Stu Dyer, 2023 Alumni of the Year
Since leaving memoryBlue in 2011 Stu has had several sensational years, but this year brought him the win and title of Alumni of the Year.
In 2022, Stu and his team at CBRE closed over $2 BILLION dollars in total contract value. Hi team also won, National Team of the Year at CBRE which is given to the highest-grossing team.
As a philanthropist, Stu ran the largest data center internship program in Northern Virginia and placed 8 Northern Virginia Community College students in full-time roles with the data center provider community.
We are proud to call Stu our 2023 Alumni of the Year winner and amazed to see all our Alumni making big wins in the sales industry since departing memoryBlue.
Mike Mishler, 2022 Alumni of the Year
Even a few years since becoming a memoryBlue Alum in 2017, Mike carries on memoryBlue’s tradition of elevating his network. While scaling company revenue from $3M to $8M in 2021, Mike also increased the size of the SDR team by over 300%, tapping into the alumni network to bring 16+ fellow mB alum into Automox. He has a hyper-focus on increasing diversity and women leadership and was successful in hiring a sales leadership team made up of 60% women.
Mike spends his time coaching and mentoring his large business development team fostering an inspiring culture:
“He inspires those around him and those he manages to consistently grow and not stay stagnant – which is so monumental for sales.” – A colleague of Mike’s
Mike was voted the winner through the tabulation of multiple voting blocks which included our five sales industry expert judges, the seven former alumni award winners, and the leadership team at memoryBlue.
Matt Bright, 2021 Alumni of the Year
Matt beat out a sensational field of applicants and nominees, including 10 impressive Semi-Finalists which narrowed to three Finalists (including himself).
Matt was voted the winner through the tabulation of multiple voting blocks which included our four sales industry expert judges, the six former alumni award winners, the leadership team at memoryBlue and the “open to everyone” People’s Choice Poll.
Richard Reece, 2020 Alumni of the Year
The 6th annual memoryBlue Alumni of the Year Award went to Richard Reece, Platform Account Executive – Informatica.
Richard captured the title after earning one of four Finalist spots, ultimately beating out those three other very well-qualified candidates.
Michael Breslin, 2019 Alumni of the Year
Michael Breslin crushed it in his role as the Director of Corporate Accounts at CenTrak. As a result, he was declared the winner of our fifth annual Alumni of the Year competition.
Michael joined elite company in 2019, as he became one of the rare memoryBlue alumni to go “back-to-back” as an Alumni of the Year Finalist. He brought an impressive set of credentials to the table with his work from 2018, which included:
- Achieving 215% of a $2.5 million quota
- Officially recognized as one of the top sales executives in the company
- Reached 152% new business quota
- Increased year-over-year territory sales growth by 318% for Northeastern United States
His work also included generating 168% in revenue, more than his previous four years combined. You can see his entire Finalist Packet, including his professional reference, by clicking here.
Michael Daversa, 2018 Alumni of the Year
The fourth annual memoryBlue Alumni of the Year winner was Michael Daversa. Michael had a sensational year in 2017 as a Senior Sales Director at Infor (one of the largest enterprise software companies in the world).
Michael led a team of Enterprise Sales Professionals covering all of North America for $3B tech company Infor in 2017. Due to his personal leadership, coaching, training and management efforts, his team produced dizzying numbers. Some of the accomplishments included:
- $5.4M in total bookings in Fiscal Year ’17 (calendar year 2017)
- Increased rep productivity (on his team) and sales efforts YoY by 254%
- Increased his team’s revenue growth YoY by 211%
These major achievements, along with numerous other accomplishments, led to Michael receiving Infor’s “Getting it Done, Doing it Right” Leadership Award for 2017.
To view Michael’s full finalist application and professional recommendation, clicking here.
Julianne (Sweat) Thompson, 2017 Alumni of the Year
In what was one of the best (and fun!) fields we could have ever dreamed of for the third annual competition, Julianne Thompson was named our 2017 memoryBlue Alumni of the Year. Julianne had a terrific 2016 professionally in her work as a Sales Development Manager at KiteDesk. The voting was tight and each of the three finalists had strong claims on the title, but in the end there could only be one winner. Julianne joined (at the time) past winners Sohale Razmjou and Taylor Pierce as the three winners of our most prestigious Alumni honor.
Julianne was an absolute machine in 2016 – and it’s worth noting that she not only applied for the award herself, but was also nominated by her company’s CEO and CMO. She led all reps in her company in terms of total revenue generated, total number of deals closed and new logos brought into the firm. She literally accounted for over 30% of her company’s work in each of those areas despite being on a team with 12 other sales pros. As a result of this amazing work, Julianne was elevated to the role of sales manager that year.
To view Julianne’s full finalist application and professional recommendation, clicking here.
Taylor Pierce, 2016 Alumni of the Year
In 2016, Taylor Pierce bested a field of 30 applicants and two amazing finalists to become the second winner of our annual Alumni of the Year award. The race was incredibly close, and we heard from numerous people on our judges’ panel commenting on just how hard the decision was — but in the end, Taylor took home the title and earned the $5,000 dream vacation on us.
As Senior Director of West Coast Sales at Cigital, Taylor led Cigital’s West Coast region to become the highest performing practice across all of his company. Although he had a number of spectacular key accomplishments in 2015, the following items were of paramount significance for his business:
- In 2015, he exceeded a “New Business” quota of $3M by 254% (closing over $7.6M of net-new sales) and ultimately closing over $10.5M in total sales for the year.
- He personally developed three enterprise accounts in the Bay Area from under $250,000 to over $1.1M in sales over the course of one year and multiple work streams across various several business units in each firm.
To view Taylor’s full finalist application and professional recommendation, click here.
Sohale Razmjou, 2015 Alumni of the Year
After joining the startup Spigit in 2011, Sohale served as the firm’s Director of Strategic accounts and was instrumental in scaling the company, leading to its $22.5 million acquisition in 2013. In his 2.5 years working full-time at Spigit, Sohale also earned a master’s degree in technology management from Georgetown University and was Spigit’s Rookie of the Year.