During his 30-year career, Dan Wensley has launched and built award-winning products, communities and brands—developing relationships with more than 20,000 channel partners worldwide along the way. Now, as the new CEO of the Global Technology Industry Association (GTIA), he’s leveraging that experience and working to increase engagement, deliver more value to members and have a bigger collective impact in the market.
We asked Dan (pictured above, center, with the GTIA board of directors) about what attracted him to apply for the CEO position, what to expect under his leadership and what’s next for GTIA. Here’s what he had to say.
What made you want to be CEO of GTIA?
Becoming CEO of GTIA wasn’t on my radar until a number of key community leaders reached out and suggested I apply. What intrigued me about the opportunity to join GTIA as the CEO was to give back to a community and join an organization that had delivered so much to both the industry and to my career personally. What an amazing opportunity to lead this group of incredible channel leaders that I have seen firsthand the impact it's had on the growth and the advancement of our industry. The vendor community and the IT service providers who are members made this an opportunity that I truly went after and really wanted to achieve.
Why do you feel that you are the right person to lead GTIA?
On the vendor side I’ve obviously worked with partners and MSPs and ITSPs who adopted SaaS technologies that I was responsible for, but growth and success really were predicated on the sense of community and working as a peer group to adopt new technologies or new ways of doing business. Which is synergistic to what we're doing here at GTIA—allowing the community to speak to each other, to share ideas, to share best practices, but most importantly, to look forward to what our industry will hold and what technologies will impact all our businesses. I see GTIA as being the cornerstone of that and being a real platform for our industry to come together and discuss what we're doing well and what we can do better in the future.
You come from more of a revenue-growth, business-building background. How does that translate into leading a non-profit association like GTIA?
One of the really poignant questions I got during the hiring committee interviews was exactly that. ‘You have run SaaS businesses; you have been in for-profit in high-growth organizations responsible for top-line revenue growth.’ And what I clearly could establish, and frankly what I built those high-growth organizations on, was building a community.
The performance of those businesses was only predicated on how well we built a community. That has been a standard in our industry of how important community is. I would argue I've built fast-growth community organizations that happen to have SaaS applications attached to them.
What is the vision for GTIA and how do you see that changing or being enhanced under your leadership?
One of the things we talked a lot about during the process was the four pillars of value that GTIA could bring as we refine our vision with feedback from our community. The four pillars we centered around are: People, resources, community and the term advancement.
All of the businesses that I've been involved with have had a people-first orientation both internally and externally. People are the ones driving innovation and driving the ability for GTIA to deliver the second pillar, which are the resources. The third pillar is coming together as a community and having discussions such as how AI is going to impact our industry. Fourth is advancement. GTIA takes great pride in having subject-matter experts that are able to communicate inside our community and ultimately lead the betterment of our entire industry.
What is needed to achieve those pillars? What is your call to action for members?
Participation. One of the things I am most humbled about is the number of community leaders involved in GTIA—whether it's our board of directors that I was blessed to serve with over a decade ago, or the number of community leaders who give their time to come in and just talk about the industry, whether that’s in AI, managed services, women in tech. I look forward to fostering and frankly recognizing those people who have done such great work here with our Spotlight Awards for example. I think we can do a better job as an organization sharing the great stories of the people who are taking proactive opportunities to advance our entire industry forward.
Where do you see the most value for both new and existing members?
We need to continue to do what we’ve done well. We've made mistakes along the way as an organization and maybe haven't reacted to technologies or innovations quickly enough and sometimes too quickly. Those mistakes are going to happen. But we are continuing to stay the course making sure that we're delivering to the value of our core pillars and advancing the technology for current members and for new members. It's going to be an area where we are really focused on moving forward.
This community has done exceptionally well and has a very diverse membership. We've globalized the organization, but it’s relatively small in comparison to the total addressable market of our industry. As we look to grow, we think more voices and more members add more value to the cumulative group. We're excited about the growth potential for GTIA in the future as well.
How are you looking to grow GTIA?
Setting the objectives of growth will be something the team and I discuss. The leadership has done an excellent job, but growth hasn't always been the primary focus—it was adding value. I want to do both.
I think we're all in agreement that we want to grow and do ‘more for more.’ We’ll continue down the path of delivering great resources and focus on expanding the number of people taking advantage of those resources. We've had great vendor support over the years, plus the distributors and associates. We need more ITSPs, MSPs, vCIOs, anybody delivering IT services into the small- and mid-enterprise to become members and become more participatory. I'm excited about that area of growth for the organization from a member perspective.
How will GTIA attract new ITSPs into the association?
The biggest opportunity to increase the value we can deliver to ITSPs is to strengthen that voice for them and broaden their educational view on what's going on in the marketplace.
We rely on technology innovation coming traditionally out of the vendor community, which is paramount to the success of our industry. But there isn't always a voice for them to get a holistic view of the industry, and that's where I think we can add incremental value with all of the other things MSPs and IT service providers need to do on the day-to-day job. If we can become the resource and continue to be the resource that they can rely on to get the resources they need to advance their business, that makes it a win for them and a win for us to have them as members.
What do you want to say to members in terms of what might change, what will be new, what might go away?
Our mandate is to grow and advance in all areas. We want to add more resources. We want to strengthen our community. We want to advance your business. We've come out with some pretty strong, lofty goals to ensure that membership in GTIA is delivering true, definable value to you, your business and your customers. And that's something that every GTIA staff member has adopted, understands and agrees upon, as well as the board, and sees as a strategic importance. That’s the scorecard that we should be measured against.
Why is charitable giving going to be important for GTIA going forward?
Back to the earlier question about advancing the youth coming into our industry, the charitable opportunity that we have, you know through the stability of the financial situation of GTIA, allows us the unique opportunity and privilege to be able to give back and invest in areas to continue to grow the industry. We have had a long history of doing that. If you've come to a GTIA event historically, you know we always do something to give back and make some donations. We have the ability to expand on that charitable giving to impact both the communities in which we operate in, and to support underprivileged individuals who need help to get into our industry or areas that continue to educate to push our industry forward.
What does the concept of community mean to you?
Community and education are the two cornerstones of what my 30-year investment in this industry has been all about. I consider myself a student of this industry—30 years into my career. Because we are always learning. Because we are always advancing and we are moving at a rapid pace. Doing that individually is near impossible. You will go off the road eventually if you're not working together with others. Whether it’s a peer group, or competitors in some ways or other team members, staying together as a group and communicating moves us all and advances us all and gives you a perspective that you simply can't get on your own.
That's why I'm so proud of this organization. At ChannelCon this year we’re going to talk a lot about advancing technologies, including AI and all the fun stuff, but remember that it's about us coming together to have those conversations, which is paramount to success.
Anything else you’d like to add?
We've started the Spotlight Awards that GTIA is now doing globally, but we don't highlight those who are leading these great communities. And we’re really looking to do that. I think that will also encourage the new generation to go, “Wow. I want to be a member of GTIA because it's a place where I can go to advance my career.”
