5 Honorees From Star2Star, A Sangoma Company, Featured on CRN’s 2021 Women of the Channel List & Power 100

Sangoma Technologies Corporation (“Sangoma”) (TSXV: STC), a trusted leader in delivering cloud-native Communications-as-a-Service (“CaaS”) solutions for businesses of all sizes, today announced that CRN®, a brand of The Channel Company, has named 5 Star2Star honorees to the highly respected Women of the Channel list for 2021. CRN® also recognized Michelle Accardi, President and Chief Revenue Officer of Star2Star and Women of the Channel Honoree, as a 2021 Power 100 winner. The 2021 Power 100 list recognizes a distinguished subset of elite leaders chosen from the annual CRN® Women of the Channel list.

The 2021 Honorees:

• Michelle Accardi, Women of the Channel & Power 100
• Diana Hite, Women of the Channel
• Chessie Huber, Women of the Channel
• Liz Lederer, Women of the Channel
• Laura Oberle, Women of the Channel

This annual list recognizes the unique strengths, vision, and achievements of female leaders in the IT channel. The 2021 Women of the Channel list acknowledges women from all over the IT channel, including vendors, distributors, and solution providers. The Power 100 award recognizes a select group of incredible women who have gone above and beyond — inspiring their peers through their leadership and unwavering commitment to the success of their partners, customers and the entire IT channel. This is the third consecutive year that five honorees have been recognized from Star2Star for Women of the Channel, and Michelle’s 7th consecutive year being recognized on both lists.

The women honored on this year’s lists pushed forward with comprehensive business plans, marketing initiatives, and other innovative ideas to support their partners and customers, helping them through the uncertainty brought on by the global COVID-19 pandemic. CRN celebrates these exceptional women for their leadership, dedication, and channel advocacy.

About The Honorees

Michelle Accardi

As President and Chief Revenue Officer, Michelle's mission is to inspire and maintain growth for the company and its partners, ensuring that customers get significant value from Star2Star and Sangoma products and services. Over the past year, she prioritized changing her approach to company communications, partner outreach, and facilitating successful customer experiences to accommodate a remote work-based environment. For solution providers, Michelle had the following advice: “The key to success moving forward is to reevaluate your remote work situation and address any of the roadblocks you encountered while transitioning. In light of the pandemic making remote work an essential strategy, it’s critical now to make sure you are ready for the long term challenges of managing in-person and remote business operations.”

Diana Hite

As the Regional Area Director for Florida, Diana brings over two decades of channel sales experience across multiple technology and service provider companies, including Avaya and Nextiva, before joining Star2Star. Her philosophy balances personal development with career, family, and community. In her current role, Diana actively works with all partners and sales professionals to enable them to excel in the next generation IT sales across cloud, collaboration, and communication services, including UCaaS, DRaaS, DaaS and CPaaS.

Chessie Huber

As the Regional Account Director for the Gulf States, Chessie serves as a trusted advisor to her partners, with an emphasis on building strong partner relationships and sales, marketing, and business development support. She began her career in the channel in the early 90s and since then developed a passion for channel sales and helping partners grow their businesses. In 2020, she overcame considerable challenges to grow a below-average territory by more than 80%. By the end of the year, she achieved 134% of her plan goal, helping her partners achieve greater stability during the pandemic.

Liz Lederer

As the Senior Vice President of Channel Development, Liz brings over 20 years of Channel Sales, Marketing, and Development experience, including a unique combination of sales acumen and marketing instinct. Over her career, she has honed her expertise in developing effective Channel and Partner programs on a global scale and establishing processes and programs to enable Partner networks. Her advice for solution providers: “Solution Providers have the opportunity to offer what used to be non-traditional services that their clients will now be looking for them to provide in the wake of the pandemic, such as cloud base telecommunications and surveillance. Moving forward, providers can guide their clients to adapt digital transformation sooner rather than later.”

Laura Oberle

As the Senior Vice President of Sales, Laura specializes in building new Partner and Customer Success teams from the ground up. Her career in the channel began in 1995 as a Marketing Support Representative and includes experience in executive recruiting and account management in the technology sector. In 2020, Laura led a team that quickly and agilely enabled partners and customers to move to remote workforces. She focused on both short-term and long-term strategies for ongoing Partner success and generated $350,000 in monthly recurring revenue with her team.

“CRN’s 2021 Women of the Channel list acknowledges accomplished, influential women whose dedication, hard work, and leadership accelerate channel growth,” said Blaine Raddon, CEO of The Channel Company. “We are proud to honor them for their many accomplishments and look forward to their continued contributions to the IT channel.”

“I am extremely proud of our team and fellow honorees,” said Michelle Accardi, President and Chief Revenue Officer of Star2Star, a Sangoma company. “We get better and better each year and continuously strive to support our partners and customers with cutting-edge technology and exceptional service. The dedication Diana, Chessie, Liz, and Laura demonstrated this past year especially shows how we rise to the challenge to help our partners succeed. As we join the Sangoma team, I am confident that we will grow even more as a company, and I am excited to offer even more advantages to our channel partners!”

The 2021 Women of the Channel list will be featured in CRN Magazine on May 10th and online at www.CRN.com/WOTC.

About Sangoma

In an increasingly complex world, businesses need to simplify the way they communicate, collaborate, and seamlessly integrate third-party applications into their operations and processes. Sangoma Technologies meets that need by being a trusted leader in delivering cloud-native, value-based Communications as a Service (CaaS) solutions for businesses of all sizes. Sangoma’s cloud-native solutions include a full suite of as-a-service offerings including: voice, video, persistent chat, meetings, connected worker integrations, trunking, fax, virtual desktops, contact center, access control and much more.

In addition, Sangoma offers a full line of communications products, including premise-based UC systems, a full line of desk phones and headsets, and a complete connectivity suite (gateways/SBCs/telephony cards). Sangoma is also the primary developer and sponsor of Asterisk and FreePBX, the world’s two most widely used open-source communication software projects.

Sangoma has been named to such prestigious lists as the Deloitte Enterprise Technology Fast 15, Omdia Top 10 UCaaS Service Provider, and Forbes Most Promising Companies. Recognition of its pioneering innovation in the enterprise cloud market extends to major industry analyst indicators such as being awarded the Frost and Sullivan Best Practices Unified Communications and Collaboration Competitive Strategy Leadership Award and the Gartner Magic Quadrant for UCaaS, Worldwide.

Sangoma Technologies Corporation is publicly traded on the TSXV (TSXV: STC). Additional information on Sangoma can be found at: www.sangoma.com.

Sangoma Technologies CorporationDavid MooreChief Financial Officer [phone] Ext. [e-mail] www.sangoma.com