TORONTO, April 14, 2021 – Telstra has named Kris Schaffer as Canada Country Lead to drive accelerated growth out of the Toronto area. An accomplished IT and telecom professional with both leadership and customer-facing roles at IBM, Bell Canada and TELUS Communications has been named Country Lead for Telstra Canada. Karl Paterson, a sales executive with more than 10 years of telco and technology industry experience has been brought onboard as a Business Development Executive and will report directly into Schaffer. Both have joined as of April 1.
Telstra Americas recently opened a new Point-of-Presence (PoP) in Toronto and upgraded infrastructure to connect Canada to its trans-Pacific subsea cable networks. These subsea cable networks carry data from Canada into the Asia-Pacific region, where Telstra owns and operates the largest subsea cable system (with more than 400,000km of subsea cables globally) and currently carries nearly one-third of all Asia-Pacific internet traffic.
The company will enable Canadian companies, including those in the technology and media, financial, wholesale, oil and gas, and mining sectors to seamlessly connect to markets across Asia to support their growth strategies and to help address new or increasing capacity demands and connectivity in the region.
Kris Schaffer has deep experience with Canada’s largest enterprises through her 20+ year career, and is a regular speaker and contributor at industry events and forums. Most recently Kris was Business Development Executive at ISM Canada, a wholly owned subsidiary of IBM, where she helped companies with cloud-based business intelligence, advanced analytics and big data solution initiatives. Prior to ISM Canada, she served as Enterprise Sales Client Director for Compugen, Inc., Senior Sales Account Executive with Long View Systems and a regional manager for Mitel Networks Solutions, Inc. She was with Bell Canada as Account Executive over an eight year span in the late 1990s and early 2000s.
Karl Paterson returns to the Telstra organization after relocating from Australia to Toronto in 2020. He previously had worked as an Enterprise Key Account Manager for some of Australia’s largest organizations with Telstra Enterprise in Melbourne, Australia, initially joining the organization as part of its graduate program, Karl has a Bachelor’s Degree in Business Administration and Management from the University of South Australia.
For more information surrounding Telstra’s Toronto-based capabilities, and how they enable Canadian companies to reach markets in Asia, contact Kris at Kristie.Sackley-Schaffer@team.telstra.com or Karl at Karl.Paterson@team.telstra.com. More information on Telstra Americas is available at www.telstra.com/americas.
About Telstra
Telstra is a leading telecommunications and technology company with a proudly Australian heritage and a longstanding, growing international business. We have been operating in the Americas for over 25 years under the Telstra Enterprise division, which provides data and IP transit, internet connectivity, network application services such as unified communications and cloud, and managed services to over 500 businesses in 160 cities in the region. Our products and services are supported by one of the largest fiber optic submarine cable systems reaching Asia-Pacific and beyond, with licenses in Asia, Europe and the Americas, and access to more than 2,000 points-of-presence around the world. Through our unparalleled network reach and reliability as well as market-leading customer service and expertise, we connect businesses in the Americas to some of the world’s fastest growing economies, including China, Southeast Asia, North Asia, and Australia. Think Asia, Think Telstra. For more information, please visit www.telstra.com/americas.
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