CenturyLink taps Sanchack to lead federal sales, replaces Meehan

Erich Sanchack
Image: CenturyLink

CenturyLink has named 20-year public sector veteran Erich Sanchack as its new senior vice president of federal sales.

Sanchack, who will start in his new role on Nov. 1, replaces Tim Meehan, who will now serve as CenturyLink’s vice president of managed services sales and support.

RELATED: CenturyLink taps cloud expert Meehan to lead its public sector division

Sanchack comes to CenturyLink after more than 12 years with Lockheed Martin, where he served as VP of competitive enhancements. Earlier, he was the VP of information technology services for Lockheed’s Information Systems & Global Solutions defense business.

As a former U.S. Marine Corps finance officer, Sanchack began his private sector career with Tetra Pak Inc. in Denton, Texas.

Sanchack’s appointment comes at a time of transition in CenturyLink’s federal and managed services divisions. Following Diana Gowen’s retirement in 2014, the leadership of CenturyLink’s federal government unit has been in flux. Initially, Lisa Burch oversaw the federal division for six months on an interim basis.    

Given his experience in the managed services space at CenturyLink and earlier at Oracle Corporation's cloud hosting unit, it makes sense for the telco to reassign Meehan to the managed services division.

Likewise, Sanchack’s experience working for a well-known public sector systems integrator like Lockheed Martin means that he can help CenturyLink to pursue new government deals.

At the same time, he can help CenturyLink navigate and prepare bids on the General Service Administration’s (GSA) Enterprise Infrastructure Solutions (EIS) contract vehicle, the follow-on to Networx, a $50 billion 15-year telecommunications infrastructure contract.

Meehan and Sanchack will report to Dean Douglas, CenturyLink’s president of sales and marketing.

During the second quarter, CenturyLink reported $1.23 billion in strategic business revenues, up 5 percent year-over-year from the second quarter of 2015, primarily due to the increased high-bandwidth data revenues being partially offset by lower hosting revenues.