Today, I have the honor of announcing that recognized industry leader Donna Grothjan is retiring after more than 30 years of supporting the channel and, over the past seven years, as the VP of worldwide channels at HPE Aruba Networking.
It’s an understatement to say we’re incredibly proud of the unwavering commitment Donna has shown to HPE Aruba Networking’s 55,000 partners globally, as well as the broader channel community over the course of her career. Her focus has always been on helping the channel community adapt to, and thrive in, changing conditions through innovative, partner-focused programs and tools that set our industry’s bar high.
Partner-centered, so everyone feels heard
Known for her problem-solving and collaboration “superpowers,” Donna has long been recognized by her peers for the ability to successfully close gaps and reach consensus. She has always worked to ensure that a result is not only a win-win for all involved, but also that everyone feels heard.
This is because Donna’s philosophy has placed partners at the heart of her efforts to serve customers. She believes partners are essential to a vendor’s success, as no single company can meet 100% of its customers’ needs.
Where others may see channel partners as extensions of their sales force, for Donna it’s always the other way around – vendors such as HPE Aruba Networking are part of her partners’ ecosystems. This makes it a competitive imperative for vendors like us to provide and enable value creation for partners every day.
Recognized for her commitment to the channel
Donna has been a repeat honoree in CRN’s annual Women of the Channel program, including consistently being named to the Power 100 list. She has also been honored as a “Most Influential” channel chief in CRN’s annual Channel Chief program multiple times and often been included in CRN’s Top 25 Sales Executive program.
Further, under Donna’s leadership, HPE Aruba Networking has consistently been named a 5-Star Partner Program for CRN’s annual Partner Program Guide.
Enabling partners to maximize opportunities
As Donna has provided us with such an incredible blueprint, it’s our intention to continue her work. HPE Aruba Networking will remain channel-first, with the key goal of enabling our partners to realize and maximize their opportunities.
We’ll continue encouraging partners to lead, while helping them optimize their business models, invest in new areas of market growth and further grow their services businesses. We will also continue to help partners expand their cloud solution offerings while driving more professional services, which will enable a partner to grow their net profitability.
Partner-focused legacy continues
Donna’s legacy will include strengthening our popular Partner Ready for HPE Aruba Networking program while also offering a unified partner experience strategy via the HPE Partner Vantage program.
Donna was instrumental in launching the Partner Ready Vantage program, which takes into consideration that partners need to access an entire ecosystem, comprised of technology and service capabilities, so they can support their customers’ full lifecycles while achieving success in this changing hybrid cloud and as-a-service business environment.
Answering the call for achieving business outcomes
Donna is also leaving us with guidance on trends she foresees impacting the channel. In addition to the continued expansion of interest in XaaS, she foresees a growing focus on helping customers find ways to achieve business outcomes, rather than just selling them products.
Donna believes partners will be asked to deeply understand a customer’s business and industry, with the expectation that partners can stitch together solutions, from various sources, to enable achieving outcomes most rapidly.
To do so, partners will need to build out robust services offerings that are based upon expansive and detailed vertical and industry expertise. With this customer shift to delivering business outcomes, the partner focus needs to shift toward return on customer lifecycle value.
This goes beyond providing technology solutions to establishing a portfolio of financial models for customers to choose from, along with robust lifecycle management. As vendors, we’ll need to continue broadening our solutions and service capabilities to assist our partners with meeting such lifecycle management expectations.
Up Next: Helping early-stage startups grow
Naturally, many of you may be wondering what’s next for Donna – whether you’ll be seeing her leading another channel program. She’s given us the unequivocal answer that she’s ready to change course in order to grow as an individual.
After taking some time off to recharge, Donna looks forward to pursuing board positions for companies that are pre-IPO or owned by private equity investors.
Words of wisdom for channel professionals
I recently asked Donna what advice she’d give people starting their channel careers, particularly women. I thought I’d share her response:
Start to build your trusted network as early as possible. Turn to peers, advisors, industry authorities, and functional experts that you can rely on for advice and guidance. Then, over the course of your career, when you encounter situations, environments, and interpersonal relationships where you lack experience, you can turn to these individuals for assistance with navigating successfully.
Most importantly, never be shy about being open and vulnerable with individuals in your trusted network, as they are there to help you. Equally critical is always being true to yourself: If at any time you think, ‘I wouldn’t do that or say that,’ then don’t.
Donna’s insights ring true even for those of us well along in our careers and I, personally, take her wisdom to heart.
Staying laser-focused on our partners
I’d also like to share that we will be naming a fitting successor to Donna in the coming months. That individual will build upon Donna’s legacy of commitment to our partners by developing and evolving our channel programs with a laser focus on supplying the comprehensive tools and support our partners need for success.
On behalf of everyone at HPE Aruba Networking, I want to publicly thank Donna for her many years of outstanding service to partners, the channel, and our company. I look forward with excitement to seeing how Donna will apply her accumulated experience and expertise toward advising a new generation of early-stage companies on how to achieve great things.
