Channel People on the Move: AT&T, Sprint, Telarus, Broadvoice, More
- Written by Craig Galbraith
- March 31, 2020
The whole world seemed to grind to a halt in the past few weeks, but there are still people on the move to tell you about.
A fixture in the channel at AT&T decided to hang it up, paving the way for another longtime veteran to take his place.
As usual, the human resources departments at master agents were busy — most notably Telarus and PlanetOne.
Click through the gallery below to see some of the biggest hires and promotions the channel had to offer in March.
Then, if you just can’t get enough people on the move, check out last month’s edition that featured fine folks at Fusion Connect, TPx, Intelisys and more. Remember that you can always keep tabs on people on the move by visiting our webpage dedicated to the topic.
Follow executive editor @Craig_Galbraith on Twitter.

Kevin Leonard (right), who spent a remarkable 40 years at AT&T, is retiring, paving the way for Will Harvey to take over as head of the carrier's Alliance Channel.
Leonard had already been with the company for 27 years when he was tapped as VP of alternate channels in 2008. Harvey most recently was VP of network integration for AT&T services and was services director for AT&T Solutions. He's been with the company for more than 30 years.
Learn more about the leadership transition.

Joe Edwards (left) is a new channel manager for Sprint in northern Florida, focused on helping partners drive mobility and IoT sales in that market. It's a promotion for Edwards, who has been with Sprint for nearly 10 years.
Ryan Yahrmatter is the telco's new head of channel sales. He will lead the company's three national channel sales programs, each of which will serve the channel with "a more simplified approach." He has been with the company for more than 20 years. Yahrmatter will continue to report to Amy Rintamaki, the company's channel chief.

Jake Schuman (left) just got promoted at master agent PlanetOne, where he previously was director of sales for strategic accounts. Now he is vice president.
Jason Morris is a new hire at PlanetOne, in the role of senior solutions engineer. He is an alumnus of XO and Masergy.
Get to know these gents.

Reinvent Telecom, the provider of private-labeled UC and CCaaS solutions, gives us a slew of new hires and promotions that would put the Brady Bunch opening to shame.
Clockwise from top left are: Shawn Crespo, product specialist; Chris Tucker, director of network management; William Tucker, VoIP engineer who comes to Reinvent from CenturyLink; Nicholas Makil, number portability specialist; Jeff Kramarczyk, product manager with experience at Fairpoint and Windstream; and Doug Moyer, channel manager who most recently was with CoreDial.
Get the full scoop on these hires and promotions.

Stacy Nethercoat, well known in the channel for more than 20 years at Tech Data, has a new position at the distributor. She was just promoted to SVP of Tech Data Cloud Solutions Americas.
The disti says Nethercoat's accomplishments include being instrumental in creating a hybrid cloud strategy for partners; expanding Tech Data's cloud partner base by more than 20% in the past year; and helping to introduce integrated "click-to-run" solutions to speed partners' time to market and reduce costs.

Taylor Klevins comes to the master agent from Serenova, which is proving to be a popular precursor for working at Telarus.
Klevins will serve as senior partner development manager for northern California. Before her stint at Serenova, Klevins spent nine years as partner experience manager for Intelisys.
Read more about Klevins and Telarus' new partnership with Sonic.

iBoss, the cloud security company, tapped Nikesh Kalra (left), previously of Palo Alto Networks, as its new chief strategy officer. He'll be responsible for developing go-to-market plans heavily focused on partner programs and strategic alliances.
Also new at iBoss is Ryan O'Connell, VP of channel sales and alliances. In O'Connell's last job, he was responsible for the national partners in the Americas for Symantec.

Granite added three new channel managers, including Bill DeHoop (middle), previously with Frontier, who will work with partners in the Northwest; and Rich Hunt (right), a Windstream vet who will assist partners in southern California. Not pictured is Bill Tookoian, senior regional channel manager of software VARs.
And a promotion of note: Brian Thomas (left) is now national channel manager, previously senior regional channel manager for the Southeast.
Here's where you can learn more about the moves.

There are a whole lot of new hires and promotions at Broadvoice, the VoIP and cloud communications provider.
They include (clockwise from top left): Tianna Sheppard (bottom right), channel manager for the Southeast; Oliver Kersey (top right), channel manager for the Mountain West; Andrew Hernandez (top left), channel manager for the Southeast; Eva Mata (middle), sales support manager; and Erica Mukilsky (bottom left), channel marketing manager.
Learn more about these employees here.

Sweden-based Telia Carrier has a new partner program targeting VARs and master agents, and Rob Pulkownik is running it.
Pulkownik, who has been with Telia for five years, spent seven years as a client executive at Level 3 Communications.
Learn more about Telia Carrier's new channel program.

AppSmart landed a big fish in Renee Bergeron, who comes to the technology services marketplace from Ingram Micro Cloud, where she spent 10 years.
She's tasked with the next phase of AppSmart's growth, which includes strategy, sales, marketing, service delivery and business development.
Read what attracted Bergeron to her new gig. Then listen to her on the Coffee with Craig and Kevin podcast.

Tim Nielsen is Otava's new vice president of sales, tasked with leading teams of enterprise direct, global partner, inside sales and presales architects to "further accelerate the growth of the business."
Before Otava, Nielsen spent 20 years in IT managed services, app hosting design and security, helping to launch Savvis — later acquired by CenturyLink. He also held leadership positions at Sungard and Zayo Group. Most recently, he was a regional sales director for Radware.
Otava is a provider of secure and compliant cloud services.

Prazak (left) and Gravel are sliding over from Cyxtera to AppGate, as Cyxtera has wrapped spinning out ifs cybersecurity business into a separate company.
At AppGate, Gravel will serve as channel chief, while Prazak is director of channel marketing.
Read our Q&A with Gravel.

David Barton is the new CTO for High Wire Networks, where he will have responsibility over the Overwatch managed security platform as a service, as well as sales through MSP partners.
He comes from Stellar Cyber, where he was chief information security officer.
Most Recent
-
Survey: Backups Are Prime Targets for Ransomware Attacks, Most Remain ExposedVeeam’s 2023 Ransomware Trends Report shows many pay ransom but don’t always recover.
-
Faces of the Partner: 6 New Tech Advisors Entering the ChannelA significant portion of the partner community is retiring. Who will replace them?
-
VMware CFO Zane Rowe Taking New Role with WorkdayRowe will be replaced as VMware's CFO by a board member.
-
Broadcom-VMware, Alibaba Cloud, Red Hat, Google Cloud: A Hefty RoundupFrom the ‘landmark’ deal that just won’t come together to generative AI news galore, we have it here.