Joe Rueda — Senior Vice President and General Manager of West Area at Forsythe Technology

Mr. Joe Rueda has been Senior Vice President and General Manager of West Area at Forsythe Technology, Inc. since May 11, 2017 and is responsible for sales and operations across Arizona, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Idaho, Louisiana, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Oregon, Texas, Utah, Washington and Wyoming. Mr. Rueda served as Senior Vice President of Solutions Group at Forsythe Technology, Inc. and was was responsible for Forsythe's client-facing field pursuit organization across North America, including regional solutions management, partner relationship management and professional services. Prior to that, Mr. Rueda served as vice president of systems solutions at Forsythe Technology, Inc. and was responsible for Forsythe's systems technology practice, which provides clients with server based hardware, software, services and financing to optimize their systems and help build their journey to the hybrid data center. In 2009, he joined Forsythe Technology as vice president of IBM solutions. As vice president of IBM solutions sales, he was responsible for the North American sales operations representing IBM hardware, software, services and financing products to the value added reseller community. Mr. Rueda has a strong background in technology and channel sales, with more than 20 years of industry experience, including 17 years with IBM. Mr. Rueda started his IBM career in Phoenix, Arizona, working in the general business sales division. He went on to hold several sales, business development and leadership positions in the hardware, software and channels organizations. In 2001, Mr. Rueda joined Works.com, a startup software-as-a-service company. He held several sales leadership positions, helping Works.com develop direct and indirect sales strategies and teams, resulting in the eventual acquisition by Bank of America. Returning to IBM, Mr. Rueda assumed a number of Americas and worldwide executive positions, including leading IBM's hardware brand channel sales organizations across North and South America, including Intel, AS/400, UNIX and Mainframe server sales along with IBM's storage portfolio representing over $4.5 billion in annual revenue. Mr. Rueda left IBM to work for Avnet, IBM's largest global channel trading partner. He served as Vice President of Sales, IBM Business Unit of Avnet Technology Solutions since June 11, 2007. Mr. Rueda joined Avnet from IBM where he has more than 14 years of experience in sales and management, as Director of Americas business partner sales for the IBM Systems Group. Throughout his career at IBM, he has achieved success selling to the small and medium business market, financial institutions and the software channel. While at IBM, he played a pivotal role in developing Avnet as a new IBM distributor. Later, he built the strategy, associated management systems, sales, business development and marketing teams to drive independent software vendor solution sales on the iSeries platform. Before joining Avnet, Mr. Rueda served as the executive assistant to the general manager for IBM's Global Business Partners. He serves on several channel advisory councils. Mr. Rueda received his bachelor's degree and masters of business administration degrees from Arizona State University.