MANUFACTURING & TECHNOLOGY
{ COMMUNICATIONS } KEN MCMAHON
SCOTT WAGNER
Vice president of enterprise sales for Mountain West Region CenturyLink centurylink.com
TOMAS GORNY CEO Nextiva nextiva.com
Gorny is a Polish-born American entrepreneur. He is the cofounder, chairman and CEO of Unitedweb, a holding company that invests in disruptive technologies, and Nextiva, a cloud communications company that currently serves more than 100,000 businesses. Source of pride: “I am proud to work with great people every day who are the best at what they do and are changing our industry. They’re inspiring, innovative, and make coming to work exciting and fun.” Business advice: “A track record is pointless. Or at least I feel they are overrated. It’s all about what you’re doing now and what you plan to do in the future.”
McMahon oversees strategic partnerships that support enterprise customers in Arizona, Colorado and New Mexico. He has spent 19 years in the telecommunications industry. Trend to watch: “The digital transformation of our industry is requiring businesses to become more agile, secure and optimized to be successful. Technology is becoming the No. 1 driver of an organization’s success — across all business segments. A company’s ability to transform the way they interact with their customers, the way they offer products and services and the way they meet their customer’s needs through the digital experience will differentiate them from their competitors.”
Designated CEO GoDaddy godaddy.com
CLARK PETERSON President of enterprise Vonage vonage.com
Peterson joined Vonage upon the company’s acquisition of Scottsdale-based Telesphere, where he served as CEO. Peterson’s leadership positions in telecommunication span more than 25 years. Business advice: “Think big. The cloud communications industry is dramatically changing the way people work and businesses communicate and operate.” Trend to watch: “One of the most disruptive new technologies is ‘contextual communications,’ which enables businesses to gain intelligence about a caller, based on where within a website or app the caller clicks to initiate a call. This technology will soon expand to capture many types of data before the call’s even answered.”
JOHN WOLFE
Senior vice president and Southwest Region manager Cox Communications Arizona cox.com Wolfe is responsible for the company’s overall operations in Arizona and Nevada. A 24-year Cox veteran, Wolfe joined the company’s Southwest Region in Phoenix in September 2014 after two years 236 ABL | Nominate at azBIGmedia.com
as Cox’s senior vice president and general manager of the Northeast Region. Wolfe is a member of Greater Phoenix Leadership and the Southwest Cable Communications Association. Trend to watch: “Homes and businesses need ever-increasing broadband capacity as more devices are connected to the network and video content becomes more portable. That’s why
Wagner, GoDaddy’s president and chief operating officer, will assume the CEO role upon Blake Irving’s departure, which is , effective December 31, 2017. Wagner joined GoDaddy in 2013, after a 13-year tenure at KKR, where he served as a partner. Wagner was a key member of the team that invested in GoDaddy in 2011, serving as GoDaddy’s interim CEO, and then joined the company’s leadership team as CFO and COO when Irving became CEO. Wagner was promoted to the role of president in 2016, with expanded responsibility across go-to-market channels, including marketing, customer care, international markets, and corporate development.
Cox continues to invest tens of millions of dollars each year into our broadband infrastructure, all while we’re continuing to roll out super-fast Gagabit internet services in Arizona.” Business advice: “Be prepared to let go of your assumptions. A quote often attributed to Mark Twain says it best: ‘It ain’t what you don’t know that gets you into trouble. It’s what you know for sure that just ain’t so.’”