Fast Lane Management
WORLDWIDE Management
Torsten Poels, CEO & Chairman of the Board
Torsten has worked in the IT Industry in Europe for 25 years. He started with Technical Training and Consulting Projects and founded his first company specializing in high-end networking services in 1990.
Since then he has gained comprehensive Executive Board and Sales experience leading several Cisco Learning Solutions Partners and IT Training companies. He has a proven track record of growing companies quickly and profitably and developing successful strategic partnerships. Torsten joined Fast Lane in 2003 and is responsible for Fast Lane’s outstanding growth in Europe, Russia/CIS, Central and Eastern Europe, Americas and Japan. Torsten has a degree in Computer Engineering from PTL Physikalische Technische Lehranstalt, Fachhochschule Wedel/Hamburg.
Chuck Terrien, SVP Americas & EMEA, Member of the Board
Chuck founded Fast Lane Americas in May of 2005. He has been in the Cisco Training Business for over 10 years. Mr. Terrien was responsible for the general management of a large multi-national Cisco delivery business as well as a WW Cisco training business development position. Prior to that, he held various technical and managerial positions in the IBM Networking Hardware and Software Divisions. He has a Bachelor of Arts degree in Business from Michigan State University and a Masters of Science in System Science from the State University of New York at Binghamton.
Eckhart Eichler, VP Cisco Line of Business & VP CEE Russia/CIS
Eckhart Eichler has an education as well as strong working experience in communications engineering and he has worked in the IT industry in Europe for more than 25 years. He started as a system engineer for telecommunications and founded his own company in 1991 offering consulting and training services. Since then he’s also involved in the Cisco training business.
Working for his own company as well as some high-tech consulting & training companies, he has more than 15 years of management experience ranging from company management to director of business development on a global basis. Based on his understanding of advanced technologies he has a track record of developing and expanding the high-tech services business and is very well known in the Cisco training industry. Besides that, he is the author of a book about routing and routing protocols and of numerous articles published in a variety of technical magazines. Furthermore, Eckhart has been chairman, speaker and instructor at a number of international events.
Alan Lee, VP NetApp Line of Business
Alan has been involved in sales and sales management for his entire career. He entered the IT industry in 1989 managing a regional sales team for a US computer manufacturer and network integrator. In 1995, he joined a US-based IT training organization that grew into an international operation. As a National Accounts Director, Alan was responsible for managing relationships with several of their largest accounts on a national and international level. He joined Fast Lane in 2005 as VP of US Sales. In 2009, Alan was asked to take his current role having worldwide responsibility for Fast Lane's business relationship with NetApp.
REGIONAL Management - EMEA
Andy Turner, Managing Director UK
Andy has worked in the Telecommunications and IT industry for over 20 years. Initially with the Philips Electronics Group responsible for the Commercial & Business Development of mobile and data products in Western Europe, Middle East and the emerging markets of Eastern Europe and India. During this period a multitude of business experience was gained in driving Product Business Units and associated Sales & Marketing programmes achieving positioning Philips as the new market entrant and taking to market leadership in many of the developing markets of Eastern Europe by negotiating multi-million dollar contracts with Service Providers & intermediaries via both a direct and an indirect sales channel. Over the past 10 years Andy has held Senior Commercial Director roles with a number of IT Education and Consultancy businesses in the UK and EMEA. This has encompassed periods of rapid growth, mergers & acquisitions as well as assisting companies to sell their business. Andy has a Bachelor of Science Degree in Electronics from Brunel University, a post graduate diploma in Sales & Marketing and a Fellowship from the Chartered Institute of Marketing.
Rüdiger Weskamm, Managing Director Germany
Rüdiger has worked in the IT Industry in Germany since 1980 including management roles for Nixdorf Computer, Siemens Nixdorf AG and Siemens Business Services.
He has worked in the training and educational sector as Line Manager for customer and employee training, as project manager for European community projects and as the responsible manager for the Siemens Internet Academy. As Business/Managing Director Germany since 2005, Rüdiger is responsible for Fast Lane’s Business Development and major key accounts Germany.
Herman Goedman, Managing Director Benelux
Herman has worked in the IT Industry in The Benelux since 1983. He worked as software developer, project manager and business manager at different System Integrators.
As of 1998 Herman has been involved in Networking training as General Manager of a Cisco Learning Partner and UNIX Consulting Company. Before starting Fast Lane Benelux he was board member for a large International Training Company, responsible for business and partner development, sales and marketing management in many areas including Cisco, Microsoft, and Linux/UNIX.
Renzo Silvestri, Managing Director Italy
Renzo Silvestri joined Fast Lane in 2009 through the acquisition of GKI, were he was CEO and owner. Renzo created GKI in 2006 as a consequence of the MBO of the Italian subsidiary of a large inter-national training company, where he served as EMEA VP and General Manager from 2001 to 2004, leading operations in Europe, Middle East and Africa. Before taking this position, from 1996, Mr Silvestri was in charge of Italy and time to time of other countries, like Spain, France, Germany, Switzerland as Country Manager. Renzo started his professional career in 1973 in Software development and before joining the mentioned international training company he worked for Digital Equipment in various managerial roles in Education and Software departments. Renzo holds a degree in Physics.
Tom Story, Managing Director Spain & Portugal
Tom began his career as a software engineer in multinational companies (Unisys, AT&T, NCR, SUN MICROSYSTEMS). He worked over 15 years in the US before moving to Europe in various technical roles including the technical responsibility of an IT department across 35 States in the US. In EMEA Tom held the position of Country Manager for the Iberian Peninsula for Stratus Technologies, headquartered in Boston, MA, a company specializing in computer hardware, services and networks. Tom´s role was to drive new consulting services across the South of EMEA achieving the first sale of a PS deals in the region. In 2005 he joined Motorola as Regional Sales Director, EMEA. During his time at Motorola, Tom helped drive 35% growth in managed services, training and consulting services negotiating multimillion dollar service deals across de EMEA region. Tom also worked at HP driving the HALO visual Collaboration Business Unit for the South of EMEA. He studied Computer Science at the University of Utah (USA), MBA from the University of Westminster (Utah, USA), Master in Management of IT Resources from the same University and studies in international business at INSEAD in France.
Philippe Gomez, Managing Director France
Philippe has a 25 years experience of European IT Operations and EMEA Business Development. He holds different International Sales and Marketing positions with manufacturers like Intel and 3Com. He has been involved in the Networking and Telecom training since 15 years. He has created the first Cisco Training Partner in France, and holds different Management positions, before he joined the Fast lane Team as the Managing Director for France. Philippe holds an Engineering Degree in Networking and Telecom.
Anders Oxelcrantz, Managing Director Scandinavia
Anders has worked in the IT Industry in the Nordics since 1990. He started as a salesman in the Telecom area and then became Sales Manager in the area of value added services. He also worked as Maintenance Manager for one of the Swedish market leader System Integrators which led him into the training area.
Anders founded a Cisco and Nortel training division in 1994 and expanded that business across the Nordics over the following five years. Anders has spent the last 13 years in different leading roles for Nordic and Pan European training organizations primarily focused on Cisco Training.
Jens Søltoft Andersen, Managing Director Denmark
Jens has worked in the IT Industry in the Nordics since 1993. He started as a salesman in an Apple Business Center and began working with network and security solutions in 1996, and has stuck with that ever since. He and a colleague started up Network Associates in Denmark in 1999, where Jens’s focus came on the protocol analyzer "Sniffer", and soon the responsibility in that area also moved to Norway. During those years, Jens started to plan and deliver training to users of the Sniffer tool and the interest in delivering training to business professionals were founded. Since November 2009 Jens has been responsible for the Danish operations for Fast Lane.
Paul de Reuck, Managing Director South Africa
Paul has been working in the IT industry for 17 years, initially in technical roles, including time as a trainer on IBM hardware systems. He has worked for Dell and IBM, as well as locally listed IT companies. He has been involved as a sales executive, mostly in the Telco and Banking environments in South Africa, and has run the Storage business as Platform Manager for IBM in Sub-Saharan Africa for several years. Paul is joining Fast Lane as MD for South Africa in July 2011.
Stephen Egri, Worldwide Operations Director
Coming to Fast Lane with over 12 years of experience in the IT Education Industry, Stephen joined mid 2011. Beginning his career in Ireland with a background in IT Management, he worked with an Independent IT Training company combining his technical experience with a focus on Operations Management. Stephen has also spent time at an EMEA level where he worked for Microtek, a global learning solutions provider successfully building a network of delivery partners across EMEA while supporting business opportunities & initiatives further abroad. Since then he has also helped establish a new education and consultancy provider to the market Imparando, designing and building out a flagship training facility in the city of London. Stephen is currently based in the United Kingdom.
James Dixon, EMEA Marketing Director
James studied Marketing at Birmingham University for 4 years before undertaking his first executive role at Westcon UK Ltd, the distributor of leading-edge networking technology products.
Providing marketing support for a number of Westcon’s leading vendors such as British Telecom, Nortel Networks, Extreme Networks, 3 Comm and Packeteer. After 2 years James moved into the IT Training industry and has never looked back with 10 years experience under his belt. James joined Fast Lane in February 2010 and is ultimately responsible for all of Fast Lane marketing activities including strategic decisions, engaging with vendors and partners and overseeing the execution of the marketing plan ensuring it’s on time and within budget.
Emma Lobley, EMEA Business Development Director Cisco LoB
With over 15 years experience in the IT industry, 12 of which directly involved with Cisco Training, Emma has a wealth of experience building relationships with large corporate and Cisco Partners. Her key strength is to build relationships at various levels within an organisation
and help them design and execute training programs for their staff or end customers. She has directly managed a host of training programs involving sales staff, pre-sales and post sales engineers whether this is through on-line learning or a traditional instructorled classroom experience.
REGIONAL Management - CEE / RUSSIA/CIS
Oleg Feldman, Managing Director Russia/CIS
Oleg has 10 years of experience in the Cisco training business with several of the world’s leading CLSPs. He has worked as Sales Manager, Partner and Key Account Manager and Partner Devel-opment Manager. Also, he has managed 2-Tier partners (CLPs and Sponsored Organizations) across EMEA for over 4 years.
Oleg is an effective communicator and trusted advisor while being very successful at strategic planning within a dynamic business environment.
Tilen Rozman, Managing Director CEE
Tilen brings over 10 years of experience in IT education field with extensive international experience in educational program develop-ment, business development, sales & marketing, customer relations, business operations and new technology initiatives. His professional path began with Compaq educational services where he was in charge of delivery and development of programs for European and African regions and continued with Program Management for Micro-soft and Hewlett Packard Educational Services through European Learning Partners. Tilen was in the past working for a Hewlett Pack-ard and Microsoft Training center as well as for Cisco Learning Solu-tions Partners. Tilen is now on a position of Managing Director at Fast Lane Slovenia, responsible for Central and Eastern Europe. His current position combines all his previous experiences and gives him an opportunity to develop new business, such as IBM (implementation of N-series courses), VMware (implementation of training into Central and Eastern European region), etc.
Bogdan Stashchuk, Managing Director Ukraine
Bogdan Stashchuk has an exceptional experience in IT. He worked as a network engineer at National University of Taras Shevchenko, Kiev, before he entered IT training business as a Cisco Instructor. After gaining his CCIE certification, Bogdan had been involved in numerous complex integration projects as an architect. He also held an executive director position at one of ukrainian IT training providers. Bogdan’s excellent management and planning skills allow him to develop successful and profitable business strategies.
REGIONAL Management - US / Canada
Dan O´Brian, COO US/Canada
Dan O’Brien joined Fast Lane in Oct of 2010 as the COO Americas, responsible for busi-ness operations in Canada and the USA. Dan has an extensive background in training operations and services, prior to Fast Lane he held the Position of VP Managed Learning Services at MicroTek a provider of learning solutions. While in that role he was responsible for building a global service line of business and for launching many new service offerings that supported high quality training delivery. Dan also spent 10 years at a very large global technology training company from 1996 to 2006. He started in Canada running Canadian Operations then spent 3 years running US operations and then 2 year running European operations; he left the company as the Global VP of Operations and Planning. In the past 17 years in the private training industry Dan has been instrumental in defining plans and strategies to manage growth and to drive efficiency and profitability in all countries where he has had management responsibility.
REGIONAL Management - LATAM
Luis Campbell, VP Latin America
Luis has worked for Unisys Corporation most of his career in Executive Management positions, leading technical and consultant business groups and providing value add in complex technical Integration Projects in several Latin America countries. Also, he is an expert in business planning and organization, and a consultant expert in business process transformation in banks and business alignment. He also had direct sales roles coordinating sales groups of technological products across Latin America. Luis is a Computer Science engineer and has an MBA with a Marketing major and post-graduate degree in Tele-communications. He was appointed Information Services Director since 1999, Certified Principal since May 2000 and Certified Partner since 2003. In 2004 he was responsible for the consultant practice of Retail Banking for Latin America including Mexico and Brazil. He had the responsibility of over one hundred consultants and 23 managers, and had a total services quota over USD$7.5M.
Ricardo Matsui, Managing Director Brazil
A thoughtful leadership is his style of business management and a truly believer of the power of customer satisfaction and loyalty. Ricardo has over 19 years of experience in the IT industry and a proven record of successful business development and execution in the networking business around the globe. Prior to leading Fast Lane business in Brasil, he worked for Cisco for 13 years (former CCIE) where he led geographic dispersed cross-functional teams selling thru strategic partners. He graduated in Electronic Engineer with emphasis on Computer Systems at Faculdade de Engenharia Industrial – FEI, as a top performer.
Héctor Martínez Rodríguez, Managing Director Mexico
Hector is an Electric Engineer of the Instituto Teconlogico de Estudios Superiores de Monterrey. He has experience in the education area for more than 10 years working with training programs of companies like IBM, HP, Symantec, Altiris, NetApp, Cisco, VMware, BEA, Sybase, SAP, etc.. He is cofounder of Uny-II de Mexico, a training center with more than 20 classrooms located in Mexico City. Hector has also the following certifications: CSE – Cisco Sales Expert, ASAM – Cisco Advanced Security for Account Managers, AWLANAM – Cisco Advanced Wireless LAN for Account Managers, NCDA – NetApp Certified Data Management Administrator, NCI – NetApp Certified Instructor, ACE – Altiris Certified Engineer, ACC – Altiris Certified Consultant.
Jesús Sanchez Ferrer, Manager Peru
Jesus is a System Engineer of the Universidad Nacional de Ingenieria and Administrative Engineer of the Univeridad Inca Garcilaso de La Vega with more than twenty years of experience in the area of management and education of Information Technologies at level superior, he has experience on the management of development projects and implementation of Information systems with wide experience in the direction of training centers of Networking and IT with responsibility in the Commercial Corporate area. In the area of training centers of information and communication technologies, he has more than fifteen years of experience. He has taken part on the creation of the first Cisco Learning Partner in Peru in 1998 and he also participated in the creation of the first Cisco Networking Academy in Peru in 2003. Nowadays, Jesus is the Country Manager of Fast Lane, Peru with commercial responsibilities in the countries of Ecuador, Bolivia and Peru.
REGIONAL Management - APAC
Norbert Jacobsen, VP APAC South
Norbert has over 20 years of experience in IT Service, IT Training and support. His work history included Digital Equipment, 3Com and 7 years with Cisco Systems in Europe and Asia. He has had direct sales responsibility for service providers, enterprise customers, global customers and all
types of channels in the IT environment. As Senior Manager for Cisco in Asia he was in charge for 13 countries and had management responsibility for Sales, field sales marketing, field sales finance and delivery. After leaving Cisco, Norbert managed a start-up joint venture in India with full P&L responsibility and successfully implemented a UPS company in more than 14 Metro cites across India. As Training is driving product and service sales, Norbert was focusing on Channel- and Sales enablement during his entire career.
Tina Huang, VP APAC North
Tina Huang has over 15 years of IT training and certifications management and industry experience. Tina joined Fast Lane in 2011 through the acquisition of IT Learning Solution Ltd, CEO and founder. Tina set up IT Learning Solution Ltd in 2006. ITLS is the biggest learning distributor for several vendors in Asia. Before ITLS she worked at a regional IT training company and was in charge of IT training and certification business across 13 countries in Asia Pac from Japan to New Zealand. Tina has been involved in marketing, consultant and management roles for IT Talent Development working at GKN, Training Partners, Hitachi Data Systems, KPMG Advisory Services and partnership with Accenture Learning Solutions. Tina holds a degree in Law School.
Linda Belina, COO Singapore
Linda has been working in Singapore as Regional Manager for NIL Data Communications where she gained experience in the training industry. Linda has a strong business experience in Asia, she has worked as Project Manager and Operations Chief in China as well as Business Consultant for the APAC region.
Rachel Chan, COO North Asia
Rachel is a senior administrator with extensive experience in people, project and operations management for the Asia Pacific Region. She has over 15 years of experience in multinational corporations and private enterprises. Rachel works as COO to in-charge all aspects relating to Cisco business in Asia Pacific Region, such as recruiting learning partners, training kit ordering, managing LPMS and LCMT. She also acts as Project Manager in handling courses delivery for APAC projects. She is also responsible for all administration and financial duties for Hong Kong Office.
Lisa Yang, Manager Fast Lane Taiwan
Lisa had graduated in Law School and has over 12 years’ solid experience in IT Training Industry. She is familiar in providing IT training solutions to customers from telecommunication, multinational corporations, service providers as well as SMB companies. Lisa works as Regional Manager and in-charge of business development, learning partner recruitment and sales & marketing. She has successfully introduced Red Hat Certifications to universities and colleges in Taiwan and formed “Taiwan Redhat Academy”. She is also responsible for promoting Cisco Certifications, PMP, ITIL and various IT Security certifications to SI partners, Government and end-users.
Kazu Sakamoto, Managing Director Japan
