Avnet Technology Solutions, the IT solutions distribution leader and operating group of Avnet, Inc., appointed two IT industry veterans to executive roles within its IBM and HP Solutions Groups in North America. Gale Brown will serve as vice president of services, IBM Solutions group; and Phyllis McCullagh has been named vice president of field sales, HP Solutions group. With more than 50 years of combined industry experience, both join Avnet with strong backgrounds in channel sales and services.
Brown joins Avnet with extensive IBM experience, which she will draw from to accelerate the sale of services through Avnet’s IBM partner channel. Brown will work with Avnet’s IBM team and partners to provide the skills and expertise needed to sell and deliver services, including Avnet’s SolutionsPath® Services, IBM maintenance services, after-market services and emerging service offerings such as cloud-based IT data solutions.
Most recently, Brown served as the vice president of business partner sales, general business at IBM. Her responsibilities focused on increasing the success and penetration of channel sales in the small to mid-sized business (SMB) market. In this position, she provided customer-facing resellers, systems integrators and distributors with targeted incentives, solutions, enablement, demand generation support, and marketing programs to support profitable growth in the SMB segment. Her IBM career spanned numerous positions of leadership, including vice president of channel sales west region, global client executive for Avnet, director of operations channel management North America, and other sales management positions in software and services. Brown’s achievements at IBM were recognized by CRN magazine in 2009, when she was named to their list of the 100 Most Powerful Women of the Channel.
As the vice president of field sales for Avnet’s HP Solutions group, McCullagh will use her years of experience in the technology industry to support Avnet’s HP partner channel in the U.S. She will manage Avnet’s HP field sales teams across the region and work closely with partners to help them profitably grow by leveraging Avnet’s SolutionsPath® methodology and practices.
In her technology industry career, McCullagh was a senior executive with Compaq in both channel sales and marketing roles. She also spent two years at CompTIA, the Computer Technology Industry Association, creating membership programs and services for channel partner members. Most recently, she served as vice president of distribution and sales operations at D-Link Systems, Inc. Prior to D-Link Systems, she was the president, North America, for GN Netcom, Inc., a leading manufacturer of headsets for unified communications, offices and call centers. In that role she was recognized by the Boston Women’s Business Journal in their list of Women to Watch for 2009.
