Garrett Gee Out at Lumen; Dave Young to Oversee Indirect Team

Garrett Gee is leaving his position as Lumen Technologies‘ channel chief as the service provider revamps its indirect leadership.

Gee’s indirect sales team will now report to Dave Young, who has moved into a new role at the company. Lumen appointed Young as senior vice president of strategic sales. Young in turn will report to Ed Morche, president of North America enterprise and public sector.

Garrett Gee

Lumen did not detail the reason for Gee’s departure, and he has not responded to a request for comment.

“Garrett will be leaving the business,” a Lumen spokesperson told Channel Futures. “We wish Garrett the best in his future endeavors and thank him for his contributions to Lumen. Garrett’s current team will report to Dave, effective immediately.”

Gee’s tenure leading the Lumen Channel Partner Program goes all the way back to the CenturyLink and even Level 3 Communications. Gee started working as Level 3’s channel chief in 2013. When CenturyLink acquired Level 3 in 2017 he split leadership duties with John DeLozier. Gee took sole responsibility for the CenturyLink Channel Partner Program in 2018 when DeLozier left for 8×8.

Telarus’ Richard Murray

Telarus chief operating officer Richard Murray, who has been partnering with Gee for more than a decade in the channel, called him a “true channel ally.” In particular, Gee led partners through numerous integrations and advocated for Lumen to bring back channel integration.

“He navigated personalities,” Murray told Channel Futures. “There’s been a whole bunch of system changes and evolution.”

Longtime Veteran

Dave Young most recently worked as Lumen’s senior vice president of public sector and global hyperscale business.

Lumen’s Dave Young

His new reportees include Lumen’s indirect team and Lumen’s system integrator, hyperscaler and digital ventures groups.

“Our indirect channel is a critical part of Lumen’s enterprise revenue growth strategy. Delivering a dynamic customer experience to the partner community and to their customers is one of the primary drivers of partner trust, net new revenue opportunities and long-term revenue growth,” Lumen stated.

Young has worked at Lumen/CenturyLink/Level 3 for nearly 30 years. Young, like Gee, came up from the Level 3 side of the business. He started his career at AT&T in 1987 and worked his way up to senior program manager. Then he began a five-year stint at AT&T-spinoff Lucent Technology in 1995. He turned to Lucent-spinoff Avaya in 2000, where he helped introduce a new indirect sales model. He landed at Level 3 in 2002, working in federal markets. His labors resulted in multiple promotions, including vice president of federal markets and senior vice president of public sector.

Richard Murray said that although Young does not possess a hefty channel resumé, he carries deep respect internally at Lumen. And that respect might pay big dividends for partners.

“He helped champion some pretty successful programs in other areas of the organization that had been weaknesses,” Murray told Channel Futures. “I think he’s seen as a change-agent.”

Murray said he has seen a positive response from partners about Young.

“He’s a guy that ‘gets it,’ that is highly strategic and super willing to listen and help drive the channel toward future success,” Murray said.

Big Changes

On Tuesday, Lumen announced the sale of its ILEC business in 20 states to the private equity firm Apollo Management Group. A spokesperson told Channel Futures that the ILEC divestiture and the leadership change are not related.

Lumen’s second quarter business revenues decreased from the first quarter. Large enterprise dropped from $937 million to $931 million, and midmarket dropped from $755 million to $682 million. Lumen’s total revenue ($4.9 billion) was down 5% from last year’s second quarter. Lumen did, however, post an adjusted EBITDA of $2.1 billion that improved slightly over the second quarter of 2020.

Chief financial officer Neel Dev said compute and application services are helping Lumen find traction amid declining IP and data services demand.

“Our overall business segment revenue performance continued to be impacted by delayed decision-making by enterprise customers in the current environment,” Dev told investors. “While year-over-year comparisons this quarter were affected by the pandemic-related surge in voice services last year, we are seeing stabilization in sequential trends.”