Member Spotlight: Kim Barnett: Bringing a Channel Partner’s Perspective to the Public Sector Marketplace

Having built a successful career serving public sector customers from the reseller side of the channel, Kim Barnett is stepping through the looking glass to bring a valuable new perspective to her role as Client Executive with TD SYNNEX Public Sector.

Kim's career began in the early days of cellular communications, when mobile phones were installed in vehicles and carrying one in your pocket was still a novelty waiting to happen. From customer service to sales leadership, she eventually built her own business serving government and education customers across multiple states.

After selling her company, Kim joined TD SYNNEX nearly five years ago, working in mobility, connectivity and vendor relationships. While she enjoyed sharing her expertise with the vendor community, the opportunity to return to public sector was simply too good to pass up. After all, it's where she'd spent much of her career and where she'd developed a particular appreciation for the customers and missions behind their work.   

As Kim believes:

"There is a mission behind what they're doing on a daily basis."

That understanding is one of the advantages Kim brings to her new role. Unlike commercial customers, government and education organizations often operate within complex procurement requirements, approval processes and budget constraints. Having spent decades serving these organizations, Kim knows that success requires more than offering the right technology; it means understanding how public sector customers operate as well as how to navigate the challenges that can stand between a solution and a sale.

Equally important is her firsthand knowledge of the reseller experience. For Kim, successful partnerships begin with listening, asking the right questions and understanding the people behind the business. Having walked in her partners' shoes, she recognizes the importance of building trust, earning loyalty and reducing the friction that can stand in the way of growth.

How does she accomplish this? One way is by leading with the mindset that:

"There's always more there than just what you see."

As Kim settles into her new role, she's especially looking forward to meeting partners face-to-face, learning how their businesses operate and identifying new opportunities to help them grow.

And having experienced both sides of the looking glass, she's eager to put that perspective to work for the partners she serves.