Former PAETEC Channel Chief Donna Wenk Lands New Role

**Editor’s Note:


Click here



to see which channel people were on the move in February and March.**

Former PAETEC channel chief Donna Wenk has resurfaced at Broadview Networks, in the same role.

Wenk, whose official title is vice president of alternate sales, comes to Broadview after a year away from the competitive services world. She worked for PAETEC when it was bought by Windstream in 2011, but Windstream cut jobs. Over the last year, while waiting out her non-compete clause, Wenk consulted for 10n2, an app company backed by former PAETEC CEO Arunas Chesonis.

In the meantime, one of Wenk’s PAETEC colleagues, Mario DeRiggi, had landed a plum role with Broadview. In March, DeRiggi joined the company as executive vice president, responsible for indirect, direct and wholesale channels. DeRiggi told Wenk that if he got the Broadview job, he was going to bring her on to run the channel.

On Thursday, Broadview announced that’s exactly what has happened. Wenk has taken over for Rob Westervelt, who now will focus all his time on the non-traditional, mega partnerships with OEMs and other suppliers that Broadview is finding lucrative.

That means Wenk will oversee all channel managers and support. One of her goals is to double the size of Broadview’s channel and its channel revenue.

“So we’ve got a lot of channel managers I’d like to fill in the next 30-90 days, ideally earlier,” she said.

Broadview is keen to add those personnel in Baltimore, northern Virginia, Philadelphia and King of Prussia, Penn., as well as New Jersey and Washington, D.C.

Wenk also is creating a new group that she expects to contribute to sales growth. It’s an up-selling/renewal team for agent-sourced deals.

“Broadview hasn’t done it historically but PAETEC did it to help with customer retention, and it fostered goodwill with partners,” Wenk said.

Commissions on those renewals are not expected to go down.

“We want to maintain the integrity of the agent program, so this is a value-add, not a takeaway for the agents,” said Wenk.

Wenk’s overall aim is to boost Broadview’s channel revenue.

“The channel has had a nice reputation at Broadview,” she said. “It’s been about one-third of their sales. We would like to expand that.”

To kick off the process, Broadview is taking a road show to partners in Boston, New York and Philadelphia next month. Broadview CEO Mike Robinson will deliver a “state of the union” address, and DeRiggi and Wenk will discuss their plans for the channel. On top of that, Wenk intends to re-start Broadview’s agent advisory board, which died out a few years ago. That effort should go live this fall, and Wenk plans to have a range of agents in the roster.

“There will probably be some of our best and most loyal agents, and probably some we’re not getting much business with, because they have some reason, so we’ll get some diversity,” she said.