'As Good As You Get': Intel Promotes Channel Veteran

Intel handed out promotions to three top executives on Tuesday, including a channel veteran who became the head of the company's Sales and Marketing Group last year.

The Santa Clara, Calif.-based company promoted Michelle Johnston Holthaus, the company's general manager of the Sales and Marketing group who had previously served in various channel roles. Her title was upgraded to senior vice president from corporate vice president.

"She's about as good as you get for an executive," said Wallace Santos, CEO of Intel partner Maingear, who found Holthaus to be helpful in his past interactions with her.

Holthaus also serves as Intel's interim chief marketing officer, a role she took over from Steve Fund, who was moved into a "special projects" leadership position earlier this year. Before she took over as the head of Intel's Sales and Marketing Group, Holthaus was the general manager of channel for Central Marketing and Operations, where she led channel efforts for Intel's Client Computing Group.

The company also promoted Dan McNamara, head of Intel's Programmable Solutions Group, and Allon Stabinsky, chief deputy general counsel of Intel's Law and Policy Group, to senior vice president from corporate vice president. McNamara joined the company in 2015 through Intel's acquisition of Altera while Stabinsky, who also leads Intel's global legal department, joined in 2005.

"These promotions recognize the expanded scope and significance of the organizations for each of these proven Intel leaders," Bob Swan, Intel's chief financial officer and interim CEO, said in a statement. "These leaders are helping us achieve our transformation from a PC-centric to a data-centric company, and I look forward to their continued contributions."

The promotions come as Intel continues the search for a permanent successor to Brian Krzanich, who resigned as CEO in June after violating the company's non-fraternization policy. Swan has reportedly said he is not interested in taking the permanent role, leaving the top post open to former Intel and Google Cloud executive Diane Bryant and others who have been floated as frontrunners.

Intel channel partners recently told CRN they would like the company's next CEO to build deeper relationships with the channel, among other things.

"It would be a breath of fresh air for the new CEO to reestablish relationships with companies whose CEOs' names are not [Dell Technologies CEO Michael] Dell or [Amazon CEO Jeff] Bezos," Andrew Kretzer, director of sales and marketing at Bold Data Technology, had said.

The company plans to report the results of its second-quarter earnings on Thursday at market close.