Intelisys Alum Michael Sterl Joins Bridgepointe in New COO Role

Charlesbank-backed Bridgepointe Technologies has tapped former Intelisys executive Michael Sterl to lead operations for the technology advisory firm.

Bridgepointe on Monday announced the appointment of Sterl, known for his work as an operator on the supplier side at the channel and most recently as as senior vice president of partner success and revenue ops for ScanSource’s Intelisys. Sterl in his new job will oversee the experience of the company’s employees and strategists (partners). That includes leadership over the back office, with Sterl overseeing sales operations, systems and tools.

Bridgepointe’s Michael Sterl

Bridgepointe executives hailed Sterl as an important hire to steer the company’s operations as the company continues to scale.

Bridgepointe’s Scott Evars

“We’re thrilled to have Michael join our leadership team as we continue to scale Bridgepointe and consistently improve across all business areas,” said Bridgepointe CEO Scott Evars, to whom Sterl will report. “Michael’s skills and experiences uniquely qualify him to help lead us into the future. The level of talent we’ve been able to attract is a true testament to our mission of being the go-to choice for tech leaders committed to delivering measurable business results.”

Bridgepoint has hired multiple high-profile channel executives since Charlesbank Capital Partners invested in the company in 2022. That includes former Intelisys leaders Jamaal Savwoir, who leads Bridgepointe’s CX division, and Carol Beering, who leads integration.

“Bridgepointe’s growth trajectory in recent years has been impressive, and they’re building something truly new and different in the industry,” said Michael Sterl, Bridgepointe Technologies. “I’m excited to join the team to keep building the nation’s leading tech advisory firm and creating the best strategist and employee experience in the entire industry.”

A New Job for Michael Sterl

Bridgepointe has created an entirely new role for Sterl.

The chief officer officer job parcels out several areas that chief strategy officer Scot Kinka has been overseeing as chief strategy officer. Kinka, who joined Bridgepointe in spring 2022, has overseen operations, marketing, suppliers, engineering and corporate strategy.

Now Kinka will focus on the later four areas as Sterl heaps up all operations.

Bridgepointe’s Scott Kinka

Kinka said it made sense to add a COO, as there are increasingly more operations to run at Bridgepointe. Bridgepointe has grown its employee count from 43 to close to 200 over the course of a year. The company has also tripled its revenue, he said.

Kinka said Michael Sterl possesses an extensively knowledge of how to run a channel-focused company.

“He’s a guy who has an incredibly good feel for what’s going on. It doesn’t take him long to learn. He can have a conversation, cut to the chase and know where the answer is,” Kinka told Channel Futures.

Kinka said Sterl’s knowledge will be especially useful at a company runs a back office like Bridgepointe’s. While Bridgepointe executives don’t label the company as a tech services distributor (TSD), as it is end-user-facing, the company does process commissions from its supplier partners on behalf of its IT strategist. Kinka said Sterl has worked in the RPM system that most TSDs use to collect and dispense commissions.

“If you think about being able to cut to the chase in terms of streamlining our operations, providing better information to our strategists on their own bases so they can be more effective, is there a better guy? He’s been on the supplier side, and sold through TSDs and partners. He’s had a job as an operator inside of a supplier and also done all of that at a TSD, and he was directly responsible for, among other things, the system that’s been used from a commissions perspective. He just knows it. We just want to pull out the insights to make everybody more successful,” Kinka said.

Kinka also pointed to Sterl’s analytics focus. Prior to joining Intelisys, Sterl co-founded data and analytics companies Carve Digital and Cloud Optik, which provided insights to channel partners. Kinka said harnessing data will help Bridgepointe as it continues to grow.

“His superpower is in taking all the architecture that’s going on and just honing down into, ‘Where are the numbers? What’s working? What’s not working? What to do more of? What to do less of? What to clean up? He’s an analytics guru,” Kinka said.