Tara Ridley (Salesforce)
Cisco A/NZ partner organisation managing director Tara Ridley has left the networking vendor and has joined Salesforce as its new vice president of alliances and channels in Australia and New Zealand.
Ridley spent more than a decade at Cisco, starting out as an account manager before moving through the ranks to taking up the A/NZ partner organisation managing director role a year ago.
Prior to joining Cisco, Ridley also worked for Macquarie Telecom and Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE).
Cisco confirmed Ridley left after serving 13 years with the vendor.
“She has done a terrific job leading our partner organisation in Australia and New Zealand, and other senior leadership roles and we wish her all the best for the future,” a Cisco spokesperson said.
In January, Salesforce revealed it was hunting for channel talent to fill a newly-created role of A/NZ VP of alliances, partners and channels in an expansion of its current partner leadership team.
The new executive will report to Charles Woodall, Salesforce Asia Pacific VP for partner sales, industries and strategic alliances.
At the time, Salesforce said it was seeking a highly motivated leader and team player to design and execute a program for its global and local system integrator partners.
The new person will be responsible for developing “the core” of the CRM vendor’s global systems integrator (GSI) and systems integrator (SI) partner ecosystem across A/NZ.
“This is a key and strategic role that requires a balance of strategy with a strong roll-up your sleeves and ‘get it done’ mentality,” the ad read.
As well as being “highly motivated”, the new channel chief will have expertise working in a “fast-paced, cross-functional manner” and has the ability to “establish broad senior-level relationships”.
