Former Dell EMC Canada president Kevin Peesker has been named the new Microsoft Canada president. Peesker becomes the first Canadian-born President of Microsoft Canada since Frank Clegg, who retired from Microsoft Canada at the end of 2004.
Multiple sources have told CDN that Janet Kennedy has left her position at Microsoft Canada and will be taking a sabbatical with her husband. Kennedy has been the president of Microsoft Canada since Oct. of 2013 and plans to share details of her next role at a later date.
Earlier this summer, Peesker made the decision to step down from his role as president of Dell EMC Canada commercial business. Kevin Connolly, who is a native of Chicago just like Kennedy, was named has Peesker’s replacement for Dell EMC Canada commercial.
Peesker became Dell Canada’s first ever President in 2013 after a four-year stint working for Dell in Ireland and other European markets. Peesker came into prominence by spearheading Dell Canada’s move to the channel nine years ago after the Canadian GM Greg Davis left the Canadian operation to become worldwide channel chief.
He famously wore angel wings and a halo at the 2008 CDN Top 100 Solution Providers Gala to signal Dell’s commitment to the channel community in Canada.
Peesker served as Dell Canada’s vice president and general manager of SMB at the time. In that position, he was responsible for all aspects of Dell’s direct and channel sales and marketing activities. Peesker is also a member of Dell Canada and the Americas International leadership team, which included ownership of Dell’s corporate commercial customers as well as Dell’s software and peripherals business unit.
Kennedy joined Microsoft in 2002 in order to help shape the company’s industry approach with a specialty in retail and hospitality. Her roles in the U.S. included time in the west and central regions as the vice president for enterprise customers. But it was in Canada where she made her mark in the industry by returning the subsidiary to prominence and providing much needed leadership and structure to the Canadian operation.
She spent the last four years as the president of Microsoft Canada and in that time Microsoft Canada captured the highly coveted Subsidiary of the Year award. Kennedy also opened up two data centres in the country and for that she was named the CDN Newsmaker of the Year.
