscore, the provider of productivity intelligence software.
Powell’s history in the channel includes recent stints at Corsica Technologies and Perch Security, which ConnectWise bought last year.
CableFinder, which cable companies work with to help on-ramp MSPs to sell connectivity services, has a new senior director of strategic alliances.
Before CableFinder, Jeff Pratt managed Spectrium Business’ authorized partner program. CableFinder expects Pratt to develop new relationships with master agents, retail, call center and digital channels for CableFinder.
Learn more about CableFinder.
RapidScale, owned by Cox Business, added Jason Scillieri (left) and Nick Syris as cloud solutions consultants.
Scillieri supports partners and customers in Arizona. Syris enables agents and end users in the Central-South region.
Scielleri spent 18 years at Verizon Wireless in various roles. Syris has been at Oracle for the past five years in multiple sales positions.
High Wire Networks tapped longtime Black Box executive Don Schimidt to be the company’s new EVP of technology solutions. Schmidt was actually a High Wire client before the company hired him.
The company, which sells tech field services, staff augmentation and managed security exclusively through the channel, expects Schmidt’s experience as a customer to be “vital to ensuring a great CX going forward.”
Kevin Sorgi takes the reins as senior director, national channel at Zayo Group.
He spent the previous year-and-a-hlf at Spectrotel, but we bet you know him best from nearly 15 years at Granite, where hwas manager of market development and a channel sales manager.
Upstack, which bills itself as a direct sales agency, needs a bigger team to keep up with its flurry of agent acquisitions.
Some come directly from those companies Upstack is gobbling up.
Take, for instance, Mike Casagrande (left) and Mike Leonardi (upper right), who join the Upstack team from M2 Enterprise Group. The men worked as independent Bridgepointe Technologies agents before joining forces in 2018 to launch M2.
Read about these gentlemen and their company’s acquisition by Upstack, which specializes in UC, colocation, SD-WAN and more.
Also new to Upstack is Paula McKinnon (lower right), a Telarus alum who comes on as VP of vendor relations.
You can learn more about her here.
David Willis, who many in the channel know as a 28-year Microsoft executive, is now on Pax8‘s board of directors.
Willis has held a variety of senior sales and marketing leadership positions since joining Microsoft in 1992. Most recently, he was corporate VP for Microsoft’s U.S. One Commercial Partner group.
Andrew Wood signed on as a Nextiva sales specialist with D&H Distributing.
Before D&H, Wood spent many years with Ingram Micro and made a couple of other stops along the way.
Andrew Wood signed on as a Nextiva sales specialist with D&H Distributing.
Before D&H, Wood spent many years with Ingram Micro and made a couple of other stops along the way.
As Sally Field noted at the Oscars in 1995, “you really like me!” That’s how our Channel People on the Move segment – this month featuring Avant, VMware and Zayo – feels. You once again last month flocked to see the biggest new hires and promotions in the industry.
This month’s personnel moves cover the farthest edges and corners of the channel.
For instance, traditional telecom master agents and tech distributors are well represented here. Avant, Telarus and TBI all made noteworthy moves, from naming new channel managers to cloud specialists. D&H Distributing hired a specialist to work with the company’s Nextiva account.
SolarWinds, which has made news all year for the massive hack that infiltrated customers and government entities, didn’t fire anyone as a result. But it did make some new hires to beef up defenses.
The cable companies also got into the act. Cox Business gave a regular Channel Futures contributor a promotion. Furthermore, a company that works closely with cablecos to onboard MSPs, hired a senior director of strategic alliances.
If only we could include all of the channel’s new hires and promotions — but your passion for this recurring segment might break the internet! Our slideshow above features a few dozen people who climbed the ladder in May. Don’t forget — you can keep up with people on the move all month long on our page dedicated to the topic.
If you missed last month’s edition, it’s available here.
Want to contact the author directly about this story? Have ideas for a follow-up article? Email Craig Galbraith or connect with him on LinkedIn. |
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