Aryaka’s Craig Patterson: Creating a New Kind of Leadership
Channel Influencer of the Year Patterson is the sum of all the influencers he’s worked with during his career.
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When Craig Patterson made the big jump from his employer of nearly two decades, the people he needed came with him.
For Patterson, now senior vice president of global channels at Aryaka Networks, leaving Lumen Technologies meant a chance to make his own mark on the channel. It also gave him a chance to put into practice years of observing and modeling a deep bench of leaders.
And in the early days after he joined Aryaka, the biggest validation of his leadership skills was seeing individuals pack up and join him at the SASE provider.
“For people to leave these secure jobs they’ve had for quite some time just to make this leap of faith and follow me to where there’s a lot of uncertainty and a lot unknown was a major inflection point,” Patterson tells Channel Futures.
Recently promoted from leading Aryaka’s North America channel strategy to leading their global channels, Patterson has his work cut out for him. One might have said the same thing when he joined Aryaka in late 2021. Important relationships with TSDs had fallen apart. On the recommendation of consultant Curt Allen, Aryaka decided to select a new channel leader.
A Personal Rebranding
Patterson was working as division vice president at Lumen Technologies when the opportunity arose. He was already pondering a new venture, anxious to revamp his brand.
“I’d been known for a long time as this Lumen telco dude. I wanted to start rebranding my own personal brand in the market into more of a technologist around new and emerging trends, products and solutions,” he says.
Patterson found himself leaning toward Aryaka’s market opportunity. He also felt that their employee and partner experience would lend itself to the recruitment efforts he would be doing.
“I wanted to find a company that had an unbelievable and unrivaled experience I could stand behind,” he says.
But the opportunity came with its own uncertainties — in part from joining a vendor whose channel footprint needed serious retooling.
He spoke with some of his closest partner contacts, including Bridgepointe’s Brian Miller, about what they thought, and they agreed with him about Aryaka’s market opportunity.
Although the opportunity would take him out of his corporate home of nearly 20 years and lead him into uncharted waters, Patterson decided he was ready to embrace change.
“If you’re not uncomfortable, you’ve become complacent, and you’re really not moving forward in life,” Patterson said.
A Revamp
Patterson started identifying Aryaka’s North American channel gaps upon his arrival at the company. The company needed to establish itself as truly channel-centric, and it needed to reposition its sales team.
The channel investment started with people — national channel managers and directors and an operations director who brought credibility in the TSD channel.
The company invested to brand itself in the TSD ecosystem where Patterson said the goal was “creating as much noise as I possibly could” on social media and at events.