Distology appoints new CMO and CTO to pursue 'ambitious 2024 goals'

Sarah Geary and Lance Williams are stepping into the shoes of chief marketing officer and chief technology officer at the distie

Cybersecurity distributor Distology has appointed Sarah Geary as its new chief marketing officer (CMO) and Lance Williams as chief technology officer (CTO).

The distributor said both announcements will be "key" to its growth plans in 2024 and precede a new portfolio announcement coming in the next few months.

Geary joins CRN's Security Distributor of the Year 2023 as CMO from Cybereason where she was director of partner marketing in EMEA and APAC.

She is hoping to bring a fresh perspective to the company's go-to-market strategy and partner value proposition.

"Marketing needs to be a driving factor in the business and working in true partnership with the sales function," Geary said.

"I plan to bring structure and consistency to the teams so we can unleash the true value of channel marketing for our vendor and partner communities. With my background in creating go-to-market initiatives, I can quickly help our vendors create and execute their partner value propositions and create effective campaigns that will directly impact the bottom line."

She said she wants the marketing function at Distology to not only be an extension of the vendors' marketing teams, but a real voice for the channel.

"It can be challenging for vendors to understand the needs and wants of a varied channel ecosystem and I hope my experience can highlight examples of the good, the bad and ugly."

Previously chief product officer, Williams will now step into a new role as CTO.

As CPO, Williams was responsible for the development of Distology's technology and services portfolio story, working with vendors and channel partners to support their customers with technologies and service providers across multiple regions.

He told CRN: "Much of our work is hinged on understanding what our IT channel partners are facing with their customers. Those responsible for cybersecurity technology solutions strategy within each channel partner act as an aggregation point for the challenges being faced by their customer base.

"I already have a good network with people in these roles and now want to expand it, as it helps us to serve our customers better.

"Our cybersecurity solutions will continue to benefit as a result by adding and developing relevant offerings."

Expanding the portfolio

Williams told CRN he'd like the distie' portfolio to grow, with modern identity and access management to be made available to channel partners.

"We've really bolstered our cybersecurity operations portfolio this year with additions of OPSWAT and Drata and we'll build on these in the year ahead," he added.

"Further out from this, the multi-cloud security landscape continues to be a very underserved and under-addressed area of cybersecurity by the channel community across Europe. I'm working on adding a cloud-native application protection platforms (CNAPP) provider to help us roll out the multi-cloud security awareness training we designed some months ago."