New ANZ GTIA community manager wants everyone to know about the industry’s “best kept secret”

Bec Paior talks to CRN Australia about her new role and what she’s excited about for the IT channel.

The Global Technology Industry Association (GTIA) recently appointed Bec Paior as its new community manager for ANZ.

She moved to the industry body in September, coming from spending the past nine years at ConnectWise.

Speaking to CRN Australia at the recent GTIA event in Sydney, Paior explained how she is focused on community for Australian members.

“It's a new world, like what GTIA has become, and what we took from the CompTIA community as we built GTIA this year. This has really enabled us to focus in on community and the benefits that we can provide to our members,” she said.

“Community is the piece that I'm most excited about, and that's why I'm pleased to be in the role of the ANZ community manager.”

As community manager in ANZ, her role is to grow the GTIA community and enable more people to actively contribute in ANZ and globally.

“We are a global organisation. We have seven different regions that we represent, North America, UK, Ireland, etc, giving that global view within Australia, and bringing people in community, making this the place that everyone wants to turn up to,” she said.

Priority two for Paior is to guide and work with the executive council to deliver on the tools and initiatives that this region needs.

“I'll be continuing to work through the objectives and options that [the executive council] want to see, to see how we can actually turn those into tangible outcomes for this region,” she said.

Paior said the GTIA is the industry’s best kept secret, “It shouldn't be, but I think it is. Those who are involved tend to get very active very quickly.

“They are keen to participate, we have a number of members throughout ANZ that have been members for years and years through CompTIA community to now GTIA.”

Paior noted there are a number of people who don't even know that the GTIA exists.

“The scary part is there are a number of people who are members, or their organisation are members, and they're not taking advantage of all of the benefits that membership brings within our region,” she said.

"We've talked about that today out on the floor, about the availability of training, not only for the people who are here and active today, but training you can bring back into your organisation, the GTIA provided as well.”

This is one of the challenges Paior recognised is communicating to the GTIA members about the benefits of being a part of the association.

“That’s one of the challenges that I see in being here and being part of the ANZ region, is to help enable our members to see what tools are available to them and to help them find ways that they can be actively participating within our community,” she explained.

“There is an incredible amount of sharing and knowledge that's being passed in between our members.”

What she’s excited about

Speaking to Paior, she had only been in the role for three days but there are three factors that are exciting to her.

The first one is the GTIA executive council, she said.

“We had our strategic meeting for the EC Executive Council yesterday, and you won't find a more passionate and focused bunch of individuals that really represent some of the best in our industry, and that's really exciting,” Paior explained.

She noted there are elections coming up and encourages anyone to put their name forward.

Another thing she is excited about is the advancing women in tech arm of GTIA, which is being renamed to global women in tech group.

“What it represents is a way of actually bringing in more diversity within our sector as well. That's something that I've always been really passionate about,” she said.

“My first engagement in with GTIA was as the Vice Chair for the Advancing Women in Tech interest group here in ANZ. And I am really lucky that I have Maria Armstrong from Pax8 as the chair of that group and also our vice chair, and that that just gives another voice for diversity within the industry.”

In her new role, Paior is looking forward to getting to know the other interest groups too within the GTIA.

“We've got some really interesting opportunities in the next 12 months to then just grow those out and build them out a little bit more,” she said.

“We haven't done as much this year as we've been on hold just firming down changes for our GTIA as well as the changes here regionally by not having the community manager for a number of months.”