Meet Channel Futures' Top 20 UC/Contact Center Leaders for 2023
Leaders from NICE, RingCentral and Vonage made our list. See who else did based on their accomplishments and contributions to the channel.
![UC Channel Leaders UC Channel Leaders](https://eu-images.contentstack.com/v3/assets/blt10e444bce2d36aa8/blt2ab9fb0266edad8b/65725812ecdc33040af514ce/UC_Channel_Leaders_hero_image.jpg?width=700&auto=webp&quality=80&disable=upscale)
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Name: Robb Bāshore
Job Title: Vice President of Partner Channel. Nextiva
Tenure in Role: One year
Responsibilities: Leading Nextiva’s partner program.
Previous Experience: Mitel, Unified Technologies, Inter-Tel
Key Accomplishment: Expanding the firm’s partner landscape and increasing partner revenue.
What Makes Him a Leader: Coworkers say he is great at empowering them by energizing the channel and increasing sales.
Name: Jake Butterbaugh
Job Title: Senior Vice President, Five9 Global Partner Organization
Tenure in Role: One year
Responsibilities: Building and managing an expanding customer experience partner ecosystem; implementing a three-pronged strategic initiative for partners.
Previous Experience: Cisco, BusinessEdge Solutions, Accenture
Key Accomplishment: Created more incentives, upsell/co-sell opportunities for members of the channel, as well as made AI more accessible for them in the CCaaS space.
What Makes Him a Leader: Colleagues say he leans heavily on data to make sound decisions in the program, often leading to positive outcomes for channel members.
Name: Jamsey Collins
Job Title: Regional Channel Manager, Dialpad
Tenure in Role: Three years, eight months
Responsibilities: Helping partners achieve sales goals and leading partner recruiting efforts.
Previous Experience: NetFortris, Star2Star Communications, Microcorp, TW Telecom
Key Accomplishment: Helping build the firm’s partner ecosystem.
What Makes Him a Leader: Those he’s worked with say he is willing to go the extra mile for customers and to ensure they have everything they need.
Name: Mike Conlon
Job Title: Head of Americas Channels, Zoom
Tenure in Role: Less than one month
Responsibilities: Drive sales in enterprise, commercial, and healthcare sectors.
Previous Experience: RingCentral, Mitel, Polycom
Key Accomplishment: Multifaceted experience in wide range of technologies from security and software to communications and contact centers.
What Makes Him a Leader: He has a ton of channel experience and has worked in channel-facing roles for some of the biggest brands leading those efforts.
Name: Michael Day
Job Title: Vice President of Global Partner Sales at GoTo
Tenure in Role: One year, eight months
Responsibilities: Directing and leading a global partner sales ecosystem.
Previous Experience: RingCentral, SCRAM Systems
Key Accomplishment: Made AI/sentiment analysis more accessible to the channel.
What Makes Him a Leader: Colleagues say he leans on his more than 20 years of experience to make sound decisions.
Name: Chris Dickson
Job Title: Vice President of North American Channel, Avaya
Tenure in Role: Three months
Responsibilities: Leads North American channels organization, driving demand generation, partner engagement and participation, satisfaction and loyalty, market differentiation, and overall brand ambassadorship.
Previous Experience: ImageWare Systems, Bitfury, Panaya, Verizon Enterprise Solutions
Key Accomplishment: Successfully managed Avaya’s largest and most complex partners, transforming relationships into growth opportunities, embracing the “choose your journey” approach with Avaya’s customers, driving some of the largest public and private cloud wins this past year.
What Makes Him a Leader: People he’s worked with say he is a dedicated sales and business development leader.
Name: Daren Finney
Job Title: Senior Vice President of Global Channels at Mitel
Tenure in Role: One year, five months
Responsibilities: Strategy, program development and administration of global partner organization
Previous Experience: Citrix, Symantec, Lenovo
Key Accomplishment: Anurag Agrawal, a UCC analyst, says Mitel stands out by being customer-focused and providing flexible choices with on-premises, hybrid and cloud solutions.
What Makes Him a Leader: People say he leads with a mentor mindset, always willing to embrace personal growth and creativity.
Name: Bobby Hall
Job Title: Channel Leader, LiveVox
Tenure in Role: Eight months
Responsibilities: Overseas all partner efforts.
Previous Experience: 8x8, CenturyLink Business, Unify
Key Accomplishment: Leverages over a decade of experience in the channel, building relationships and helping increase revenue.
What Makes Him a Leader: Folks describe him as methodical and has a detailed approach to leadership.
Name: Jon Heaps
Job Title: Co-Founder / Managing Partner, Ascent Business Partners
Tenure in Role: 9 months
Responsibilities: Leveraging accessible AI for channel partners
Previous Experience: Observe.AI, ShoreTel, Talkdesk, Linc
Key Accomplishment: Bringing together the best AI solutions to build the best-of-breed tech for UCaaS/CCaaS vendors.
What Makes Him a Leader: Innovation is front of mind for Heaps and his team, as they have indicated in multiple conversations.
Job Title: Vice President, Strategy and Business Development, NICE CXone
Tenure in Role: Four years
Responsibilities: Executing and developing growth strategies for US-based partners.
Previous Experience: Telarus, CarrierSales, inContact
Key Accomplishment: Hicken is a mentor to many members of the UC/CC channel space.
What Makes Him a Leader: He has tremendous insight into the UC/contact center space, making him exceptionally good at making difficult decisions.
Name: Kristyn Hogan
Job Title: Vice President of Global Collaboration Partner Sales at Cisco
Tenure in Role: Three years
Responsibilities: Working closely with Cisco’s regional partner organizations and global partner organizations, leading strategy and execution across each of the company’s unique go-to-market strategies.
Previous Experience: Cisco Meraki; held previous positions at Cisco
Key Accomplishment: Overseeing massive company growth in key areas.
What Makes Her a Leader: Her ability to execute an idea from inception to implementation and her overall leadership style.
Name: Chris Holloway
Job Title: Senior Vice President, Channel Sales, North America, Sangoma
Tenure in Role: One year, seven months
Responsibilities: Responsible for leading efforts in partner relationship management, entering new markets, account management, revenue generation and more.
Previous Experience: NetFortris (acquired by Sangoma), TBI, Fuze, Logix Fiber Networks
Key Accomplishment: Responsible for increasing channel sales and overhauling the program by hiring new top talent to lead various parts of the firm's channel program.
What Makes Him a Leader: Those he's worked with speak highly of his leadership style and character.
Jamil King
Job Title: Director, US Mobility Channel, Panasonic Connect of North America
Tenure in Role: One year, six months
Responsibilities: Led nearly 200 partners responsible for nearly 100 percent of the firm’s sales.
Previous Experience: Panasonic USA, MoreDirect, Inc., CDW,
Key Accomplishment: Launched a new partner portal 18 months ago, which he notes integrates with its customer relationship management (CRM) platform, lending partners more insight into real-time access to two-way communications.
What Makes Him a Leader: Data-driven approach to leadership and building the right teams to execute.
Name: Zane Long
Job Title: Senior Vice President of Global Partner Sales at RingCentral
Tenure in Role: Almost eight years
Responsibilities: Growing RingCentral's and its partners' UCaaS and CCaaS business.
Previous Experience: Mitel, Unified Technologies, Inter-Tel
Key Accomplishment: A 2022 Channel Futures Channel Influencer Award winner
What Makes Him a Leader: His willingness to collaborate.
Name: Kathy Mazza
Job Title: Head of Channel Sales, Ecosystem Chief Ooma
Tenure in Role: Six months
Responsibilities: Building, managing, and designing a program that leads partners/their customers through the sales process without the partner taking a financial hit. She says it is all about quality assurance.
Previous Experience: 8x8, CenturyLink Business
Key Accomplishment: Created a sense of synergy among the team and ensured partners felt listened to. She also revamped marketing materials so partners could take better advantage of them by adding their branding, etc.
What Makes Her a Leader: Colleagues say she has an “incredible” sense of work ethic and is willing to go the extra mile to ensure partner success as a channel leader.
Name: Michelle Paitich
Job Title: Vice President of Channel Sales, 8x8
Tenure in Role: Less than one month
Responsibilities: Leading the global channel efforts which include sales.
Previous Experience: Salesforce, Twilio
Key Accomplishment: New to 8x8 bot not the channel. She is anxious to dive in and align with partners on 8x8’s plans for its XCaaS platform.
What Makes Her a Leader: By all accounts she has a lot of non-traditional channel experience and everyone seems to be rallying around her.
Name: Yulia Papadelis
Job Title: Director of Strategic Alliances, Ribbon Communications
Tenure in Role: Six years
Responsibilities: Leading the firm’s strategic alliances division for partners.
Previous Experience: Grandstream Networks
Key Accomplishment: Working closely with partners to bring new solutions to market.
What Makes Her a Leader: Being an advocate for things like security and Microsoft Teams.
Name: Jim Regan
Job Title: Vonage Channel Chief
Tenure in Role: 12 years
Responsibilities: Oversees channel program and works closely with the company’s network of technology solutions brokerages, subagents, ISVs, VARs and other resellers to help them meet the full range of cloud communications needs for their customers.
Previous Experience: More than a decade at Vonage; Aptela
Key Accomplishment: Redesigned channel partner program and established a new partner experience portal, part of Vonage’s strategic channel growth initiative.
What Makes Him a Leader: Has a vast knowledge of managed services, SaaS, cloud computing, and telecommunications.
Name: Frank Seltzer
Job Title: Channel Leader at ConnectMeVoice by Cloudli
Tenure in Role: Five years
Responsibilities: He heads up efforts for the channel, including increasing sales, establishing competitive pricing, etc.
Previous Experience: ConnectMeVoice
Key Accomplishment: He is an MSP champion and goes above and beyond to enable them regarding sales and whatever other metrics they seek to increase.
What Makes Him a Leader: Described as being strategic, knowledgeable and professional and having the vision to see things through.
Name: Steve Smith
Job Title: General Manager, Global Systems Integrators, IBM
Tenure in Role: 11 years
Responsibilities: Leads Cloud & Cognitive Software and ISVs Team
Previous Experience: IBM
Key Accomplishment: Brought together a number of sectors to create a unique AI offering for the channel that is unlike others on the market.
What Makes Him a Leader: Ability to gather the right folks to create a truly differentiated offering, particularly leveraging AI.
Name: Steve Smith
Job Title: General Manager, Global Systems Integrators, IBM
Tenure in Role: 11 years
Responsibilities: Leads Cloud & Cognitive Software and ISVs Team
Previous Experience: IBM
Key Accomplishment: Brought together a number of sectors to create a unique AI offering for the channel that is unlike others on the market.
What Makes Him a Leader: Ability to gather the right folks to create a truly differentiated offering, particularly leveraging AI.
Channel Futures is back with a fresh list of top channel leaders for 2023 in unified communications, which, despite a bit of a slowdown as implementations during the peak of COVID-19 wanes, remains a very hot technology with ample room for growth.
Our list also focuses on those channel leaders who represent the best in contact center. Projections for contact center-as-a-service (CCaaS) are through the roof, with Emergen Research projecting a compound annual growth rate of 18% through 2030, when the firm expects CCaaS to be an $18 billion opportunity.
We've already published lists this fall focusing on EMEA and cloud leaders, but it's this projected growth that makes our focus on UC and contact center leaders so important.
Channel Futures' Channel Leaders lists not only highlight the recognized channel "leader" at a given company, but a leader can also be someone with the channel organization who works in the trenches and might not be at a VP or senior VP level. Our goal is to identify those people at a supplier that are making the most impact on a partner's business.
Lists still to come focus on distributors, network/connectivity leaders, security leaders and more.
In the slideshow above, in alphabetical order, we introduce you to the UC and contact center leaders having the most impact on the channel today. We detail their accomplishments and what Channel Futures thinks make them a great leader.
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