Lumen Appoints Senior Vice President of Global Partner Solutions

Lumen Technologies has announced that Jim Ortbals will join the company as Senior Vice President of Global Partner Solutions (GPS). Ortbals will lead Lumen’s channel partner strategy and execution, with responsibility for strengthening how the company engages, enables, and scales outcomes through this critical part of its commercial approach.

“As we transform Lumen into the trusted network for AI, we need a partner ecosystem built for speed, rigor and scale,” said Lumen Chief Revenue Officer Jeff Sharritts. “Jim brings proven experience building and scaling global channel organizations, connecting commercial strategy to results. His leadership will help simplify our partner motions, sharpen execution, and accelerate growth by delivering better outcomes for enterprise customers.”

Ortbals brings more than 25 years of experience growing global channel and partner organizations across complex technology and services environments. He has held leadership roles at Cisco, VMware, Zscaler and others, with a track record of connecting channel partner strategy to operational rigor in support of customer outcomes.

“I’m excited to join Lumen at a time when enterprises are demanding tangible business outcomes and partners play an increasingly critical role in delivering them,” said Ortbals. “Lumen’s momentum and investments in our digital platform create a strong foundation for partner-led growth. My focus is to simplify and strengthen our channel partner motions so we consistently engage, enable, and support partners with operating rigor and clear accountability.”

Channel Impact^®
The Denver-based company is undergoing a multi-year transformation, simplifying how it operates and modernizing its network and digital capabilities to meet rising demand for secure, scalable connectivity in the AI era. Partners are central to extending those capabilities to enterprise customers.