9. New Channel Chiefs Emerge

2020 saw new executives step up to take over the key channel chief role at several large IT companies and in the process look for ways to help those companies expand their relationships with the channel community.

Dell in August brought back Rola Dagher, a former Dell executive who left the company for three years to act as president of Cisco’s Canadian operations, to serve as its new global channel chief where she now leads Dell Technologies’ global channel partner strategy, vision, enablement, program design and partner experience. She took over a month after long-time Dell channel chief Joyce Mullen left.

Hewlett Packard Enterprise in September named George Hope as its new worldwide channel chief after his predecessor, Paul Hunter, was promoted to managing director of North America. Hope, who for the last three years has been HPE’s vice president of worldwide distribution, told CRN he is focused on HPE’s edge-to-cloud Platform-as-a-Service vision with the goal of moving the entire HPE product portfolio to as a service by 2022.

Verizon in December appointed Wendy Taccetta as the first channel chief of its Verizon Business Group in three years. Taccetta, a 20-year Verizon veteran and most recently the carrier‘s senior vice president of global commercial operations for Verizon Business, is overseeing channel strategy, operations and sales enablement for all partner programs across Verizon‘s entire business.

Lenovo in January appointed 30-year industry veteran Steve Biondi, who has held various top channel and sales roles for the likes of Avaya, Oracle, VMware, and IBM, to be its new channel chief.

Meanwhile, VMware in July brought in former Cisco executive Sandy Hogan as its new channel chief.

The influx of fresh channel talent in these key roles and others will have a significant impact on channel strategy in the new year.