Luc Villeneuve

President, Benchmark Corp.
Business Administration – Class of 1979

Canadian businessman Luc Villeneuve has spent more than 25 years boosting sales and assuming leadership roles with a succession of major international IT companies.

After lengthy stints with Sun Microsystems and GE Capital, among other companies, in 2009 he became president of NCR Canada and after two years moved to Paris to lead NCR. From 2011 to 2013, he was president of McAfee Canada.

He has a lengthy record of success in a highly competitive market. In the two years before he joined NCR, revenues declined 22 and 24 per cent. During the first two years of his tenure, annual revenues increased by 32 and 34 per cent. His most dramatic impact to date was on Red Hat Canada after he joined the open-source software solutions giant as country leader and general manager in 2013. Over the next five years, his team quadrupled revenue and was honoured as the North America Region of the Year in 2018.

How does succeed in each role? He says it’s about surrounding yourself with great talent and working hard together. Villeneuve learned the value of hard work early. He grew up in a family with no money to send him to post-secondary school, and he missed much of Grade 11 and 12 because he was already working to make ends meet. But he was determined to continue his education. He knew it was his greatest hope of achieving success, a lesson he would later pass along as proud father of his children Jean-Phillipe (a graduate of Guelph University) and Stefania (York University).

“I knew if I was able to do well (in school), it would give me and the rest of my family a springboard for a better life. At Algonquin College (in Business Administration, Class of 1979), I didn’t miss a day of school. I won the Kiwanis Award, which was for the top student in my group. It was a challenge because when I arrived I didn’t speak one word of English — I had a translator to help me out. But people were always available to assist me. I learned there that people are always ready to help those who put in the work for themselves.”

In December 2018, Villeneuve announced he was stepping down at Red Hat to become president of Benchmark Corp., a promising Canadian IT solutions provider based in Mississauga.

Tackling a new challenge energizes him. Each of his last six jobs has been very different, and he says the learning curve in the first six months of each position has been high. But in each instance he has reached his goals. “If you understand the needs of your customer and the value you bring to them, you will do well. I don’t go deep technically because I can’t. But I understand supplying a solution that solves a client’s problem.”

For his accomplishments, Computer Daily News/IT World Canada honoured Villeneuve as the No. 4 newsmaker of 2018, the seventh time he has appeared on this list of technology channel leaders.

Villeneuve has also taken a leading role in national discussions about diversity and inclusion in IT “to attract many minds to create the best software.”

At Red Hat Canada, he created a strategy to engage everyone and reach gender parity. He’s invested time curating his 7000-plus connections on LinkedIn network to attract, engage and deepen relationships. He’s also a contributor to the Globe and Mail, where he has raised awareness — particularly with men — about the need to join together as a community to commit time and influence.

In 2014, women represented five per cent of his Red Hat sales team; they now account for 30 per cent. In 2017, he launched a Women + Leadership evening to bring together Red Hat Canada’s tech community to discuss critical diversity issues. At Benchmark, he is hosting an annual event for millennial women in tech. His first event will feature Mpumi Nobiva, Oprah’s protegee and the top graduate of her school in South Africa along with a panel of female entrepreneurs. He’s a sought-after gender and diversity panelist at events at Microsoft, Salesforce, Ryerson University, University of Waterloo, CompTIA and others.

“Gender equality is a critical economic and social issue,” he wrote in the Globe and Mail in 2018, and it is no surprise to learn that he inspired his daughter, who works in sales at Red Hat Canada, to follow his path. “It’s a lot of fun to see your children following in your footsteps,” he says.