Channel People on the Move: Windstream, Global Capacity, Avnet, More

Perhaps unexpectedly, the first half of December saw a significant number of promotions and new hires at companies that do business in the channel – compensating for a slowdown as the holidays rolled in.

Among them: a new small-business president at Windstream, new channel chiefs, security officers and more at companies you know well and others you should.

This list is by no means comprehensive, but it gives you a nice sampling of the new hires and promotions in December who will have a day-to-day impact on the industry or make decisions that will have a trickle-down effect on the channel.

Cruise through our monthly gallery. You’re sure to see people you know.

Missed last month’s “people” gallery? Click here to see who was on the move in November.

Carbonite appointed channel veteran Jessica Couto to lead channel sales and marketing for its latest product suite and expanded partner programs. As VP of North American channel sales, and is charged with driving the growth of Carbonite’s SMB IT channel. She joined the company in October after more than two years as director of worldwide channels at Bit9 + Carbon Black, and leading eastern U.S. sales for Kaspersky Lab.

Click here for the full scoop on Couto’s new job.

Windstream named Sarah Day president of its Consumer and Small Business (C/SMB) unit, effective Jan. 1. Day, who joined the Little Rock, Arkansas-based business communications giant in 2008, will be responsible for leading, managing and developing the short- and long-term strategies of the unit.

Learn more about Day here.

As part of its introduction of a new channel program, Zilliant, the Austin, Texas-based software-as-a-service (SaaS) provider, named Steve Hale vice president of worldwide channel sales. Hale said Zilliant is looking for an elite selection of systems-integrator consulting partners with the following requisites: consulting and integration capabilities, an understanding of the cloud and proficiency in CRM.

This is where to learn more about Hale and the new Zilliant channel program.

Resilient Systems, the cybersecurity provider, just brought on a pair of new sales directors.

Jerry Hill takes on Resilient’s federal sales leadership role after accumulating 10 years of public-sector sales experience, which spanned federal, state, local and higher-education markets. Also new at Resilient is Fernando Oliveira, who takes the reins as director of Latin American sales. He comes to the company with 15 years of experience in that region, responsible now for developing localized market-entry strategies.

Click here for more on the new members of Resilient’s team.

Pexip, a provider of collaboration software, hired Amy Kim of Google to serve as president for its Americas business. Kim was one of the first to be hired into the Google for Work (previously Google Enterprise) organization. During her eight years with the company, she has held a variety of leadership positions including managing the search business as well as the SaaS business around apps and cloud platform.

Read more about Kim’s future at Pexip here.

ConvergeOne, the IT services provider, hired David McDougall (pictured) as its new vice president, managed services. He comes to the company from CSS Corp., where he was executive vice president and chief sales officer.

The company also appointed Brad Jackson to the position of director of solutions engineering; and Ryan Boyd and Tige Phillips, both former Cisco systems engineers, as technical solutions engineers.

Learn more about ConvergeOne’s new hires here.

Melendez spent four years in various positions at Mitel in the first half of this decade. He followed that up with short stints at Fulton Communications and OnviSource before joining Voice4Net.

There’s much more about Melendez here.

John Purrier (pictured), the former chief technology officer of CenturyLink’s Innovations Lab is now a top executive at Automic, a business automation company.

It’s the latest of several cloud-expert departures from the Telco giant. Last spring, Andrew Higginbotham, who led all of CenturyLink’s cloud and managed-services businesses, left the company after more than 13 years. CenturyLink also lost its top two remaining cloud executives with the Dec. 1 departures of Jared Wray and Jonathan King.

You can read more about Purrier’s exit here.

Phoenix-based BeyondTrust, a cybersecurity firm, hired Joseph Schramm as its new vice president of strategic alliances. He will oversee BeyondTrust’s growing global channel program as well as the company’s systems-integrator and solution-provider relationships. Schramm most recently served as VP, North America sales and global alliances, at Core Security.

Click here to read more about Schramm’s background.

Seaman’s most recent experience was Soonr, where he was vice president of sales, responsible for revenue-generation and business development.

Don’t miss learning more about Seaman here.

Sean Valcamp is Avnet‘s first-ever chief information security officer (CISO). He will be responsible for Avnet’s global IT security as well as enterprise architecture and strategic IT planning.

Valcamp is a 16-year veteran of the distribution giant. At Avnet, he has educated employees on security, established a global information security policy and built a security-operations team that protects Avnet from security threats.

Click here for more on this new position at Avnet.

Connectivity provider Global Capacity has a new chief service operations officer. It’s Ray Whinery, a 30-year industry veteran who has held executive positions at Zayo, American Traffic Solutions, tw telecom, and US West. Roles have include vice president of technical operations, senior VP of service operations, and senior VP of engineering and operations.

Read more about what Whinery will be doing at Global Capacity here.

Accel Networks, a Sierra Wireless company, hired Chris Whitaker (left) and Greg Franzen (right) as directors of channel sales, to help launch a channel program at the company.

Franzen spent nearly nine years at Windstream as a senior agent channel manager; he was a regional sales director at PAETEC before Windstream bought it in 2007. Whitaker, who helped launch Comcast Business’ partner program, has been a partner sales manager – channel manager with the cable company since May 2011.

Accel provides primary and backup connectivity services to more than 300 enterprise customers in sectors that include retail, finance, security, energy and hospitality.

This is where to read more about Whitaker. Get the full scoop on Franzen here.