Channel Veteran Dan Wensley Named GTIA CEO

It has been a long time since the leader of the largest association dedicated to the IT channel actually came from the IT channel.

When Todd Thibodeaux became CEO of CompTIA in 2008, he came from 17 years of experience in the consumer electronics industry, not the computer industry. To his credit, Thibodeaux became deeply knowledgeable about our channel in a very short time and led CompTIA with distinction for another 17 years, culminating in the successful sale of the training and certification business that fueled the growth of the association to Thoma Bravo just about a year ago.

The sale resulted in an endowment that will fund the member association, renamed the Global Technology Industry Association (GTIA) for the foreseeable future. While this name is new, the organization enjoys a long and productive history starting as the Association of Better Computer Dealers (ABDC) in 1982, then renamed the Computer Technology Industry Association (CompTIA) in 1992, and today GTIA. With the sale of the training and certification business, Thibodeaux remains CEO of the newly for-profit CompTIA.

A New Day and New Leadership for a New Association
After a thorough and diligent search, GTIA has recently announced their new CEO.

Dan Wensley is well known in the channel community. His first major role came in 2000 when he joined MCI WorldCom with a mission to create their first reseller program in Canada. This was followed by him becoming Vice President of Marketing and Sales for one of the pioneering enablers of the MSP business, Level Platforms.

Dan joined the Board of Directors of CompTIA during that time, giving him 14 years of experience with the organization, including constant presence at the annual ChannelCon conference, at the time of his ascendance to CEO. Dan went on to become President of Passportal, which was acquired by Solarwinds, CEO at ScalePad, and CEO at WarrantyMaster, all well-known channel-leading companies. All told, Dan is a definitive citizen of the channel bringing 30 years of successful channel experience to his new role as CEO of GTIA.

When I asked Dan to share his vision for GTIA, he immediately pointed out that his initial presentation to the GTIA search committee was entitled "The Possible."

He then suggested that the resources accorded and the focus on certification and training side of CompTIA had long overshadowed the member association, limiting its visibility and perhaps delaying its growth. Dan acknowledges and appreciates the success Todd Thibodeaux achieved and points out that it is that success which has now fueled the growth and expansion of the member association basically forever.

"Let's do more for more," suggests Wensley. "Just bringing more members is not good enough. Just delivering more resources or assets is not good enough. We really look to define designed advantages or outcomes for the members and in a more tangible manner that maybe has been focused on before."

Four Areas of Focus for the Future
Dan defines four specific areas on which the new GTIA leadership will focus:

1. People
One big and important difference Dan describes in the new approach to people is to not only highlight the internal people who are hired by the association to operate it including himself, but also the members who participate in the direction and growth of the organization, most specifically those who serve on the member board of directors. He speaks of emphasizing who is serving on the member board, why they're serving, and why the entire GTIA community should be interested who is on that board, and consider the advantages of perhaps serving themselves.

2. Resources
Dan emphasizes the importance of delivering the resources that are desired by and will be extensively utilized by the members, delivering real value to them.

3. Community
Dan describes the importance of bringing the channel industry a real sense of community. "Many others," he explains, "are doing peer groups very well, but we're in the unique position, being a nonprofit, being vendor agnostic, having no other fighter in the game, other than to give back to the to the channel. I think we can be, and should be, and are obligated to be the community enablement organization."

4. Advancement
It is critical for GTIA to really drive tangible outcomes for the industry and every member.

Unlimited Funding
As mentioned earlier, the sale of the CompTIA brand and certification business resulted in an endowment to the member association that will conceivably fund operations in perpetuity. This means GTIA can serve the channel community without having to invest any time or distraction in fund-raising.

Dan acknowledges, "We absolutely have a fiduciary and fiscal responsibility, but to be unfettered by EBITDA requirements and be able to do things both on the philanthropy side and on the giving back community side, that that is going to be incredibly exciting."

He continues, "It's pure empowerment to not be constrained. There's always the aura of outside obligations. One of the challenges that I was faced with in conversation with the GTIA hiring committee was that I've always run for profit, fast growth software companies for the last 30 years. How do you think you're going to come in and run a membership organization and be successful at it?"

His reply? "A commitment to community was the cornerstone of building emerging technology businesses. To understand the value, the education, the sense of community, the listening, learning and advancing each other in the technologies we were delivering, and that that was what really resonated."

Why Channel Citizens Should Join GTIA
The immediate first response to the question of why channel members should join GTIA addressed the importance of thinking expansively.

"The first point there," replies Wensley, "is in utilizing the right acronyms. One of the first things I did coming in was to change us from an MSP nomenclature to an IT service provider (ITSP) nomenclature because it declared our need to immediately expand."

In doing this, Wensley accurately reflects the reality that the channel is evolving way past the original concept of the MSP. Already, Microsoft has created the role of Cloud Service Provider (CSP) and we're witnessing the explosion of Artificial Intelligence Service Providers (AISP), Data Service Provider (DSP) which includes data scientists being made available on a fractional basis. Following a model first witnessed in the medical industry, general practitioner MSPs are specializing in a growing variety of competencies that better define and focus their services and their markets.

Serving the Community of Communities
"I'd rather be just an enabler of other communities and be encompassing and supportive and help in any way that we can," explains Wensley. "With our funding and our structure, we're in a unique position to be able to do that without the constraints of competition in some obscure way. We're free of all that, you know, needing to think that way. We need to be the place where even emerging technologies companies come to before they can afford to go to other trade shows, because it is an expensive industry to be a vendor In. We can be the stepping stone to that and the constant resource for them moving forward."

Participation and relationship building are also important to him. Speaking of the upcoming ChannelCon show this summer in Nashville, Wensley points out, "I canceled the board meeting at ChannelCon and told the board members they have to be involved with the membership."

In closing, Wensley summarizes, "Throughout my 30-year career, the one most impactful component of being in the IT services industry has been the people. Innovation in technology alone has never moved us forward. It has been the people, the community, the conversation and working together, and I think that is the greatest asset that GTIA has, putting this community of incredible people together while we talk about the resources that are required to advance each individual member, their companies and their customers."

Posted by Howard M. Cohen on June 23, 2025