WTG Restructures Staff for Cloud Opportunity

By Khali Henderson

Amid rumors of layoffs, master agency WTG has confirmed that it has been restructuring its workforce in order to reposition the company as a “connectivity services distributor” with a sales engineering focus in support of cloud-based network sales by its agents and VARs.

“Recently we did some organizational restructuring of a single digit [percentage] of our payroll to better position our company for our continued growth and support of our agent community,” said WTG CEO Vince Bradley in an email interview with Channel Partners.

In a follow-up interview, Salwa Scarpone, WTG’s vice president of marketing, said the master agency has maintained its headcount and is planning to hire additional employees. She would not elaborate on the specific numbers or departments impacted by the layoffs.

That said, Channel Partners reported last week that WTG executive Mark Sondergaard was named channel chief at Message Broadcast. WTG would not comment on the circumstances of his departure from the company; Sondergaard did not immediately return requests for comment.

As for the new hires, the company has added personnel in its sales, finance and marketing teams. Not all of these are brand-new, however. In November 2012, Susan Penevolpe joined as vice president of sales, and longtime WTG employee Jay Rubin was promoted to COO in March.

One of the new additions is Narine Chalumyan, who joins WTG as partner finance manager. In this role, she will manage several processes in the finance department and report to WTG CFO Jeremy Hopkins. Previously, Chalumyan held various financial management and analyst roles for companies including Bank of Manhattan, Ernst & Young and Comcast among others.

In addition, Kaitlin Mitchell joins WTG as marketing assistant reporting to Scarpone, bringing the department’s rolls to three. 

Scarpone said that WTG plans additional hires in the sales department for positions in the Malibu, Calif., office.

“This will help us to further pave the road for our juggernaut-planned channel progress in 2013 and beyond,” said CEO Bradley in regard to the personnel changes. “So to really sum it up, CCC [WTG’s parent company] is in a growth phase, and we are truly ecstatic about the great upgrades to come.”