Cisco’s Bahr back as Americas channel chief

Cisco Americas channel chief Wendy Bahr

Cisco Americas channel chief Wendy Bahr

Cisco’s new Americas channel chief probably isn’t going to have a hard time getting acquainted with the partners with whom she’ll be working everyday. In fact, Wendy Bahr might not even need new business cards, as she heads back into familiar territory as the company’s senior vice president of its Americas Partner Organization.

Bahr previously headed up the company’s North American partner group from 2008 to 2010, before being moved into a newly-created role managing the company’s Global and Strategic Partner Organization, overseeing the company’s relationship with its largest alliance partners.

After she moved into the new role, Jim Sherriff was brought in to head up the company’s channel organization in North America. And now she’s returning to the role as Sherriff moves on, having “accepted a new role with Rob Lloyd on the Worldwide Sales Operations team,” according to a blog post by Chuck Robbins, the company’s Americas leader.

Quoth Robbins:

Among other responsibilities, Jim will lead our global efforts to bring greater capabilities and efficiency to our sales process by assuming sales leadership for ACT (Accelerated Cisco Transformation). ACT is Cisco’s multi-year program to fuel growth by enhancing our operating model, ensuring world-class execution, efficiency, and ease of doing business. Jim will report directly to Rob Lloyd.

While Bahr is a familiar name to most of the company’s partners in North America, she does have some new introductions to make: her role now includes overseeing the partner organization in Latin America in addition to partners in the U.S. and Canada. Bahr will report to Robbins – one would imagine with a very strong dotted line into her worldwide counterparts, Bruce Klein and Edison Peres.

Again, said Robbins:

Wendy’s deep knowledge of Cisco’s partner organization, proven ability to build strong relationships with strategic and innovative partners at the local and global level, and collaborative, innovative and inclusive leadership style make her the ideal leader for the Americas Partner Organization.

Robbins also stated that incoming Worldwide Partner Organization leader Bruce Klein will make finding a new leader for the Global and Strategic Partner Organization a top priority, and that he “is committed to having a new leader in place over the next couple of months.”