Channel People on the Move: Telarus, Former CenturyLink Chief, TBI

The master agents were once again huge contributors in our latest edition of channel people on the move.

Telarus, as part of a shift to a more condensed regional strategy, promoted three people to area vice president. The company also named a new cybersecurity guru with experience from CenturyLink and Verizon.

As if that weren’t enough, we packed in six new hires and promotions at TBI, everything from a new VP of strategic partnerships to solution engineers, account managers and more.

And if you’re looking for more Brady Bunch-style montages, we’ve also got a handful of new hires at Reinvent Telecom.

Those companies not your style? That’s OK. A trio of B’s (BullsEye, Broadvoice and Bigleaf) can be found here as well.

All in all, it’s a whopping 28 people on the move of note at some of the biggest names in the channel. That’s a record, besting our mark of 26 last month. Click through the gallery below to see where your friends and colleagues have taken new positions or been recognized for promotions at their companies.

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

Follow executive editor @Craig_Galbraith on Twitter.

Telarus, Part 1

Telarus went out and got a big name to lead its cybersecurity efforts.

Dominique Singer (left) developed his 13 years of experience in security at such industry titans as CenturyLink and Verizon. Now he will serve as VP of business development for security at the master agent. He will help partners sell penetration tests, intrusion prevention and unified threat management. Learn more about the position.

Telarus promoted Mike Gottwalt to area vice president for the Central region. Learn why on the next slide.

Telarus, Part 2

There were so many moves at Telarus that we broke them up into two slides.

That's Kirk Avaiusini on the left. He's the new senior partner development manager for the master agent in the Pacific Northwest. He'll be recruiting new partners and working with existing ones to sell UC, security and contact center services.

In the middle is Mike Bettilyon, area vice president for the West. His promotion, along with Mike Gottwalt's (previous slide, Central region) and Ruth Morford's (below, East) are part of the company's decision to merge its six sales regions into three in an effort to support its growing partner base.

“This change will allow us as a company to go deeper with our partners, in more places," said Telarus CEO Adam Edwards.

Learn more about how this change will impact Telarus' partner community.

TeraGo's Blake Wetzel

Blake Wetzel, best known for his run as CenturyLink channel chief, just landed at TeraGo, the Canada-based provider of cloud, colo and connectivity services.

As chief revenue officer, he's in charge of leading sales, channel and business development, marketing, product and customer experience for the company.

Don't know TeraGo? Learn more.

NetSuite's Art Wittmann

Our loss was NetSuite's gain.

Our friend Art Wittmann, well known in the channel for his role as senior vice president of content at Informa (Channel Partners' parent company), took a new job as content director at NetSuite, the cloud computing company.

Wittmann was instrumental in the rapid growth of the Channel Partners Conference & Expo and the successful transition of Channel Partners Evolution into the fall's biggest event for channel technology providers of all kinds.

TBI, Part 1

Not to be outdone by its master-agent rival Telarus, TBI also gets two slides in the gallery for six people on the move of note.

Left to right: Dan Beuder, promoted to senior account manager, leading TBI's new outbound 8x8 team; Scott Whalen, CenturyLink alum, hired as VP of strategic partnerships; and Dave Landsberger, promoted to senior director of training and events. Most recently he ran TBI's Big Event.

Don't miss the chance to read more about these gentlemen.

TBI, Part 2

Three more gentlemen from TBI make this slide.

Clockwise from top left: Joe Fizor, promoted to lead solution engineer. He'll work with partners as their go-to resource for solution design; James Pike, promoted to inside channel manager, the first of a new role combining operations functions and channel management; and Rifat Ahmed, now the Omni Center systems administrator, tasked with managing requests for TBI's Omni Center, the multichannel contact center that performs both outbound and inbound vendor and partner campaigning.

Learn more about what these fellows have to offer.

Reinvent Telecom

The VoIP, UC and contact center provider hired three new VoIP engineers, a partner success specialist, and promoted two people.

The partner success specialist is Jessica Glass (bottom center). She spent three years as a customer care manager for CloudNet Group, which is a Reinvent reseller. She'll be tasked with supporting partners with applications, demos, quotes and sales orders.

Julia Dengate (right) and David Ansehl (bottom left) are the promotions: to VoIP sales engineer and director of wholesale channel, respectively.

Rounding out the Brady Bunch-style montage are VoIP engineers Kevin Stalker (top middle) and Jeff Cothrun (top left). Not pictured is new VoIP engineer Robert Pauls.

Read more about these folks climbing the employment ladder.

BullsEye's Kristina Pagano

As BullsEye Telecom's new strategic partner manager, Kristina Pagano is tasked with recruiting, training and managing agents who sell BullsEye's voice and data products and services. BullsEye also is looking for some good VARs, MSPs and referral partners, which Pagano will help recruit.

Pagano, whose coverage area includes Alabama, Georgia, the Carolinas and south Florida, is a Cbeyond, Momentum Telecom and Fusion Connect alum.

Teridion's Kevin Moynahan

Kevin Moynahan, the new director of channel sales at Teridion, the SaaS accelerator and WAN optimizer, is known in the channel for his stints at ShoreTel and 8x8.

On what made him join the Teridion team: "The more I look at Teridion, I see that Teridion is revolutionizing the way the cloud is going to perform. It also makes sense because I can leverage a lot of the relationships I’ve built throughout that past in the channel, and I thought I could carry those relationships forward. It has been great. I’m even more excited about Teridion and our trajectory.

Read more about Moynahan and the partnerships his company has made with key vendors.

Broadvoice's Taylor Baranowski and Kim McLachlan

As Broadvoice's new regional channel manager in Texas, Taylor Baranowski (left) will have to meet partner demand in the Lone Star State while raising awareness of the company's products and services through partner training and development. His last gig was at Vonage.

Kim McLachlan is Broadvoice's new senior VP of sales and marketing. Most recently with West, McLachlan is tasked with improving alignment and communication among the company's sales, marketing and operation teams.

Learn more about Baranowski here and McLachlan here.

Bigleaf

That's Tim Suman on the left. He joins Bigleaf Networks as channel sales manager – West. As the title implies, Suman will actively cover the needs of Bigleaf partners in the company's West Coast region. His former employers include CenturyLink and Cox.

John Coyle also is new. Joining Bigleaf from Adtran, he'll serve a similar role to the one Suman took on, only in the Northeast.

Ooma's David Beagle

David Beagle, the Fonality and Office Depot veteran, took the head of channels job at Ooma, the UC and VoIP provider.

He's in charge of executing strategies to work with various partner types, including creating go-to-market models that fit partners' businesses. 

Read what made Ooma so attractive a landing spot for Beagle.

Telestax's Veena Vadgama

Telestax, the CPaaS enablement provider, hired Veena Vadgama as its VP of marketing, responsible for the company's overall marketing strategy, plus channel partner marketing and enablement.

Vadgama brings 20 years of experience in B2B marketing to the job, in both telecom and technology.

Axcient's Angus Robertson

Angus Robertson is the new chief revenue officer for Axcient, the provider of cloud migration and business availability solutions to MSPs.

He's responsible for the strategic direction of Axcient's newly merged sales and marketing division, revenue-generation processes, operations, marketing and making the MSP experience a great one.

ServerCentral Turing Group's Thomas Johnson

Thomas Johnson brings 25 years of experience in security and compliance to his new gig as chief information security officer at ServerCentral Turing Group (SCTG), the managed IT infrastructure service provider.

Before joining SCTG, Johnson was a security consultant for Peters and Associates, where he was CISO for various companies in the health care, government, manufacturing and financial verticals.