C1 is a global technology solutions provider delivering secure, outcome-driven innovation. Serving more than 6,000 customers, including nearly half of the Fortune 100, C1 combines leading partner technologies with advisory, professional, and managed services to deliver faster, simpler, and more resilient solutions. With more than 5,600 certifications across North America and India, C1 helps organizations modernize and drive measurable business value.
Jeffrey Russell, CEO of C1, centers his leadership on making technology modernization practical and secure. He focuses on aligning teams around a customer-first mission, driving transformation, strengthening partnerships, and ensuring modernization delivers measurable value from day one.
1. Career Journey: Can you share the most interesting story that happened to you since you started your career, especially one that shaped your leadership approach at your current company?
When I started my consulting career, I immediately found myself in the Asia-Pacific region, and I was forced to learn how best to work with and support teams and clients across a range of countries, cultures, and industries, where self-sufficiency, along with cross-border collaboration and leadership, were essential to success.
I soon witnessed first-hand how challenging it was to deliver business-wide transformational success to clients, and I saw that the transformations that did work shared three critical characteristics: the right culture and energy for change, a deep understanding of the customer’s reality (‘walking in the shoes of the end-customers’), and people placed in roles where they can truly excel.
These experiences directly impacted how I approached C1 when I joined as CEO. We were coming out of a period of rapid acquisition-driven growth without a single, unified culture. I applied those same principles to what became our “One C1” culture and business-wide transformation. By aligning around what our customers truly need – making technology modernization practical, secure, and valuable from day one – we built a culture people could connect to. We also ensured we had the right people in the right roles. That foundation made it possible to strengthen the business and deliver better outcomes for clients.
2. Career Path: What initially brought you to this specific career path, and how did it lead to your role in this company?
I have long believed that technology exists to solve human problems – not to advance for its own sake, and from the start, I approached technology with a focus on design, usability, and real-world impact.
Consulting at Accenture gave me the opportunity to apply this belief, and during my 25 years there, I helped organizations navigate disruption and build resilience by taking a people-first approach to strategy and technology. I learned that transformation fails when leaders focus only on tools and ignore culture, empathy, and clarity of purpose.
C1 appealed to me because the company had strong capabilities and real potential. Its focus on making modernization real and practical also aligned closely with my own beliefs. But the company lacked unity following its rapid inorganic growth, and taking the lead at C1 gave me the opportunity to apply everything I’d learned while serving industries, such as healthcare, education, financial services, and government, where technology directly impacts people’s lives.
3. Company Differentiation: What makes your company stand out from competitors in the market? Can you share an example that highlights this?
C1 makes modernization real, delivering secure, practical solutions for AI-powered communications, infrastructure, and security that drive outcomes from day one. Our services ensure that every technology decision drives greater business value, richer customer experiences, and empowered employee performance. Where others talk about transformation, we make it real—faster, simpler, and more resilient.
We bring together three core capabilities – Communications Experience(CX), Infrastructure Experience (IX), and Security Experience (SX) – but the difference is how we deliver them. We’re vendor-agnostic and fit-for-purpose. The goal is the right solution for the client, not pushing a specific platform – and we prove value through adoption, up-time, security, and cost control.
In Healthcare for example, we don’t lead with features. We spend time with clinicians and staff to understand their day-to-day challenges. That insight allows us to design solutions that help them work faster, reduce friction, and improve patient outcomes.
Security is another key differentiator. Protecting data isn’t optional – it’s foundational. We apply rigorous security standards, tailor them by industry, and thoroughly vet third-party providers.
Finally, we work with incredible partners, and we package industry-leading vendor technology with our advisory, professional, and managed services to deliver tailored solutions focused on client outcomes.
4. Product Innovation: Are you working on any exciting new products or projects? How do you think this innovation will positively impact your customers?
Many organizations want to benefit from AI but aren’t sure where to start. Their infrastructure and data environments aren’t built to support it.
In response to this, we are focusing on enabling AI to deliver value by ensuring we provide practical, secure IT modernization that is valuable from day one. A key innovation here is that we’re expanding our managed services because we recognized that as AI becomes embedded everywhere, clients want partners who can manage the complexity and ensure security. In particular, our approach is enabling clients to shrink the AI skills gap as part of their ongoing operations, so they can innovate without compromising reliability, security, or financial discipline—and rapidly move from experimentation to real outcomes.
5. Success Insight: What was the tipping point for your company’s recent success? Was there a change in strategy or approach that others might learn from?
Companies began telling us they were stuck in planning mode – they found themselves saddled with endless AI strategies and pilots that never reached real scale and delivered impact. That set off a light bulb for us, and we shifted how we approached AI projects, emphasizing a “do, learn, do” mindset: start small, learn quickly, and build momentum and scale. This approach is based on ensuring clients begin with people, not technology, and figure out what problem they are really trying to solve, where the friction is, and what outcomes really matter to them. From there, we guide them to focus on data—because AI only works if the data is usable, integrated, and trusted.
This approach has been rapidly embraced by our clients and prospects, and it has accelerated our managed services growth. It is an approach that can easily be adopted by enterprises and other services companies.
6. Challenges and Lessons: Can you share a significant challenge your company faced and how you overcame it? What key lesson did that experience provide?
Our biggest challenge was unifying C1 after years of acquisition-driven growth. We had strong talent, but no single culture or operating model. We addressed this by rallying the organization around a shared vision of what customers truly need: making technology modernization practical, secure, and valuable from day one. We aligned people with roles where they could make the greatest impact and communicated openly and often. As a result, we have emerged as a unified and much stronger organization capable of delivering consistent customer success while still growing rapidly.
The lesson was simple: successful business transformation is about people. Strategy and technology matter, but without the right culture and alignment, progress doesn’t stick.
7. Leadership Impact: In just a few words, what differentiates your leadership role from others in the company? What impact does this have on company culture or product success?
I lead with empathy and outcomes. Technology should improve real lives, whether that’s a clinician, a teacher, or a customer service agent. This mindset now shapes our culture. People understand their work has purpose beyond revenue or deadlines. That creates energy, accountability, and pride. It also leads to better solutions. When teams truly understand customers, they build things that are simpler, more effective, and more valued. That’s how I have created real success for clients and for our company.
To learn more about C1’s approach to making technology modernization practical and secure, visit the C1 website for additional insights and resources.
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