Future Tech Hires Dell Channel Marketing Rock Star Mary Catherine Wilson As Part of $1B Sales Drive

“I couldn’t be more excited about the opportunity to challenge the status quo and grow the business,” said new Future Tech Enterprise Senior Vice President of Global Marketing and Customer Experience Mary Catherine Wilson. “This is all about growth and solving customer problems.”

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Fast-growing CRN Solution Provider 500 powerhouse Future Tech Enterprise has hired former Dell channel marketing rock star Mary Catherine Wilson as part of its bid to hit the $1 billion sales mark in the next two years.

Wilson, a 23-year Dell channel marketing veteran, is joining Future Tech, No. 95 on the 2022 CRN Solution Provider 500, as senior vice president of global marketing and customer experience.

Wilson’s appointment comes with sales for the Fort Lauderdale, Fla.-based global IT products and services provider more than doubling over the past two years. Nearly 50 percent of Future Tech’s top 30 customers now work with the company in multiple continents.

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Future Tech CEO Bob Venero said the appointment adds a world-class global marketing executive to the team to provide the marketing processes and procedures necessary to continue to grow at a breakneck pace.

“When a football team wants to win the Super Bowl, you have to bring in the right talent to make sure you can execute,” he said. “That is what we are doing by bringing Mary Catherine Wilson to the team. Mary Catherine’s global marketing experience is going to be key as we build out sales and marketing to support a $1 billion company.”

Venero said Wilson’s impressive track record as a Dell global marketing leader who helped transform the onetime direct sales company into a channel behemoth provides a strong foundation for her to drive partnerships with the full panoply of Future Tech vendors to deliver joint solutions and to raise the customer experience bar.

“I’ve known Mary Catherine for more than a decade,” said Venero. “She was instrumental in building out the Dell channel at a time when it was a direct sales company. That is a testament to the skills and value that she brought to Dell and will now bring to Future Tech. She did an amazing job at Dell. I am sure she is going to do the same with Future Tech as we move to become a $1 billion organization.”

Wilson, in fact, was responsible for the strategy and delivery of Dell’s PartnerDirect channel program in North America, which experienced explosive sales growth under her leadership. In addition to being director of channel marketing and partner programs, Wilson supported Dell’s chief marketing officer and was most recently a global marketing leader for Virtustream, Dell’s enterprise cloud business.

Venero said Wilson’s ability to build deep community connections with many charitable ventures and as a leader in promoting women by developing Dell’s women in the channel initiative will also be a big benefit to Future Tech.

“Future Tech has a long history of creating a corporate culture that is committed to philanthropy and giving back,” said Venero. “Mary Catherine is going to help continue and raise the bar on our giving-back initiatives that include support of military veterans, first responders and our United AI Alliance partnership with Nvidia aimed at reducing the digital divide in underserved communities across Africa.”

Wilson has been named to the CRN Women of the Channel’s Power 100 list for 10 years running and has led the drive on a number of charitable projects, including Dell’s participation in CRN parent The Channel Company’s Channel@Work initiative and Austin, Texas-based Generation Serve.

Channel@Work provides community outreach to give back to people and organizations in host cities during XChange conferences. Generation Serve provides volunteer opportunities for children in the Austin community.

Wilson, for her part, said she was attracted to the senior vice president of global marketing post by the opportunity to drive growth at one of the most respected global solution providers.

“I couldn’t be more excited about the opportunity to challenge the status quo and grow the business,” she said. “This is all about growth and solving customer problems. Future Tech has established a big global presence over the last several years. I am looking forward to helping expand that global footprint and to bringing net-new customers to Future Tech.”

Wilson also said she is looking forward to working closely with all of Future Tech’s key vendors, including Dell, Intel, Nvidia, VMware, HP Inc. and others to bring new joint solutions to customers. “My knowledge of what the OEMs need to be successful and the value that Future Tech brings to customers is going to be critical to driving growth in areas like artificial intelligence, data science, cybersecurity and the enterprise data center.”

Wilson’s global marketing expertise will be key as Future Tech, which today operates in 39 countries and has capabilities to deliver in 170 countries, continues to build out its ability deliver products and services to Fortune 500 companies in locations around the world.

Future Tech, which now holds more than $100 million in inventory for Fortune 500 global companies, has over the past 18 months added nearly 150,000 square feet of space at multiple U.S. facilities to serve as configuration, imaging, logistics and supply chain centers.

“Customers have truly come to appreciate and value Future Tech’s ability to procure around the globe and deliver very quickly,” said Wilson.

Wilson said she is ready to continue to drive forward Future Tech’s global sourcing prowess. “One of the things I am looking forward to is telling the Future Tech global sourcing story and sharing with new customers the successes that we have had with global procurement,” she said. “We are going to reach out to multinational customers to make sure they know about Future Tech. The ability to do this kind of global sourcing is not trivial.”

Wilson said she is also looking forward to taking advantage of Future Tech’s new executive briefing center at its Fort Lauderdale headquarters to connect with existing and potential new customers in a world-class setting. “The briefing center is a great venue for strategic face-to-face conversations to help our customers resolve challenges and grow their business,” she said. “It’s a great way to craft breakthrough customer solutions and tell the Future Tech story.”

Wilson said she is also focused on continuing Future Tech’s charitable and community activities. In fact, she has already participated in the U.S. Africa Summit in Washington, meeting with Kenya’s First Lady Rachel Ruto in December as part of the Future Tech Nvidia United AI Alliance to bring more opportunities to Africa. “That initiative is all about bringing technology to bear to solve global challenges,” she said. “Initially we are bringing data science opportunities to Kenya, but we hope to bring it to all of Africa.”

Wilson said she has always admired Future Tech’s charitable and community activities and the company’s ability to go above and beyond for customers.

With the digital marketing landscape changing at a blinding pace, the key to being successful is listening to customers and driving successful partnerships, said Wilson. “It’s a trifecta of listening to the customers’ challenges, listening to the OEMs to understand what solutions address those challenges, and then bringing the value of Future Tech to bring the customer and the OEM together,” she said. “It’s not rocket science, but it is difficult to cut through the noise and understand what customers need.”

Key to making that happen is working with multiple OEMs to bring full solutions to customers, said Wilson. “That ability to work with multiple OEMs was something I did at Dell, partnering with Microsoft, Intel and others,” she said. “Customers need an agnostic voice to bring solutions from multiple OEMs together. I’m looking forward to working with all of the vendors that Future Tech works with and increasing our participation in their marketing programs. I want all our OEMs to understand I am going to be their advocate. I want them to understand Future Tech, but I want to understand their programs so we can grow together.”

Wilson said her experience at Dell is going to be critical to building relationships with Future Tech OEMs. “Having been at Dell, I understand what the OEMs are looking for,” she said.

Wilson has already had a significant impact driving more marketing planning and rigor to Future Tech. “One of the exciting things about Future Tech is the big investments the company is making in driving customer experience,” she said. “This is all about understanding customers’ goals and delivering the right solutions to achieve those goals.”

Wilson’s appointment is one of several key executive additions Future Tech has made over the past three years as it steps up its $1 billion sales march.

Last August, Future Tech named Elbert Laracuente, a 15-year veteran of global systems integrator Atos, as a program management senior director. At Atos, Laracuente headed up a business unit that was responsible for The Walt Disney account and one of the largest federal systems integrators.

Rick Schindel, a 23-year Dell veteran, was named senior vice president of sales for Future Tech in August 2021.

Fred Hoffman, a former CTO of accounting firm Grassi & Co. and onetime managing director for the infrastructure solutions practice at KPMG/BearingPoint, joined Future Tech as CTO in August 2020.

Future Tech has also benefited from the leadership of Venero’s son, Rob, operations manager for the company, who has led the international expansion charge.

Wilson said she couldn’t be more excited about taking the Future Tech brand to a global audience. “I am looking forward to helping Future Tech hit that $1 billion sales mark,” she said. “The timing is right to make this happen. Future Tech is a very nimble organization. The reason I came to Future Tech is to be able to put in place a global marketing and customer experience engine to take this company to the next level.”

Venero, for his part, said he sees the addition of Wilson as a defining moment for the company. “Mary Catherine is going to help build on the unique proposition that we have fulfilled by giving our customers the same level of support globally that we provide the U.S.,” he said. “It’s that ability to pivot to adjust to the global market that has driven our growth. It’s all about remembering that our customers are the most important part of our business. That is something that Future Tech will never forget.”