Lumen Channel Leader Dave Young Retiring

Dave Young, who has overseen the Lumen channel partner program for the last two years, is hanging up his cleats after a multi-decade career in the telecommunications space.

Young, Lumen’s senior vice president of indirect channel and mid markets, will retire at the end of June. Lumen noted in a statement that Young is stepping aside in order to spend more time with family and friends.

Lumen’s Dave Young

“Words cannot properly describe how honored I am to have had the opportunity to recently lead the remarkable Indirect Team at Lumen and to do business with you — our amazing channel partners,” Young said in the statement. “Our partners are the future of Lumen. The company’s focus on enabling your success and our joint sales growth is greater than ever. Lumen’s commitment to and investment in the channel has never been stronger.”

Lumen regional vice president of indirect channel Sara Seegers remains in her position, but she no longer reports to Young. As of June 1 Seegers reports to Jay Barrows, Lumen’s executive vice president of enterprise sales and public sector. Channel partners will know Seegers for her role in heading up the company’s relationship with technology services distributors (TSDs).

Lumen’s Sara Seegers

Barrows, who joined Lumen in February 2023, thanked Young for his tenure at Lumen.

“Dave has dedicated his career to serving our customers – and their missions and goals – with tremendous energy, enthusiasm, foresight and acumen. His strategic approach enabled us to significantly grow and take market share in several key parts of our business, including the public sector and indirect routes to market.”

Lumen’s Jay Barrows

Young worked at companies that now comprise Lumen since 2002. He started at Level 3 Communications working in business development for the federal sector. He went on to work with customers in the Department of Defense and ultimately assumed the role of vice president of federal markets. He was serving as regional vice president of Level 3’s government markets group at around the time the company merged with CenturyLink in 2017. He continued his leadership on CenturyLink’ government side, taking on the role of senior vice president of public sector. He eventually added the global hyperscale business to that job description.

CenturyLink rebranded its enterprise to Lumen in 2020.

When Lumen channel leader Garrett Gee left the company in summer 2021, Dave assumed oversight of indirect sales.

Over the last two years, Young’s title has shifted. His latest title of senior vice president of mid markets and indirect channel reflected the company’s movement to create a national mid market organization.

“When our new senior leadership team arrived, they overemphasized the desire to operate in the mid markets, and they’ve provided a variety of resources in a couple of different places where in previous Lumen life, there wasn’t as much focus around it. It was handled in our general management model,” Young said earlier this year. “It was natural to pull the mid markets direct team up to a national sales unit and marry it together with me and Sara.

Young pushed for increased digitization in his tenure leading indirect sales. The company also rolled out numerous incentives for partners in the TSD space. And Young told Channel Futures in his last interview with the publication that Lumen partners have been moving into larger, more complex deals.

“The partners are beginning to move in different places in the market, and they’re beginning to move up-market. They’re beginning to have more and more relationships at the Fortune 500 level,” Young said in March.

Young worked for AT&T, Lucent and Avaya before coming to Level 3.

Ed Morche, to whom Young has reported, retired from his position as president  of North America enterprise and public sector in April.