Mitel is fortunate to have many great and innovative leaders that are dedicated to our organization, partners, and customers. Among them is Denise Hanson, Senior Director, Partner Experience, who has been recognized as a 2021 CRN Rising Female Star. This award recognizes up-and-coming leaders, identifying women whose dedication and commitment have shaped growth for their company and the IT channel, as well as improving business for their solution provider partners. With a nearly 15-year track record of global leadership experience for both UC and Cloud, Denise has been making her mark here at Mitel and within the unified communications industry for a long time, and we are thrilled that the IT industry recognizes her talents as well.   
 
To celebrate Denise’s recognition as a CRN Rising Star, Corporate Marketing Intern Avery Huffman invited her to a spotlight interview to talk about her background, what the award means to her, what inspires her as a leader and more. The full interview between Denise and Avery is below: 

Denise has been with Mitel for almost her entire career and started rising through the leadership ranks early on with roles in partner experience, customer onboarding, order processing and fulfillment and more. She attributed her early career success to strong mentor relationships and guidance and shared how those early experiences drive her to help develop other young employees to grow into their potential. 

“One of the most rewarding things in my career is to see others who have had the opportunity to be promoted because of the time I invested with and for them, just like someone did for me early on in my career.” Denise said. “I’m a firm believer that it all comes full circle.” 

This Rising Star award is no doubt an indicator of success, which Denise has had an abundant amount of over the years. She has built a consistent track record of positive and impactful results for partners, including forming respectful trust-based relationships, simplifying policy and process improvements and driving performance achievements. Over the last few years, she has been a recipient of the 2017 Mitel Business Excellence Award (awarded to less than 1% organization-wide). She also received a 2018 recognition by the CEO for presenting to over 4,000 employees at a Global Employee Town Hall Meeting and received a 2019 Standing Ovation Award from the SVP of Sales and the entire Sales team.  

Only 100 women across the entire IT industry are chosen for the CRN Female Stars of the Channel list, and they are recognized as being change-makers, developers, and innovators. However, to Denise, being successful is not a measure of awards, recognition or profit, but of how much value she has and will add to Mitel. 

“At the end of the day, when my career is all said and done,” she said. “When my name comes up, people aren’t really going to remember, ‘oh, she was the Senior Director of this, or she was the manager of this.’ But what I really hope is mentioned is, ‘She added value. She really added value to the organization in what she did.’” 

Denise certainly adds so much value to Mitel, and that along with her loyalty and commitment to our organization over the years is sure to be what we remember about her career. The recognition she is receiving now has been a long time coming, and Mitel is grateful for the talent she has brought and will continue to bring to the organization in the future. We wish Denise a huge congratulations and thank her for her passion in developing strategies to help us better serve our partners. 

If you’d like to see Denise’s profile on the CRN website, you can find it here

 

 

Avery Huffman

Social Media and Content Specialist

Avery Huffman is a graduate of the University of Texas at Austin, majoring in Public Relations and Corporate Communication. She enjoys writing and telling meaningful stories and creating interesting internal and external content.

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