Avant Hires Former XO Channel Chief

**Editor’s Note: Click here to see which channel people were on the move in February.**

Avant has hired Shane McNamara, formerly with XO Communications, as executive vice president of channel sales for the East.

McNamara and Jen Gallego, executive vice president of channel sales, will manage the company’s East and West territories, respectively, to grow its channel partner community and help accelerate sales of next-generation technologies, the company said.

McNamara tells Channel Partners he brings a “diverse background to the table.”

“I’ve worked with one of the largest VARs in the country, run a channel program and built an agent business from scratch,” he said. “Personally, I’m a very competitive person with a strong drive to win. I push myself even harder when working with our partners to do everything I can to help them win.”

McNamara previously served as Qology Direct’s senior vice president of business services. Before that, he was XO’s channel partner vice president, and CDW’s general manager for carrier sales.

At CDW, he led a division responsible for millions of dollars in annual sales. He also ran a $300 million telecommunications channel program at XO and built a channel-partner business from the ground up at Qology Direct.{ad}

“Ultimately, I want to support our partners as they are the heart and soul of this business,” McNamara said. “Every decision we make is to ensure our partners always have an edge to win the business they work hard to earn. We are also aggressively building out a cable and telco practice to enable the SD-WAN and hosted phone services market, a key initiative I will drive. To us, this goes hand in hand to ensure our partners can bring the entire solution to us.”

Avant has built an “incredible team that puts partners at the center of their strategy … everything from pricing, project management to engineering resources,” he said. The company’s channel strategy doesn’t need any changes, he said.

“People with deep knowledge in both the market and channel make Avant special,” said Ian Kieninger, Avant’s CEO. “Every day, our channel partners rely on our expertise to make them more effective in identifying and selling next-generation IT services. We look forward to Shane helping take Avant and our channel partners to the next level of channel sales enablement. Shane’s proven and relevant experience, and strong alignment with Avant’s mission and values, makes him an excellent choice for the future of Avant.”