This month we have chosen to highlight Vincel Anthony, V-Soft's National Business Development and Diversity Manager. Vincel has been with the company for a few years now and has a great dedication to everything he does. What makes him tick? Find out in this blog post.
What’s your experience in? What brought you to V-Soft?
I have been in technology and business development technology for over 20 years. I have my bachelor’s degree in business administration and my master’s in information systems.
Back in the '90s I worked at UPS on their Y2K team, making sure folks were Y2K compliant. I worked out of their headquarters in Atlanta, but I had an office here in Louisville, too. From there I made my way to dealing more directly with the business development side. It was truly customer-facing but it wasn’t so much business development. It was technology but it was customer-facing from a compliancy perspective.
When it began to become more sales was really when I worked at Toshiba, and then from there with an IT Security firm in business development. My background has been being knowledgeable about technology, even having experience as a programmer years ago, and then selling technology as it changed over the years. That’s what lead me to V-Soft.
There was a CIO roundtable several years ago that I was heavily involved with. That's where I met Purna. I learned more about V-Soft and what they did. When an opportunity came to potentially work at V-Soft I was with the IT Security firm. Their office was physically in Cincinnati, but my area was all over Kentucky. It made sense for me to join Purna and his team and it’s just been great since then. I was successful selling technologybefore and am doing the same thing now with V-Soft.
Because I’m in business development, constantly dealing with trying to convince someone to give us opportunities to engage with them, I’m constantly engaging with many cases strangers... establishing credibility is important. That’s where things begin, and then the trust factor. After trust they give you an opportunity. It’s always a good feeling to complete those steps. We are really efficient and effective with that.
Being a minority-owned firm, and I represent us in that space, you sometimes have hurdles to jump over that others don’t. And once they realize that you are just as good, if not better than most of the folks out there, then it becomes a win-win.
Hopefully still with V-Soft, seeing us growing and expanding. We’ve made some acquisitions with the firm in Chicago (and prior to that, the acquisition up in Madison) and that’s all fallen under our umbrella. Growing and managing what I envision to become a big part of the puzzle for us which is the space I’m in now, managing the minority front. There’s a strategic way to go about and be effective in representing yourself within that space, so in five years I see truly myself representing us in a regional perspective, as well as nationally.
As we grow the need for us to be represented in other areas will grow as well. Replicating what I’m doing here regionally around the country, and also continuing to work in the MSP space, which is where all the large accounts are.
The best thing about V-Soft is that it’s a technology company, meaning that it’s going to be a part of the future.
Whether you’re going to the gas station or have a medical concern, technology is a part of everything now."
Being in technology means that as long as you continue to educate yourself and you work with a firm that knows how to strategically embrace technology, you should be a part of the future. So we’re not in a space that’s dwindling or going away, we’re in a space that everything is going toward—we’re sitting right in the belly of where this country will be. This company has strategically been smart in doing that.
The headquarters is here in Louisville, where we physically live. It is a good thing to be located where your headquarters is. Our owners, Radhika and Purna are awesome people, so that combination makes this a good place to be.
I play golf, work out, and spend tons of time with my kids. I coach my sons in middle school football. I also do mentoring at the high school level here in Jefferson County, particularly at my alma mater, Male High School.
There is a mentoring program that I lead at Male High School calledThe Men of Quality, and it’s really just showing young men the appropriate steps to take to make sure that they become productive and solid citizens as they make their next steps into manhood.
Well, yeah, my mom loves to talk about it. I was born with 12 fingers. If they didn’t cut them off I’d look like an octopus or something.