Don Poole
Vice President of Corporate Communications & Marketing, Rancher Government Solutions
For over a decade, Don Poole covered the White House and Washington for CBS News. Now, he’s trying to educate the very people he used to cover as a journalist on the transformational benefits of Rancher’s open source Kubernetes software stack.
Poole’s biggest recent achievement in this role was building from the ground up a stand-alone communications and marketing department while simultaneously launching the Rancher Government Solutions brand in the federal marketplace.
This effort involved introducing a new website, a system for scoring and tracking leads, developing marketing materials focused on Rancher Kubernetes for federal purposes and sales training, producing public webinars and videos alone and with industry partners, planning and executing a full schedule of tradeshows and events, and building relationships with industry partners, trade associations in the Washington area and technology news content providers. At the same time, they crafted the federal narrative about Rancher’s transformative open source technologies and solutions related to containers and Kubernetes.
“Don and his team have built a solid foundation to help RGS reach the next level of growth and success,” said Paul Smith, Rancher Government Solutions acting CEO. “We now have a platform from which to communicate with our customers and partners the value of Rancher Technology and Support to help meet them at their mission and run Kubernetes securely everywhere.”
Why Watch
In 2023, Poole’s team is focused on educating the federal market about Rancher’s revolutionary open source container and Kubernetes technology solutions, especially in terms of edge computing and container security. Moreover, with NeuVector joining the RGS product family, the company now offers a preventive, zero-trust container security solution.
“RGS has come a long way in the last two and a half years, and the best is yet to come,” Poole said. “Thanks to the talented engineers, sales and comms team at RGS, we now have a respected and sought after voice in the Federal community when it comes to application modernization, containers and Kubernetes. Helping bring awareness to how Rancher’s innovative solutions can empower the warfighter and help advance our National Security has been one of the greatest honors of my career.”