Claire Keelan becomes Onnec UK MD
The new country chief brings nearly three decades of leadership experience
Onnec has named Claire Keelan as MD UK, a newly created role aimed at strengthening the VAR’s operations in its home country.
Keelan will lead the UK business, with full profit and loss (P&L) responsibility, overseeing sales, operations, and other functions.
She will also be in charge of aligning the UK’s execution with Onnec’s global strategy.
The company’s UK chief began her career far from the IT channel, working as a tunnelling engineer for J. Murphy & Sons in 1992.
She obtained her first leadership role as MD of Ridge Developments and reportedly grew turnover growth from €3m to €57m (£49.2m) over the span of 13 years.
In 2012, she joined Johnson Controls as GM, where she held various senior leadership positions, such as head of service UKI, service director UKI, EMEALA service growth director, VP of service growth EMEALA, and VP of global transformation operations.
“[Keelan]’s appointment marks an exciting new chapter for Onnec in the UK,” said Philippe Huinck, CEO of Onnec.
“Her leadership, experience, and energy are exactly what we need to accelerate our growth and strengthen our position in the market.”
Keelan added: “I’m excited to join Onnec at such a pivotal time.
“Together, we will build on a strong foundation to drive innovation, empower our teams, and deliver exceptional value to our clients across the UK.”
She will report directly to CEO Philippe Huinck as a member of the Onnec executive committee.
This new appointment comes as the London-based VAR recently reshuffled its leadership team across the world.
In Ireland, Darren Walsh and Shan Slevin were respectively named head of sales and business development and country operations manager.
Dereck Barron was also promoted to commercial director of projects.
In Norway, Helene Norman-Dupuy becomes the country’s operations manager, while Chris McLoughlin became operations manager in the US.
Other exec hires have also been made across operations, client relationship, business development, technical, service delivery, finance and compliance.
Onnec ranks number 31 in CRN’s Top VARs list.