Sonepar (Charleston, SC)
François Anquetil, the company’s president of Sonepar Canada (in photo), retired after a 36-year career at the company. He will remain as acting president through March 2024 as he transitions responsibilities to incoming president of Sonepar Canada, George McClean.
During his career at Sonepar, Anquetil served as president of Lumen, vice president of vendor relations, and CFO for Sonepar Canada. He was also president of two divisions at Sonepar France, CCE and Franco Belge (Sonepar’s very first acquisition).
Under his leadership, Sonepar Canada doubled in size while undertaking transformational projects that shaped the future of the organization. He led efforts that strengthened customer service and operational excellence, including state-of-the-art distribution center automation, implementing a new digital platform to accelerate an omnichannel experience, and creating specialty business capabilities to further diversify Sonepar offerings in the market.
“I am very proud of how we grew the business in Canada and in the development of careers for our associates,” he said, “It’s very gratifying to watch someone who started as a sales account manager grow their career to lead a large functional area of the organization today. Sonepar has a strong entrepreneurial culture that allows associates to imagine many different opportunities for the work they do and their own professional development.”
George McClean, former president of National Tire Distributors, has spent his career at companies like General Motors, and W.W. Grainger, where he worked for 10 years. He holds a bachelor’s degree in social science from Western University, a JD from Osgoode Hall Law School, an MBA from the Schulich School of Business, and is a CPA.
“Having worked in fast-paced environments where exceeding customer needs was a daily expectation, George is an ideal choice to lead the next chapter for Sonepar Canada,” said Rob Taylor, president of Sonepar North America, in the press release. “George has deep expertise in developing strategic roadmaps, leading acquisitions, accelerating adoption of analytics and digitization within an organization, and developing talent. With François having led a very well-run operation in Canada, I expect a smooth transition.”
Turtle (Clark, NJ)
Teesee Murray is now chief strategy officer. Murray has more than 25 years of global leadership in distribution, retail, manufacturing, healthcare and financial services and will lead Turtle’s transformation strategy. Key areas of focus for this transformation are innovative solutions, go-to-market initiatives, partner ecosystem, ESG and Turtle’s micro-investment strategy.
Murray was most recently CEO of iGrafx, an equity-backed global firm in business process intelligence. Prior, she was vice president/general manager at Epicor, and global vice president for Digital and Cloud at Infor. Murray is a graduate of the MIT Sloan School, Computer Science and AI Lab, AI: Implications for Business Strategy 2018. She received bachelor’s degree in business economics & environmental science from the University of California, Santa Barbara.
According to the press release, “At a time when Turtle is accelerating the transition to sustainable energy by advancing innovative customer solutions, Murray brings C-suite experience as a growth-oriented changemaker with a deep knowledge of technology that includes AI and enterprise automation.”
Vantage Electrical Group (Crystal Lake, IL)
Shawn Blair was hired to be the new president and CEO, according to a LinkedIn company post. Most recently, he served as the executive lead, U.S. Service Partner Organization at Schneider Electric. He has also had national sales posts at Belden and Rockwell Automation.
Motion Industries (Birmingham, AL)
Mike Esposito was named group vice president, Motion Automation Intelligence, effective immediately. He most recently served as director of Motion Automation Intelligence’s Engineering Assembly Solutions (EAS), having joined Motion as part of the Kaman Distribution Group (including Kaman Automation) acquisition.
With over 25 years in industrial automation and manufacturing, he has developed a systems approach along with deep, cross-functional experience as an automation consumer, producer and supplier. Prior to joining Motion/KDG, he held senior management roles at iAutomation, CDF Corp. and SencorpWhite.
In his new role, Esposito will lead the Motion Automation Intelligence team, and his responsibilities will include the development and implementation of multi-year strategic business and marketing plans.
Esposito graduated from Bridgewater State College (master’s of science in technology management) and New England Institute of Technology (bachelor’s of science in electronic engineering technology).
Motion Automation Intelligence solution technologies include robotics, motion control, machine vision, digital networking/IIoT, industrial framing, pneumatics and custom mechatronic systems.
W.W. Grainger (Chicago)
Cecelia Myers joined the company as VP-group product manager and will lead its strategy to custom build technology capabilities aimed at improving the customer and team member experience.
Myers most recently she served as VP-Digital at CDW, where she led its digital channel and oversaw product management, digital integrations, demand generation and product design. Prior to CDW, she held roles of increasing responsibility in product and user experience at Groupon, leading initiatives such as automating customer support, implementing AI solutions and launching Groupon’s photo/video studio. She also co-founded CakeStyle, an online women’s styling business.
OmniCable (West Chester, PA)
Carmel Cunningham joined the company as director of business development for Omni’s Communications Business Unit. In this role, she will lead the company’s growth strategies in the industrial automation connectivity end markets. Cunningham has 35 years of experience in the communications industry, with the last 15 within the industrial sector. Prior to OmniCable, she was with CommScope for 10 years and Belden for 15 years. She also worked for Rockwell and Cisco Systems.
OmniCable launched its Datacom Business Unit back in July. OmniCable now has a dedicated team to focus on broadband and enterprise products and solutions for distributors’ customers.