“We want to continue to focus on streamlining partner onboarding and provide more navigation to them to make it easier for partners to navigate the AWS Partner Network and AWS in general,” AWS’ global channel chief Ruba Borno tells CRN. April 27, 2022, 04:00 AM EDT
Amazon Web Services’ new worldwide channel leader Ruba Borno is planning to double down on working with partners, with a focus on streamlining and making it easier for solution providers to navigate the AWS Partner Network as well as the cloud market leader in general. “We’re truly doubling down on working with partners in service of our customers,” said Borno, vice president of Worldwide Channels and Alliances for AWS. “We want to continue to focus on streamlining partner onboarding and provide more navigation to them to make it easier for partners to navigate the AWS Partner Network and AWS in general. We want to continue to grow co-sell with them and help them transform our customers together.”
Borno plans to help guide partners better around how to drive profitability and tailor the channel experience to partners specific business models, including investing more in the AWS Partner Paths program. “One of the great things about the breadth of our innovation, the breadth of our customer base, is that we have a lot of insight that we should be using a lot more proactively to guide our partners on the highest return on investment for their time,” she said. “And that’s something that you’ll see us do more of through the Partner Path experience.”
The AWS Partner Paths provide a flexible way to help partners accelerate engagements with AWS as well as navigate through resources, benefits and relevant programs. “We want to continue down that line of thinking of helping streamline the experience and simplify the experience. We know that we’ve got room to improve on making it simpler to do business with AWS by being a lot more proactive in guiding them,” said Borno. Ethan Simmons, managing partner at Norwood, Mass.-based AWS partner Pinnacle Technology Partners (PTP), was excited to hear Borno’s strategy of simplifying and streamlining the entire AWS partner experience. “AWS has moved so fast. They launch so many net new services every year that it’s hard to keep up as a partner. If AWS can help partners scale more at speed, I think that’s where the opportunity is,” said Simmons. PTP, a longtime AWS partner, has struggled with the complexity of the AWS field environment. Simmons said there are many different people at AWS—from field sellers to partner sales managers—who PTP needs to connect with in order to get deals done. “There’s a lot of different people that you need to talk to and build relationships with in order to start to get stuff done,” he said. “I’m glad to hear Ruba is trying to streamline that because it would be a great thing for us.”
Borno To ‘Tailor The Partner Experience’
Borno said she plans to provide partners with more customer insights. AWS will offer more information and insight to channel partners around their specific vertical expertise and business model. “What we want to do is actually tailor the partner experience to our partners’ business model. Not only what is it that they’re selling, but which customers they are supporting, and also what’s driving their profitability,” said Borno. Simmons was bullish about AWS proactively providing insights to help partners drive sales and profitability. “They obviously have a lot of data on customers and much greater visibility than probably most manufacturers have ever had on their customers as far as what they’re doing, what services they’re using within AWS—that type of insight and visibility they have is greater than anyone else that’s out there,” said Simmons. “As far as just sharing it with partners, the AWS partner program has been pretty good at guiding partners to where there’s higher value opportunity and where you should be focusing your time, both from a technical expertise but then also from a vertical expertise. There’s room for improvement, especially around partner development.”
‘It’s Still Day One’
Ruba Borno hails from networking global market leader Cisco. She was most recently senior vice president and general manager of Cisco’s global customer experience centers and managed services before joining AWS in November. Cisco is considered the “gold standard” of partner programs, according to PTP’s Simmons, who also partners with Cisco. Hiring a former Cisco executive in Borno will bring “good things to the AWS Partner Program,” he said. Borno said with herself at the head of AWS’ channel charge, solution providers will see a commitment “across AWS, top-down,” to its partner community. She said only a fraction of workloads which could migrate to the cloud are actually in the cloud today, which creates massive amounts of cloud computing transformation opportunities ahead for channel partners. “From an AWS perspective, as it relates to our partners, it is still day one,” said Borno. “The opportunity ahead of us is significantly greater than what’s behind us. We’ve got more to discover together. You’ll see our continued commitment to our partners.”
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Beauty Independent
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Millennials’ interest in minimalism reshaped the look of beauty brands. As a designer for Drybar and later at her firm Monolith Collective , which has worked for Alchemy 43, SkinMedica, Tenoverten, Skin Laundry, SkinKick and State of Kind , co-founder and creative director Ruba Tadros has been a key architect of minimalist design in the beauty industry, but she now senses the tide is turning away from minimalism as gen Z consumers become a focal point for beauty brands. She’s up for the change. “Building a successful brand is about allowing yourself to evolve,” says Tadros. “I like to think of brands as living, breathing things and not be strict around certain guardrails, whether they be color palettes or typefaces.” Beauty Independent asked her to elaborate on the decline of minimalism, and seven other design and branding movements she believes will be integral to the style and experience of beauty companies in 2022. 1. Maximalism will rule. “We are a coming off over a decade of minimalism,” says Tadros. A maximalist aesthetic harkening back to the early internet period of the late 1990s and early 2000s is taking over. She characterizes the rising maximalism as having “lots of gradients, unexpected color combinations, and interesting use of fonts and typography.” She says, “We had all these strict rules, and now we are breaking them.”
2. Imperfections will be perfect touches. Whether it’s showing pimples or unrefined angles, beauty brands continue to drop the illusions that separated them from everyday people. “The idea of things being overly photoshopped, we know that’s gone. I have had clients prefer to use unretouched photos of models. We are embracing our flaws,” says Tadros. “It’s becoming more authentic. I think the word ‘real’ is overused, but you want to show a little bit of grit and truth behind what you are looking at—and the new generation is demanding that truth.”
Founded by husband-and-wife Ruba Tadros and Marshall Meier, Monolith Collective’s client list includes SkinMedia, SkinKick, Alchemy 43, Tenoverten, Skin Laundry, Blushington, Dr. Pimple Popper and State of Kind. 3. Brands will incorporate scientific design elements. With skepticism of clean, natural and green claims mounting, brands are bringing in scientific and medical experts to validate their assertions. That expertise is being reflected in their design. “It has a lot to do with differentiated yourself in the market. Whether it’s doctor-approved or developed by a dermatologist, it’s saying, ‘We are different. We have smart doctors and teams promoting our brand, and we have done the research,’” says Tadros. “In the visuals, you are seeing science-y tools such as beakers and petri dishes.”
4. Luxury will be defined by immersive experiences. In the contemporary market, price doesn’t dictate luxury. “It’s not just about having the most expensive little bottle. It’s going to be about, what is this brand doing? Who it is aligned with? Where is it being seen? That’s what it is going to take to take it to that level of luxury,” says Tadros. “It’s about the brand perception and the brand experience.”
5. Big brands will look like small brands. As the publication Thingtesting has chronicled, big consumer packaged goods players have introduced brands that mimic the direct-to-consumer upstarts nipping at their heels. For example, Clorox launched supplement brand Objective Wellness, and Reckitt launched children’s sleep product brand Little Yawn Collective and vitamin brand Fight Vitamins. Even if they aren’t spinning out new brands, Tadros foresees legacy players increasingly emulating the visual identities of their smaller competitors. “The independent brands have paved the way and made a name for themselves by owning their own look,” she says. “The larger brands are going to be following that path of inclusivity, not being siloed into gender norms and not retouching.”
6. Physical locations will embody branding and brand values. If a brand makes gender inclusivity one of its core tenants, Tadros suggests it has to be woven into their physical spaces. She indicates stores can stand out in their branding the way packaging does, creating a moment for brand communication that sometimes doesn’t exactly align with the selling proposition. She highlights the microblading studio Perfect Frame in downtown Los Angeles to illustrate her point. “They are known for hyper realistic brows, and their artists are amazing, but what’s really interesting is the branding is not at all what you would expect from a microblading eyebrow lounge,” says Tadros. “It uses an image of Lady Guadalupe and has a lot of religious undertones. It’s not just about, ‘We are selling to a female customer base,’ it’s about being thoughtful and functional in design.”
Ruba Tadros, co-founder and creative director of Monolith Creative, believes beauty brands should focus on clean copy. “When you try to say too much, you say nothing,” she says. 7. Brands will have to be constantly producing scrappy content. Relatively cheap videos and posts that aren’t overly orchestrated are suited to social media today. “It’s no longer, ‘OK, we are going to have two to three big shoots a year and spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on these super-produced shoots,’” says Tadros. “Brands are going to have more content ready on the fly. When you look at TikTok or Instagram Reels, it’s the less produced stuff that gets more views and likes.”
8. Clean copy will remain important. “When you try to say too much, you say nothing. You want to be a lot more intentional with the verbiage that you are using,” says Tadros. She recommends brands zero in on one to two attributes they want to get across in their copy. Tadros explains, “Are you a CBD-based product? Are you a science-driven brand? Focus on whatever story is going to be the most important and not overwhelm the consumer with so much in a small amount of space.”
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Monolith Collective Creative Director Ruba Tadros’s Expectations For Beauty Design And Branding In 2022

Borno is AWS’ third global channel chief in less than three years for its AWS Partner Network. By Donna Goodison  November 22, 2021, 12:01 PM EST
Amazon Web Services has turned to a Cisco Systems veteran and “change agent” to lead its global partner program. Ruba Borno, most recently senior vice president and general manager of Cisco’s global customer experience centers, will replace current AWS global channel chief Doug Yeum beginning Dec. 6. Borno was not available for comment. Since February 2020, she has led Cisco’s customer experience centers teams that deliver technical support, professional services, managed services, customer success and hardware and component repairs and replacements. AWS announced last week that Yeum, who became channel chief in July 2019, was leaving his post to help build a new business on the retail side of parent company Amazon.com. His last official day with AWS falls after the conclusion of the AWS re:Invent 2021 conference for partners and customers in Las Vegas, where he’ll deliver the AWS Global Partner Summit keynote address. With Borno, AWS will get its third global channel chief in less than three years for its AWS Partner Network (APN), which has grown to more than 100,000 partners and is adding 50 partners per day in its ninth year, according to the cloud computing provider. Borno’s official start date will come five months after Adam Selipsky returned to AWS as its new CEO. The APN public sector partner program also is getting a new leader in Jeff Kratz, who previously led the regional public sector team for Latin America, Canada and the Caribbean. While the senior executive changeups could raise questions of continuity challenges, Jim Keller, AWS global leader for Marlborough-based Quantiphi, isn’t concerned about the stability of AWS and its partner program . “The partner program is foundational to how AWS thinks and acts with customers,” said Keller, whose company is an AWS Advanced Consulting Partner. “I can’t imagine that that strategy doesn’t continue to emphasize partners as a large part of their ecosystem as it has in the past.”
Borno had been working for the Boston Consulting Group (BCG) for nearly seven years prior to joining Cisco. When Chuck Robbins was announced as Cisco’s new CEO in 2015, he hired her to join his leadership team as chief of staff and vice president of growth initiatives. Borno was considered an “outsider insider” at Cisco because she had consulted for the company while at BCG. In fact, Cisco was her last client at the Massachusetts-based global management consulting firm, where she focused on strategic transformation, portfolio and organization optimization, post-merger integration, and growth strategies for enterprise and consumer technology companies, according to her LinkedIn page. Borno was the only person on that Cisco executive leadership team who came from outside the company — brought in to help develop a strategy that was going to transform Cisco’s business model, she said in a June “No Turning Back” podcast with the McChrystal Group, a global advisory services firm. Borno acknowledged she suffered from imposter syndrome at the time. “I was looked to as a change agent, almost an agitator in some cases, to question the status quo,” Borno said during the podcast. “Recognizing that and fully owning it is really important and easier said than done, at least in my case. I was the only millennial on the leadership team, and I’m coming in to question what we’re doing and also work with the executive leadership team on developing the transformation of the company: How do we evolve our business model and look at it completely from the outside in — so market first, customer first as opposed to where we (stood).”
When she sat down with Robbins in one of their early meetings, Borno asked why he hired her. “His response was, ‘I don’t really know yet, but we...have a lot of [stuff] to do, and you get [stuff] done,’” Borno said during the “Roar” podcast. Cisco’s official biography for Borno credits her with reshaping the company’s strategic business planning process in support of its own digital transformation and that of its customers and partners in that initial role. Borno also led the agenda for the World Economic Forum’s IT Governors to focus on reskilling and job creation by IT companies, according to her Cisco bio. Borno became vice president and general manager of Cisco managed services (CMS) in early 2018, leading the team responsible for accelerating the digital transformation for Cisco customers. “Under her leadership, CMS began turning customized offers into repeatable, automated solutions sold through partners,” her Cisco bio states. “This drove down costs, sped up time to value realization and created new revenue streams.”
Borno, who has a Ph.D. and master’s degree in electrical engineering from the University of Michigan, ascribes to a leadership philosophy voiced by Belinda Parmar, a fellow member of the World Economic Forum’s community of Young Global Leaders and CEO of The Empathy Business, a consultancy. Parmar has believes the skills needed by leaders today are empathy, emotional intelligence and resilience, Borno noted in a March “Roar” podcast hosted by Lakecia Gunter, Microsoft’s vice president and general manager of IOT global and strategic engagement. “That really resonated with me,” Borno said during the “Roar” podcast. “I had a chance to build my (Cisco customer experience centers) leadership team in the middle of the pandemic, and I would say that they all exude those three characteristics. We need empathy and emotional intelligence to set a vision, get everyone headed in the same direction and give people the space to figure out how to get there.”
Leaders don’t get where they are by themselves, Borno said. “It really requires collaboration,” she said. “It requires helping others achieve their potential. I look good when my team does a great job and when they look good.”

Cisco Vet Ruba Borno Is AWS’ New Global Channel Chief

Borno says her drive to reach her full potential is fueled by her parents’ experience coming to the U.S. as refugees who left behind everything but their integrity, education and work ethic. By Donna Goodison  November 22, 2021, 12:01 PM EST
Ruba Borno, Amazon Web Services’ incoming global channel chief, comes to the industry’s largest cloud computing provider with more than six years of experience at Cisco Systems, a doctoral degree and a responsibility—driven by her family story—to reach her potential. Borno had been working as senior vice president and general manager of global customer experience centers at Cisco, the San Jose, Calif.-based company known for its highly regarded channel partner program. She will now officially replace current AWS channel chief Doug Yeum beginning Dec. 6, when he moves over to help build a new business on the retail side of parent company Amazon.com. Here are five things to know about Borno , from her background at Cisco and her belief in leading with empathy, to her doctoral studies, work on a presidential task force and how her experience as a refugee has shaped the way she approaches opportunities. “Me and all of my sisters … feel an obligation that when we have an opportunity, to really take advantage of it,” Borno said during a podcast earlier this year. “We have a responsibility to reach our potential and work really hard and to do the best job that we can. But, more importantly, it’s also that if we climb a ladder, to leave that ladder so that others can climb up as well.”

5 Things To Know About New AWS Channel Chief Ruba Borno

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Established in 2008, Ruba is a user generated travel guide site. Ruba aims to allow users to discover their next trip by browsing highly visual guides written by other travelers. Guides are collections of the best places including attractions, activities, lodging, restaurants, and more that are grouped along interesting themes such as "The Top 7 Most Picturesque Towns in Provence France". Members of Ruba can build and maintain their own Guides as well as explore Guides from similarly-minded travelers. Ruba is also integrated with Facebook and Twitter, and Ruba integrates Google maps for geographic locations and addresses.

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