Channel People on the Move: Vonage, Ingram Micro, Windstream, Rackspace, More
It's our biggest edition ever as so many of you started the year in a new job. Congratulations!
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‘Twas a busy month in the HR department at Pax8, the cloud distributor.
Left to right: New CTO Scott Chasin, who Pax8 says has spent his 30-year career as a “serial entrepreneur”; Elizabeth McIlhany, senior VP of product; Nikki Meyer, VP of global vendor alliances, who spent 15 years at Microsoft; and Caroline Goles, VP of digital sales strategy, whom you might also recognize from Microsoft.
8×8 was able to lure Lisa Del Real away from one of its rivals.
Del Real, most recently RingCentral’s VP of strategic partnerships, is now the new global channel chief at 8×8, the cloud and UC provider.
Interim chief Bobby Hall returns to his role with responsibility for 8×8’s channel program and team in North America. He will report to Del Real.
Read up on the changes at 8×8.
Two moves at tech services brokerage Telarus to tell you about.
Matt Heron (right), who is a veteran of Canada communications giants Shaw and Rogers, is Telarus’ new regional VP for Canada. He will work to develop relationships with both suppliers and sales partners.
See whom Heron replaced in Canada.
Meantime, Sean Kane is area VP of sales — East. He comes to Telarus from IntelePeer, where he spent eight-and-a-half years, most recently as SVP of channel sales.
TCG, the tech services brokerage, hired Carl Katz as its new executive VP of partner sales and chief operating officer.
Katz, perhaps best known for his role leading Nextiva’s channel, spent the past year with security company ThreatProtector.
Find out how Katz plans to use his experience to become a “strong conduit” between agents and vendors.
Jim O’Driscoll joins Sherweb after more than five years at MSP Commerx. He takes on the role of VP of sales at the cloud marketplace provider.
[Jim] has a passion for sales, deep business acumen and is highly customer-focused,” said Alain Brisson, Sherweb COO. We’ll be able to achieve great things with him on our executive leadership team.”
Gino Toromazote joins the team at SCB Global as director of sales for the Americas. He comes to the company after eight months at fellow Scottsdale, Arizona-based tech company Iron Mountain.
SCB Global is a Microsoft Teams integration specialist.
Safeguard Cyber, which you won’t be surprised is a security and compliance solution provider that operates in the channel, named Chris Lehman its new CEO.
The former executive at ExtraHop and FireEye joins the company “at a time of rapid growth and rising demand.”
Safeguard Cyber recently closed a $45 million funding round led by NightDragon.
That’s Mo Katibeh, whom you probably know from his big leadership role at AT&T. There, he was chief product officer and CMO for AT&T Business.
Now, Katibeh takes over as chief operating officer for RingCentral, where he will be responsible for the gamut, from products, sales and marketing, to customer experience.
Learn why he is “thrilled” to join the RingCentral team.
Some major shake-up at Rackspace, the managed cloud provider.
Within days of one another top channel leaders Michael Stephens and Lisa McLin left the company. The same day we got confirmation that McLin was out, we learned that Renee Taylor (right) would be taking her position as VP of global alliances and channel chief. Taylor most recently was with tech consulting giant Capgemini.
Vicki Patten (left), having worked in the Rackspace channel program since 2017, took Stephens’ role as director of channel sales and agent channel chief.
Learn more about the upheaval in Rackspace’s channel.
PlanetOne, which now calls itself a technology sourcing partner, promoted two of its best-known employees.
Chris Werpy (left) is now president, and Jake Schuman, son of founder and CEO Ted Schuman, takes the reins as senior vice president.
Werpy joined the PlanetOne team in 2020 after 13 years at Masergy. Schuman’s most recent position was general manager and vice president, overseeing PlanetOne’s offices in Orange County.
Get the full scoop on what these gents have been up to over the past year.
Jeff Benedetti is new on the job at security provider TitanHQ, where he is VP of sales, North America.
He most recently was with Skout Cybersecurity and spent four-and-a-half years prior to that at Datto.
Storage-as-a-service provider Zadara hired Tony Craythorne as chief revenue officer. His job will be to drive the adoption of the company’s Federated Edge program, grow its channel partnerships and expand Zadara’s edge cloud solutions to the enterprise.
He most recently was CEO of Bamboo Systems Group, but brings experience from Nexsan, Brocade and more as well.
Zadara says in his new role, Craythorne will leverage his expertise leading sales and channel programs for distruptive companies.
PerimeterX, the application security provider, made a number of appointments, including AJ Stahl as chief revenue officer. He is responsible for go-to-market execution and sales momentum by growing revenue, customers and the company’s partner ecosystem.
His last job was VP of North American sales at Signifyd.
There’s a new channel leader at Onapsis, the application security and compliance company.
It’s Rocco Donnino, senior VP of global strategic alliances and channels at the company. He has more than 20 years of experience, with his last job being EVP of strategic alliances at Unbound Security, where he supported the company’s acquisition by Coinbase.
His other gigs have been at Titan HQ, McAfee, Microsoft and more.
Observe.AI, the provider of artificial intelligence for contact centers, added three veterans of Talkdesk and Mitel to its channel team.
Left to right: Tony Burns, director of channel sales; Heather Riley, head of channel marketing; and Scott Eastman, director of channel sales. In addition to Talkdesk and Mitel, the trio has various experience at Integra, Nice InContact, Momentum, NetFortris and more.
Here‘s where to learn more about them.
Samantha Jacks just landed at channel upstart Upstack as VP of commissions operations. She will lead the commissions team, support the revenue life cycle for advisers, tech suppliers and their shared business customers.
Jacks has worked in commissions for 15 years, with the majority of her career at Intelisys, where she held a variety of positions.
The European channel has been active with personnel moves early in the year, and at some big names, to boot.
Take Miriam Murphy, who left Tech Data to take over as CEO of NTT Europe. Her job is to drive NTT’s European sales and business development organizations and extend customer partnerships.
Read why NTT’s global CEO says Murphy is a terrific fit for the company.
Nitel founders Rick Stern and Ron Grason stepped aside from the leadership roles at Nitel after announcing a private equity investment. That paved the way for Margi Shaw (pictured) to take over as CEO.
It’s a promotion from her role as chief operating officer.
Shaw has been with the Chicago-based company since 2020. Past employers include Comcast Business and First Communications.
Nitel also promoted Mikail Shomade to chief operating officer and Mark Dickey to chief revenue officer.
Read more about what’s up at Nitel.
Nfinit, the database management company, named Bradley Craig to the post of director of channel sales.
The 13-year industry veteran has worked primarily with cloud and managed service providers, most notably Insight, No. 1 on the 2021 Channel Futures MSP 501.
He also spent time at Veeam, the backup, recovery and data management provider.
Read what Craig had to say about great partnerships in his career.
After six years at Splunk, most recently as area VP of global partner marketing and experience with the company, it’s off to Datto for Brooke Cunningham, where she is chief marketing officer.
Cunningham says she joined the MSP technology company based on the company’s “core values, partner-first approach and commitment to the MSP community.”
She told us how she will be working with partners.
Cybersecurity company Cynet named a new VP of sales, EMEA (Andy Wright, left), and chief revenue officer, Mark Fullbrook.
Wright has 25 years of experience in sales leadership. He built and managed direct and channel sales teams at Websense (now ForcePoint), Ivanti and Check Point.
Fullbrook led worldwide and American sales at IntSights and CyberArk before joining the Cynet team.
We told you earlier about Miriam Murphy vacating her role at Tech Data to become CEO of NTT Europe.
Naturally Tech Data (still known as Tech Data across the pond, not TD Synnex) needed to her fill her spot. So they turned to Jason Boxall, a five-year company employee who becomes SVP, advanced and specialized solutions, EMEA. Boxall has experience from Cisco as well.
Read more about his background.
The same day we told you how tech services distributor TBI had taken the step to refuse private equity funding, we let you know about two new hires.
Grayson Throckmorton (left) starts his second stint at TBI, having been there from 2017-19. His new job is VAR inside channel manager. He will recruit VARs and MSPs nationwide.
Also new is Hunter Owens (right), who spent the last three years at Lumen. As channel manager, he will work with agents in Texas, Kansas, Oklahoma and Arkansas.
Not pictured, but promoted by TBI is Pete Miserendino, now omnicenter director of sales.
After recent runs at LogMeIn, Fuze and Ujet, Cristina Morrell is on board with Coro, the cyber protection company, as a national channel account manager.
Her most recent role was regional channel sales manager at Ujet.
Matthew Koenig just landed the VP of channel development role at ThreatAdvice, which offers a vCISO cybersecurity platform.
Koenig has had a series of roles in sales and channel over the years at the likes of Curricula, Secure Now and RapidFire Tools.
Next-gen tech distributor Avant hired Doug McWilliams (left) as an inside channel manager and Phil Chandler as senior channel leader.
McWilliams will support the Central region. He previously was a senior channel manager at NetWolves, handling the Southeast.
Chandler comes to Avant from Talkdesk, but his long career also includes stops at Telarus, Mitel and XO Communications.
Hybrid IT solutions provider CoreSite named Juan Font its new president and senior vice president of American Tower, CoreSite’s parent company.
American Tower wrapped its acquisition of CoreSite at the end of 2021.
Font is tasked with leading CoreSite’s strategy, innovation and growth while delivering value to customers, partners and shareholders. He’s been with CoreSite for 11-and-a-half years following more than five years at Equinix.
CoreSite also named nine other people to a restructured executive team post-acquisition.
Ira Feuerstein became the third big channel name to leave Nextiva in the past six months, though all seemingly for different reasons.
Feuerstein, who was the company’s director of partner experience/evangelist, publicly announced his resignation via LinkedIn. His profile says he’s now an independent channel partner consultant, saying that he wants to “build his own legacy.”
His exit follows this month’s departure of channel marketing leader Jeff Turner, and chief revenue officer Eric Martorano last August.
Get the full story.
Ten-year Comcast Business veteran Maureen McAneny O’Connell just got promoted to senior director, national partner sales. Her previous role was director of partner sales for the Northeast.
She was with NetCarrier and Verizon before her run at Comcast Business.
CloudCheckr, now a NetApp company, hired Matt Jordan as director of global partner development.
Jordan is no stranger to CloudCheckr, having worked at JHC Technology (a CloudCheckr partner, now Effectual) for eight years.
CloudCheckr offers a total visibility cloud management platform.
Brendan Dolan is the new CFO at CloudBolt Software, which automates, optimizes and governs hybrid cloud, multi-tool environments for enterprises.
Dolan’s last gig was CFO of CloudCheckr, which NetApp recently acquired.
CloudBolt’s partner ecosystem includes technology vendors, cloud solution partners, delivery and implementation partners, and MSPs.
Matt Somerlot is a new strategic partner manager at Bitsight, the cybersecurity company.
He had been at AT&T, and before that, Bell South, since 1999, in a variety of positions. The latest was lead product marketing manager.
Doug Ochs will lead partnerships and alliances for Ostendio, the provider of integrated risk management software. His job is to expand on the success of Ostendio’s Auditor Connect program, which helps security auditors and Ostendio customers to connect within the MyVCM platform to manage their security programs and complete complex security audits.
Ochs co-founded Fortrex Technologies, which was acquired by Drummond Group in 2018.
Beyond Identity, which offers “invisible” multifactor authentication, turned to cybersecurity industry veteran Bill Hogan as chief revenue officer. He will lead the company’s worldwide sales team and further fuel growth and expansion into Asia and Latin America.
Hogan’s career includes stops at EMC, NetApp, Fortinet and SecurityScorecard.
After 24 years at Mitel, Jason Yorn made the move to Avaya as director of channel sales for the company. His last position with Mitel was regional VP, channel sales, which he held for the past four years.
Growing Portland, Oregon-based agency Athenium Technology promoted Allison Muñiz-Bain to director of sales and operations. She previously was an account support manager.
Catherine Garrett made the move from Datto to Armor, where she is the new channel engagement manager.
Her last role in nearly six years at Datto was project manager, marketing. On LinkedIn, she wrote that “driving strategy around MSP events and community is where my passion lies and I am very excited to bring my experience and enthusiasm for MSP event to the … channel engagement team at Armor.”
You probably know Randy Jeter from his 11-and-a-half years at RapidScale, where he was CEO and co-founder. Now he is chief strategy officer at ARG, the cloud, communications and security provider.
Security operations company Arctic Wolf appointed Dan Schiappa to the role of chief product office. He has 20 years of experience at such companies as Sophos, RSA and Microsoft.
Most recently chief product officer at Sophos, Schiappa will be responsible for driving Arctic Wolf’s innovation strategy as it grows and expands products to new markets.
Barb Huelskamp just took over as senior VP of global partners and alliances at Alteryx, the analytics automation company.
Her most recent job was at AWS, leading ISV go-to-market accelration and public sector programs.
You probably last saw Genesis Lee at Kore, where she spent five years, most recently as VP of channel sales.
While there, she took a passion for the customer experience and “transformed it into a full-fledged initiative,” the company said, when she launched “Customer Success at Kore” in 2018.
As a result, she’s taken the role of VP of customer service at Allbound, the PRM software provider.
“I’m thrilled to leverage my experience leading channel sales to help our customers drive meaningful engagement in their partner programs,” said Lee.
The new COO at AireSpring is Russell Shipley. He comes from TPx, where he was COO after 15 years at the company.
Before that, he did time at Mpower, Global Crossing, Frontier and more.
Learn more about Shipley’s background.
Abundant IoT, the startup founded last year by WTG founder Vince Bradley, has a new VP of operations.
Lindsay Anastasio will plan, direct and oversee operations for the company, “ensuring development and implementation of efficient operations.”
Anastasio comes from Wall Street, where she spent 15 years of her career. She will report directly to Bradley.
Adrian Jones takes the lead as chief revenue officer at ABBYY, which bills itself as a digital intelligence company. He is a veteran of HP, Oracle, Symantec and more.
Jones will spearhead the company’s global go-to-market strategy to continue ABBYY’s aggressive growth, with an emphasis on intelligence process automation
Dialpad, known for AI-powered communication and collaboration, named Prashanti Aduma its first chief information officer. Her job will be to advance the company’s core business systems, data and security framework.
Aduma comes to Dialpad from Salesforce where she was senior director of enterprise services. Her career also includes stops at Vlocity and VMware.
Data center services provider Equinix named Jon Lin its new executive VP and general manager of … data center services. It’s a newly created role for the company.
It’s a promotion for Lin, who has been serving as president of the Americas at Equinix.
He has been with the company for almost 13 years.
Robert Latronica is the new VP of business development at FlexIP Solutions, which sells custom managed communications services.
Latronica joins FlexIP after nine yars at The LLB Group, a tech consulting firm specializing in managed IT.
Seasoned channel and sales executive Ben Chou is the VP of sales and business development at Forty8Fifty Labs, the provider of collaboration, IT service management and DevOps solutions.
Veristor is Forty8FiftyLabs’ parent company.
Chou most recently was senior director of global alliances and business development at Contegix, where he was responsible for global channel strategy, sales leadership and channel strategy.
Danielle McKnight’s new job is channel program sales manager at Granite, the business communications provider.
She comes to Granite from CorpCom Exhibits & Events, where she was a senior event and account executive.
Ken Bisnoff, who just about everyone in the channel knows from his co-founding TPx (formerly TelePacific), joined GTT Communications as its channel chief.
Bisnoff, who had been consulting with EagleTEQ Advisors, becomes the company’s SVP and channel chief.
He joins the team just a few months after GTT filed for chapter 11 bankruptcy protection.
GTT specializes in multilocation, multinational companies and says its SD-WAN offerings are a differentiator.
Find out more about where GTT is headed.
Meantime, Sherry Staiger is another key addition to GTT’s channel team. Her title is director of channel sales.
Staiger has experience from Cogent, Time Warner Cable, Global Crossing and more.
It’s a promotion for Katherine Peltz, now partner sales manager at Innovative Business Solutions. She was a sales support manager with the company for a year-and-a-half before the move up.
She also has experience from Comcast Business and MarketSource.
The merger of Tech Data and Synnex last year changes the distribution game for the major players.
Paul Bay, new CEO of Ingram Micro, is up for the challenge now that he is stepping into the CEO role at the distribution giant.
He replaces Alain Monié, who is stepping down after more than 10 years in the top spot.
Bay’s appointment comes six months after Ingram Micro was acquired by Platinum Equity. He was president of the Americas for five-and-a-half years before landing this promotion.
Intel learned the longtime leader of its client computing group, Gregory Bryant, would be leaving the company. He joined the chip maker as an electrical engineer 30 years ago.
Stepping into his role is Michelle Johnston Holthaus. She has been with the company for 25 years, most recently as executive VP and general manager for sales and marketing in Intel’s Communications Group.
If you want to know more about Holthaus moving up the ladder, it’s here.
Intelisys made a couple of key moves in January.
Chandler Legarreta (left) joins the company as senior VP of sales, making the jump from 8×8, just as his boss, president John DeLozier did, a few months ago. Legarreta will lead Intelisys’ field and inside sales teams.
Meantime, Michael Sterl, shifts to SVP of partner success. He will oversee operations, partner compensation and commissions.
Eric Stark left satellite provider Viasat after six years to become VP of channel engagement, enterprise connect, with Mavenir, a network software provider.
His job is to introduce Mavenir’s CCaaS, CPaaS and messageing services to the channel. It’s a new position at the company.
ISC2, the nonprofit association of certified cybersecurity pros, named three new execs.
Left to right: John Giddings, VP of global customer experience; James Prather, VP of global marketing; and Jon France, chief information security officer. France most recently was head of industry security for GSMA.
Two moves at Jenne, which now identifies itself as a cloud services brokerage, of note.
On the right, that’s Suzette Barrera, who is a new senior partner manager covering the West Coast. She has experience from Zoom, Intrado, Avaya and PGi.
That’s Jonas Lehman on the left, also a senior partner manager. He has the Central region. He comes from Spectrum where he was a national partner development manager in the Midwest.
Look who’s new at LogMeIn.
That’s Mike Hines on the left, who joins the team as VP, North America channel & MSP. He will oversee the rollout of a new resell program and team for LogMeIn’s LastPass business. He is an alumnus of Okta, Oracle, Akamai and more.
Kristi McCaslin is a LogMeIn newbie, senior director of partner management to lead the regional partner team in the West. She spent the last eight years at Mitel.
Corey Cohen, the TBI alum who spent a few months at Intermedia, has moved to MetTel, the voice, network, cloud and mobility provider.
As VP of channel marketing, Cohen will support channel partners by overseeing programs for education, awareness and resource-sharing.
Learn more about Cohen’s goals for her MetTel tenure.
Elizabeth Hildreth just got promoted to VP of marketing at Momentum Telecom.
A six-and-a-half year veteran of the company, her last position was director of revenue marketing. Before that, she worked for Alteva/WVT, which Momentum acquired in 2015.
Netreo, which offers the market IT infrastructure and observability solutions, made two key appointments.
That’s Josh Chessman on the left. He takes the newly created position of VP of products. He most recently was senior director, analyst for research firm Gartner.
On the right is Melissa Phillips, VP of product management for the company. With 30 years of experience, she has worked for PRTM, Starlight Networks, Novell, Cisco, Intel and Intuit.
Former Infrascale CEO Russell Reeder has moved over to Netrix, the provider of managed and professional IT and cybersecurity provider, in the same position.
The 25-year veteran of IT also has experience at a number of other companies, including Oracle and GoDaddy.
Longtime Tech Data vet Joe Quaglia just took the reins as president of IT and managed service provider Trace3. He will work along regional sales teams to expand sales and solution capabilities to support Trace3 clients and partners.
Trace3 provides consultation services and advanced technical solutions.
Learn more about why Quaglia made the move.
Brian Marlier is now the chief revenue officer at Virsec, the cybersecurity company. He is responsible for all aspects of revenue performance and will oversee all go-to-market and revenue-generating activities.
Virsec last year announced a $100 million funding round. The Virsec partner program offers sales tools, marketing resources, training and certification, and more.
Marlier is the former CEO and co-founder of Focal Point Data Risk, which he sold to CDW last year. He was previously at Cisco for 21 years.
Expected to lead the “next evolution” of the Windstream Enterprise channel program is Rob Westervelt. You know him for his long tenure in the channel at the likes of GTT, NTT America, Broadview Networks and XO Communications.
Westervelt talked to us about his new role in this Q&A.
Lynn Tinney (right) is the new channel chief at Zayo, the network solutions provider. She most recently was VP of global channels at Brightcove, the video hosting company. Her channel experience also includes stints at Opaq, Cisco and Riverbed.
“I look forward to leading our channel sales team with a collaborative strategy based on due diligence, data and a culture that welcomes change,” Tinney said.
See what else she’ll be up to.
Also on the move at Zayo is new senior channel manager Jessica Powell (left). She has prior experience at Entelegent Solutions, Effortless Office, Nitel and more.
Noting on LinkedIn that her career at Mitel ended “unexpectedly” after the company’s partnership with RingCentral, Carly Hoehn started a new job at Zoom. There, she is enterprise partner programs manager.
Hoehn was at Mitel for two-and-a-half years.
John Knettles takes on a new job as market director, channel sales, Florida, at Vonage.
You might know him from Zoom, his last stop in his 20-year career in the industry. But he also spent almost 13 years at Windstream/Paetec.
Guy Cunningham is the new VP of channel sales at ClearData, which specializes in data privacy and security in the health care industry.
Cunningham most recently was SVP of channels and alliances at Netsurion. He also has experience from Symantec and Veritas.
Guy Cunningham is the new VP of channel sales at ClearData, which specializes in data privacy and security in the health care industry.
Cunningham most recently was SVP of channels and alliances at Netsurion. He also has experience from Symantec and Veritas.
This could be the one that breaks the internet. We recorded a staggering number of you who got promoted or took new jobs to start the year.
We heard from you via press releases. Some of you sent us email notifications. Our team scoured social media. The result was a record-breaking 89 channel people on the move for January.
They ranged from a new channel chief at 8×8 to a new CEO at distribution giant Ingram Micro. All of the largest technology solutions brokerages (fka master agents) are represented here.
Security giants, managed service providers — we left out no business type and left no stone unturned.
So now we’ll just get out of the way. Check out our slideshow above for the amazing number of your peers who started 2022 in a big way.
When you’re done, if you missed it coming out of the holiday season, here’s our list of channel people on the move in December. It featured moves at Intelisys, Zoom, McAfee, SolarWinds and more. Also, don’t forget you can see who’s on the move 24/7 on our webpage dedicated to this topic.
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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