Nextiva, a leading conversation platform, announced today the addition of four new channel leaders to its team. The expanded team will focus on developing and growing Nextiva’s partner channel and bring to life a number of strategic initiatives, including driving visibility and demand around the company’s multi-site, distributed enterprise customer segment.
The new leaders include: Scott Forbush – Vice President, Channel – West; Jolynn Antonacci – Vice President, Channel Marketing; Ed Pearce – Vice President, Channel – North; and Brandon Ackert – Strategic Partner Director.
“We’re building the channel dream team at Nextiva,” said Olen Scott, Head of Channels at Nextiva. “We’re positioned for unprecedented success. Nextiva has the innovative technology portfolio millions of businesses need to solve their greatest communication challenges, and the mission now is to get that information into the hands of our partner community.”
Forbush, a channel veteran with more than 25 years of sales leadership, joins Nextiva as Vice President, Channel, West. He will oversee Nextiva’s channel sales and development activities on the West Coast. Before joining Nextiva, Forbush served as Senior Vice President of Global Sales at PPT Solutions LLC, and prior to that, as Senior Vice President of Global Sales for Telarus, where he drove significant growth across the agency’s six regional sales teams and expanded the company’s cloud, UCaaS and SD-WAN practices.
Antonacci, the new Vice President of Channel Marketing, joins Nextiva with 15 years of experience in technology operations and marketing, including as the Vice President of Marketing at PPT Solutions LLC, and Director, Channel Operations, Programs and Strategic Alliances at Aryaka Networks. At Nextiva, she will be responsible for amplifying Nextiva’s channel brand and driving demand through a variety of channel marketing programs and activities.
Pearce joins Nextiva as Vice President, Channel, North, with more than two decades of experience in channel and commercial sales leadership. Pearce’s focus at Nextiva will be channel sales and development for the North region. Most recently, he served as Vice President of Sales, Global Channel Chief at Tangoe, and as Director, Channel Sales, North America, for Aryaka Networks. Prior to these roles, he held sales leadership positions at Brinks Home Security and Windstream Communications.
Ackert joins Nextiva as Strategic Partner Director, and brings a wealth of channel experience through his positions at Mitel, Five9 and UJET, where he played an integral role in the successful launch and wide-spread adoption of UJET’s channel program. Most recently, Ackert served as Vice President, Channel Development at PPT Solutions LLC, before joining Nextiva. Ackert will be focused on leveraging his technical vantage point and partner relationships to help drive visibility and demand around Nextiva’s multi-site, distributed enterprise customer segment.
Nextiva, also launched NexConnect, its marketing enablement platform built specifically for its partner community. With NexConnect, partners can customize a broad arsenal of content and collateral, which can be then used to run a variety of campaigns and marketing activities – in just a few clicks. Capabilities include:
- Campaigns in a box (including emails, blogs, landing pages, social posts, collateral, etc.) Contact list management
- Organic social media content
- No-code landing pages
- Field marketing support
- Co-brandable collateral library
- Real-time analytics
- Streamlined marketing automation
“NexConnect makes it simpler than ever for partners to access a variety of marketing programs and collateral all through a single, easy-to-use platform,” Antonacci said. “I want our partners to feel our commitment to them, and see the continued investment Nextiva is making in their go-to-market strategies. We want to be easy to do business with, because when our partners succeed, Nextiva succeeds.”
Nextiva’s Partner Program is known in the channel community for offering competitive incentive programs, lucrative promotions and proposal-based marketing development (MDF) funds to support their partners’ GTM activities.
Along with a $50 million investment into its partner channel within the last few years, Nextiva has accelerated its product roadmap to deliver innovation and greater impact for its partners and their customers.
In August 2022, Nextiva launched its next-generation workhub, NextivaOne, bringing together team and customer communications for the first time.
In April, Nextiva announced its acquisition of Simplify360, a leading AI customer experience platform, as part of the company’s mission to level the customer support playing field for businesses of all sizes. The acquisition will expand Nextiva’s core offerings to include social media, reputation management, live chat, and helpdesk CRM.
Learn more about Nextiva’s Partner Program here, and careers at Nextiva here.
