At AppDirect, we’re deeply committed to supporting and recognizing excellence and nurturing innovation. On September 19, in awards ceremonies held during our Thrive 2024 conference in Chicago, we recognized 16 true industry pioneers who are not only visionary leaders, but also masters at executing on their vision and making remarkable strides in their respective fields.

Read on for details about the awards and our very special winners.

2024 Digital Heroes Award Winners

For our Digital Heroes awards, we unveiled the names of eight individuals within the AppDirect advisor and platform monetization customer communities who exemplify excellence and influence. These individuals are making remarkable strides in the advisor and platform customer communities.

Award-winning criteria

Candidates were ranked on the strength of key performance indicators (KPIs) submitted to support their nominations, and on how closely they adhered to the AppDirect core values of humility, positive mental attitude, intensity, ownership, and a true north data-driven approach.

Check out our AppDirect Digital Heroes Awards page for details about how our winners were chosen, including the values at the core of our selection criteria.

And the 2024 Digital Heroes Award winners are…

Advisor Awards

Category: Best Innovator

This award recognizes a technology advisor who has achieved remarkable success through innovative business strategies, creative marketing, or unique approaches in compensation structures and sales funnels. This individual showcases exceptional ingenuity and a strong impact on the industry.

Winner: Adam Nebrich—CEO, at Jeka Software

Adam is a true embodiment of collaboration, understanding the importance of teamwork, support, and dedication to drive revenue. He takes ownership where he can best be of service to his customers. With over 25 years of experience in aviation and engineering, Adam has a passion for problem-solving, strategic planning, and empowering his team to maximize value for customers.

Category: Best Growth Strategy

This award honors a technology advisor who has demonstrated outstanding sales performance or achieved the highest growth in revenue compared to the previous year. This award celebrates exceptional business expansion and financial success.

Winner: Stephen Hancock—President, at Socium Consulting

Stephen is an example of implementing a land and expand strategy, having an extensive cross-selling strategy across a multitude of solutions. He has a penchant for making data-driven decisions with the utmost integrity and displays a high level of intensity in his dedication to his customers’ business success. He is a true advisor to his base. With his extensive experience in IT, he focuses on guiding customers through the financial operations of IT, ensuring comprehensive support for various IT services.

“The Digital Heroes award really means a lot to me. It's a validation of the hard work that I put in to ensure that my clients are getting supported in the way they need to be, and bringing them the right technology that they need. With the help of AppDirect, being able to ensure that we have a consolidated and holistic portfolio to support those clients has been helpful in achieving that and executing on the goals that I had for 2024 and forward.” – Stephen Hancock, Socium Consulting

Category: Best Multi-category Expansion

This award celebrates a technology advisor who has demonstrated a willingness to experiment and who has achieved success by closing deals across three or more categories in the AppDirect technology wheel. This award highlights their ability to leverage a diverse catalog and drive multi-category sales.

Winner: Steve Ancheta—Founder, Managing Partner, at Endpnt.io

Steve has nearly a decade of experience. In recent years, he has placed a major focus on expanding his portfolio of solutions, allowing his business to scale to new heights in a short period of time. He is focused on collaborating with the right experts to ensure customer success, while sustaining strong growth metrics. Steve and his team are shaping the next generation of technology advisors with a clear vision and spirit of intensity.

Category: Best Community Educator

This award recognizes a technology advisor who has developed and implemented creative methods to educate and empower end customers and employees with valuable information—highlighting their commitment to enhancing customer knowledge and engagement.

Winner: Jason Cadwalader—President/CTO, at AVAIL Technology Solutions

Jason believes in the importance of education for its role in empowering customers to make informed decisions, and enabling team members to be a trusted source of information—a reflection of Jason’s adherence to a True North approach. He places an emphasis on facilitating employee learning to ensure they understand the full scope of technology solutions available to their customers. Whether it’s having himself or his team attend educational or community events, Jason is a strong proponent of expanding knowledge.

Marketplace Platform Customer Awards

Category: Best Innovator

This award recognizes a platform customer who has revolutionized their business and go-to-market strategy through the introduction and successful implementation of a marketplace. It highlights their innovation and agility, and their transformative impact on their company and industry.

Winner: Christopher Woodin—Senior Vice President, Solutions & Alliances, at Softchoice

With clear intensity, Christopher is dedicated to delivering a world-class customer experience, with marketplace initiatives being an extension of that. Putting customers first, he considers the impact of strategy on each step of the customer journey and strives to get the customer experience just right, backed by an impressive speed to market. Under Christopher’s leadership, the team has embarked on a headless commerce journey, to further tailor the overall customer experience. To make informed, data-driven decisions, Christopher and team use research and real customer feedback to iterate and innovate on the marketplace experience.

Category: Best Commerce Strategy

This award celebrates a marketplace platform customer's exceptional success in operating a transactional marketplace. It recognizes the recipient’s ability to facilitate seamless transactions, drive revenue growth, and enhance user experience within their marketplace, showing strong growth metrics.

Winner: Christin Hanneken—Director of Commerce Platforms, at CANCOM

Christin has been instrumental in implementing an effective commerce strategy that spans IT infrastructure, cloud solutions, managed services, and digital transformation consulting. Her approach has increased revenue per customer and driven high customer satisfaction, reflected in a strong Net Promoter Score. By cross-selling and upselling across various categories, Christin’s team addresses the full spectrum of clients' IT needs, making them a trusted one-stop shop. Her leadership, marked by humility and a client-first mindset, inspires her team to take ownership of their clients' success, delivering innovative solutions that keep them ahead in a rapidly evolving market.

“Next year is our ten year partnership anniversary with AppDirect. It feels like being part of a family working together for ten years. That's why I'm very excited to win the award, and I'm honored.” – Christin Hanneken, CANCOM

Category: Best Multi-category Selling Strategy

This award acknowledges a marketplace platform customer who has demonstrated strong success in launching their marketplace, achieving significant adoption and onboarding a diverse array of partners, products, and solutions. It highlights their strategic planning and execution and their impact on marketplace growth and ecosystem expansion, along with demonstrating depth of inventory.

Winner: Stewart Hawker—Head of Business Platforms, at Vodafone

Stewart has been involved in the successful implementation of marketplaces in 14 geographic areas with well over 800 multi-category products onboarded. More importantly, he continues to drive a group-led strategy in a fast-changing, geographically diverse, and politically challenging environment. His name is quite rightly synonymous with 'marketplace' amongst colleagues and business partners. Stewart takes full ownership of his actions, driving results by holding his team accountable and tackling challenges head on. He listens with humility, asking thought-provoking questions to ensure understanding, and remains open-minded, prioritizing the right decision over political motivations. His focus on the big picture, balanced with attention to detail when needed, enables him to solve complex problems collaboratively while keeping his eye on what truly matters.

Category: Best Partner Ecosystem

The Best Partner Ecosystem award recognizes a platform customer who has successfully built a robust ecosystem of partners and developers, offering a diverse range of solutions through their marketplace. This award highlights their strategic approach and includes measurable KPIs that demonstrate the ecosystem's effectiveness and impact.

Winner: Shivang Patel—Chief Product Officer, at ADP

Shivang is a leading example of pushing technology applications and partners to higher levels so they can all thrive in the digital economy and collectively increase the standard of excellence. Due to his unwavering vision, he has built an incredibly successful partner ecosystem with over 400 partners and counting. Cited as being nothing short of exceptional by many who work with him, Shivang is one to pass recognition to his team and shift the spotlight to their many successful efforts. A humble spirit, positive attitude, and drive to deliver a world-class experience for customers are just a few of the things that set Shivang apart.

2024 Provider Awards

At Thrive, we also announced the names of eight AppDirect Provider Award winners. These exceptional technology providers not only push boundaries and drive innovation, they create transformative solutions for a more technologically accessible future. These awards honor both individuals and brands who demonstrate an unfaltering dedication to strong partnerships, and truly make the digital channel shine.

Provider Award Categories

Following are the AppDirect Provider Award categories. For a list of all award recipients and descriptions of their achievements, see our AppDirect Provider Awards page.

Top Strategic Growth—This award recognizes a provider who achieved exceptional growth in 2024 by driving AppDirect’s newest strategies, significantly expanding their market reach and revenue. The recipient of this award has been integral to AppDirect's success, consistently meeting collaborative targets.

Top National Channel Manager—This honoree demonstrates excellence in aligning mutual goals and setting and executing joint growth plans with unmatched precision. Their ability to drive growth across every go-to-market strategy is unrivaled, leading to exceptional partnerships and significant nationwide success.

“I look at this award as a team award. There are others on my team that have laid the groundwork to get us where we are today, as well as all the great people I work with at AppDirect, who have made this partnership exciting, and we're looking forward to what's to come.”—Jared Hughes, Dropbox

Top Field Channel Manager—This award celebrates an outstanding channel manager who has consistently outperformed peers in regional markets, driving the highest sales growth through strong relationships with AppDirect CSMs and the advisor community. Their close alignment with national field channel managers has been key to this success.

Top Channel Leader—This award acknowledges the leader who has made a substantial impact in shaping channel strategy, fostering innovation, and driving overall channel success. They redefined strategic alignment with AppDirect by pioneering the referral side’s first resale route to market and embracing the potential of the AppDirect marketplace for enterprise customers.

“I’m Incredibly honored and humbled to be able to receive this award from AppDirect. This is a really unique and cool opportunity as Zoom continues to grow through our channel partners and build out different, creative routes to market. AppDirect has been a fantastic partner as we continue to evolve."—Jim McGarry, Zoom

Top Strategic Provider—This award honors a provider who has been integral to AppDirect's growth by consistently exceeding every jointly set target. They have excelled in offering innovative solutions and demonstrated strong strategic alignment with advisors, driving mutual success in the market.

"This award exemplifies the strong partnership that we have, and the innovation that we've been able to drive in the market collectively. I'm so excited to see what's to come, as we continue to grow this partnership and do more and more to help our customers succeed."—Matt Goddard, Microsoft

That’s a wrap for 2024’s Digital Heroes and Provider awards! We hope to see you at Thrive 2025 where next year’s winners will be announced. Stay up to date on Thrive developments on our Thrive website!