Alcatel-Lucent Names North American Channel Chief

Alcatel-Lucent Enterprise has appointed Lisa Simpson as vice president of channel sales and distribution strategy in North America.

Simpson will be responsible for driving revenue growth in the channel by expanding the company’s North American reseller and distributor base, and developing new opportunities to support partners in key vertical markets, in particular in education and transport.

Simpson brings 20 years’ experience from the IT and telecom industries. Most recently she served as senior director of partner sales at Nokia, where she was responsible for building and developing partner programs with AT&T. Previous positions at Alcatel-Lucent saw Simpson lead business operations and IT, as well as head up marketing, before moving to the carrier side of the business.

Transportation and education are two of the key growth markets for ALE in North America. Technology in transport is shifting from legacy systems to scalable LAN and WLAN IP solutions, and the Alcatel-Lucent Enterprise technology portfolio of hardened, IoT-ready network components is positioned to support transport operators during the transition to intelligent transportation systems.

In education, its other key focus area, ALE aims to help higher-ed and K-12 districts create connected learning environments for students, while providing new consumption-based models that meet the market’s seasonal variation in service demand.

“Lisa’s appointment reinforces our commitment to business growth through the channel and support for our customers in North America’s vertical markets,” the company said. “In this new position, Lisa will use her skills and experience to grow sustainable revenue for ALE through the channel and develop a collaborative knowledge-sharing environment where ALE and its partners can meet the digital transformation needs of customers.”

It added, “Her experience in the industry, combined with her high-energy approach, will prove invaluable both to us and our partners as we expand the success of our network and communications portfolio with a focus on education and transportation customers.”


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