Sam Roza

Work History

Red Hat

09.2021 - Current

Manage the support relationships of Red Hat's largest OEM partners, focusing on new and upcoming products and routes to market and how they will be supported by both the partner and Red Hat Technical Support
Assist ISV technical partners and cloud partners with their certification processes, support operations, and work with negotiating sales contracts, MOUs, and support agreements
Achievements: Developed a new support model for a key OEM partner that resulted in a 25% increase in partner NPS returns and a similar reduction in detractor responses.

Red Hat

07.2019 - Current

Lead a team of partner success managers who are responsible for ensuring the success of Red Hat's technical partners across North America
Provide coaching, mentoring, and guidance to the team members and help them achieve their goals and objectives
Collaborate with other teams and stakeholders within Red Hat to align partner success strategies and initiatives
Achievements: Increased partner retention rates by 15% by implementing an onboarding program for new partners.

Red Hat

09.2016 - 07.2019

Managed the support relationship of Red Hat's strategic partners, including OEMs, ISVs, cloud providers, and distributors
Ensured partner satisfaction, retention, and loyalty by delivering high-quality support services and solutions
Identified and resolved partner issues and escalations in a timely and effective manner
Drove partner adoption, expansion, and renewal of Red Hat's products and services
Educated partners on product lifecycles, certification and education options/opportunities, and evolving technologies
Achievements: Led a project to increase partner visibility by driving changes to internal CRM systems so partner accounts could be differentiated from commercial accounts

Red Hat

06.2013 - 09.2016

Established myself as a trusted advisor for key technical and management stakeholders of strategic accounts in the west region
Worked with sales account teams to develop and execute success plans for accounts
Kept customers informed of product updates, roadmaps, best practices, and industry trends
Provided proactive technical guidance and support to customers to ensure optimal performance and availability of their Red Hat environments
Managed partner expectations during engineering operations
Achievements: Achieved a 0% churn rate for over 3 years through account management, proactive monitoring, and issue resolution.

Sequoia Retail Systems

11.2010 - 06.2013

Worked as a Windows and Linux systems administrator with a focus on internal systems, services, and infrastructure
Maintained Atlassian products such as Jira and Confluence, and worked with other departments to plan for upgrades, migrations, integrations, etc
Troubleshot and resolved system issues and incidents
Achievements: Ensured 99% or better customer uptime for internal and customer-facing services in a mixed VMware and physical environment.

Sequoia Retail Systems

06.2005 - 11.2010

Oversaw the day-to-day operations of the technical support and customer support group
Managed customer escalations, technical escalations, service level agreements, and quality assurance
Acted as a liaison between the support organization and the engineering group
Trained and mentored new hires and existing staff
Achievements: Improved customer satisfaction ratings by 15% through process improvements and training initiatives.