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Since David Bailey was poached as EVP/GM of tech boutique Airfoil, Text 100 has accelerated its succession plan and promoted VP Kerry Hall to San Francisco GM. Bailey, who started at Airfoil this week, had been with Text for nearly seven years, running its Cisco business, and most recently, its San Francisco office.
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David Bailey[/caption]
“I’ve been keen that we have proper succession planning for all of our offices,” says Text 100’s North American director Rowan Benecke.
In August, Bailey moved into the GM role at Text -- and at the same time -- the firm began grooming Hall as deputy manager, while also preparing her to step into Bailey’s role as Cisco’s North American account lead.
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Kerry Hall[/caption]
“This was with the eye that we’d transition David into a new role - but we thought he’d be in place longer than it turned out,” Benecke says, adding Bailey was moving into a greater role on accounts like BlackBerry.
This reshuffle comes on the back of Text’s first year of double-digit growth (12%) in North America since 2008, with wins like BlackBerry, Broadcom, Lightspeed Venture Partners and Home Away. The San Francisco office, under the direction of VP Carolina Noguera -- who has since moved back to a client service role -- also grew 12% in the 2013 fiscal year that ended July 31. Globally, Text 100's revenues are north of $50 million.
Meanwhile, Airfoil, an $8 million tech shop, has grappled with flat growth over the last two years in its Silicon Valley operation. Bailey has been brought in to reverse its fortunes and drive growth in the office. Since 2009, Tracey Parry has led Airfoil's 14-person Sunnyvale office with clients that include eBay Motors, Survey Monkey and recent win FuzeBox. She retains her role as SVP and now reports into Bailey, who reports into co-CEO Janet Tyler.
“We needed core B2B tech expertise, so David’s Cisco experience is really relevant,” Tyler says. Both Parry and Bailey sit on Airfoil's executive team.
Bailey previously left Text for a brief stint as president of AxiCom. He's also previously worked at Hewlett-Packard and the now defunct Sun Microsystems.
