Claude Reeves, Vice President and Country Manager – Canada

 

Claude has over 25 years of experience IT industry, with a deep expertise in enterprise software and the cloud. Starting his career as a consultant and developer, Claude held a number of technical and development roles early on before making the move into sales and sales leadership. Before joining VMware Canada he was most recently the Country Manager for Red Hat Canada. He has also worked for HP, CA Technologies, The Citro Group and Datawatch Corporation, the last two organizations while living and working in the US. With experience in the US, Canada, Europe and Latin America, Claude has had the privilege of working with organizations across most verticals and both private to public sectors. Claude is passionate about working with customers to help them achieve the best business outcomes that technology can enable, whether that be on-premise or in the cloud, or most likely, both.

A passionate advocate of diversity and inclusion, Claude champions and is proudly part of a number of organizations and groups that are striving to turn words into action to improve the situation of women and other groups within the technology industry.  Claude studied at Concordia University in Montreal. 

Born and raised in Toronto and attended Concordia University in Montreal. Claude now lives in Montreal, with his family. He enjoys playing hockey, boating and camping and is fully bilingual in French and English.

Tara Fine, Senior Director of Channels, Canada

 

Tara’s career spans over 20 years of progressively senior roles, providing service and partnership to an array of customer segments, with the past 8+ years focused in the Channel.

 

Tara joined VMware in 2016 as a key member of the Executive Leadership team, where she has been tasked with driving the revenue growth of VMware Canada’s businesses through its partner community. Her scope includes the full partner ecosystem of national and regional value added resellers, distribution, alliances and OEMs. Prior to joining VMware, Tara was the first Canadian Channel Chief for Dell Canada, responsible for developing and executing the go-to-market strategy for commercial channels. Before that, Tara served as the Director of Sales for the North American Mid-Market Commercial Channels at Dell. She also held sales leadership roles within the Consumer, SMB, Online and Operations divisions at Dell, including in project management, as she relocated and took on the launch and sales leadership of Dell Canada Sales based in India in 2003.

Tara was appointed as a founding member of the Canadian Channel Chiefs Council of Canada in 2013 and continues to serve on the board in addition to leading efforts with building of the Channel accreditation program for Canada.

In 2016, she earned her Certified Canadian Channel Chief accreditation and Trust Mark by the C4 council of Canada.

Peter Near, National Director, Solution Engineering

 

Peter Near is Director of Systems Engineering at VMware Canada. His role includes hybrid cloud strategy with customers, technical sales strategy, and continued growth of core platforms across VMware. Peter has worked in the enterprise technology field for more than 15 years. During this time, he has held a number of leadership positions working as a services practice manager, product management director and other senior roles in the enterprise software and infrastructure areas. Peter has received a Bachelor of Science degree from Wilfrid Laurier University and studied at IMD Business School in Switzerland. He has held senior positions with Procter & Gamble, OpenText and VMware. Peter is a valued speaker at VMware – presenting regularly to Canadian Executives, at VMware’s Conferences and other industry events.

Ali Emadi, Senior Associate Corporate Counsel

 

Ali Emadi serves as the primary legal counsel to the Canadian leadership team. Ali is an attorney called to the State Bar of California, the Bar of Ontario and the Barreau du Quebec. Prior to joining VMware, Ali held various legal counsel roles within both private and public sectors, with his last position being with Hewlett Packard Enterprise where he advised company’s enterprise services business, including advising on large IT and business process outsourcing, cloud and professional services transactions. He received his law degree (J.D.) from the University of Ottawa.

 

Outside of work, Ali enjoys his time running, golf and spending time with his family. Ali lives in Toronto, Ontario with his wife.

Roy Poloni, Sales Director Canada, Central Region

 

Roy Poloni joined VMware in 2008 as Director of Sales. In his role, he manages a Canadian field sales organization, which includes, inside sales, sales specialist and liaisons with the channel team. Throughout his 10-year tenure at VMware, Poloni has built a sales strategy and coverage model to meet the transformational business needs of Enterprise and Commercial clients.

 

With over 20 years of IT experience, Roy Poloni stands at the forefront of the fastest moving technology industry trend. He’s spent the past four years evangelizing an industry-wide shift to the cloud and has helped position VMware as a leader in private, hybrid and public cloud space via the SDDC, Software Defined Datacenter.

Prior to joining VMware Inc., he held several sales leadership roles at Compuware including Regional Sales Director and Country leader. He holds a Bachelor of Business degree from Marshall University, Huntington, WV.

Mike Stamos, Regional Director for Eastern Canada

 

Mike Stamos is the Regional Director for Eastern Canada, VMware based out of Montreal, Quebec. Mike has over 20 years of international business experience. He has held various management and sales positions spanning public and private sectors, Information Technology, Transportation, Aerospace & Defense, Oil and Gas, Natural Resources, Healthcare and Education. Mike joined VMware after 2 years at Citrix as Regional Director. Beyond VMware and Citrix he has valued experience from Microsoft, Canadian Pacific Railway and Xwave Solutions (Bell). Focusing on the customers’ agenda, Mike has mobilized and led teams to help customers transform their organizations to be more innovative and generate sustainable top line revenue growth in order to compete in a new, disruptive economy. Mike holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Physics and Marketing from Concordia University in Montreal, Quebec.