I am excited to announce that we have launched a brand new annual awards program at Upbound! At our recent Company & Sales Kickoff event in Puerto Vallarta, we recognized and celebrated the contributions of our employees, partners, and community members.

It’s crucial to show appreciation for the hard work and dedication of those building our company into something special. That's why we have created a new awards program that aligns with our company's cultural values.

The award categories are: "Advocate of the Year," "Partner of the Year," "Care for Our Communities," "Demonstrate Craftsmanship," "Builder," "Visionary," "Champion the Customer," and "Act as an Owner." Let’s find out who our winners were this year for each category!

Customer Awards

Nuno Guedes from Millennium bcp is our “Builder” award recipient! This award recognizes an individual who has contributed to building and growing Upbound. As an individual dedicated to innovation, Nuno has devoted himself to this ideal with Upbound. Amongst other activities, he has collaborated on valuable resources to help others scale their infrastructure, including presenting about his use of provider-terraform at the, “Kubernetes Called and it Wants Your IaC Back: Using Control Planes to Modernize Your IaC Tech Stack“ webinar.

Márcio Ribeiro from Grupo Boticário is our "Visionary" award recipient! This award highlights someone who has shown great foresight and leadership in shaping Upbound's future. Márcio has contributed to an Upbound webinar, helped with a blog and case study, and continues to serve as an advocate to help others level up their cloud platforms. He strongly believes in the revolutionary future of cloud computing and champions control planes, Crossplane, and Upbound as significant factors of that future.

Partner & Alliances Awards

Partner advocacy is critical to Upbound's success as it helps us expand our reach and offer more value to our customers.

We chose Google Cloud Platform to win the "Advocate of the Year" award this year! Google Cloud Platform has gone above and beyond to champion Upbound and our values to the broader community.

We chose AWS to win this year’s "Partner of the Year" award! This award recognizes a partner who has worked tirelessly with Upbound to deliver exceptional customer outcomes, and AWS was that for us this year.

Crossplane Community Awards

Christopher Haar from Deutsche Kreditbank is the recipient of the "Care for Our Communities" award! This award recognizes an individual who has made an outstanding contribution to the communities in which we operate. Christopher has directly contributed to multiple providers within the Upbound Marketplace, including provider-aws, provider-zpa, and provider-jet-pagerduty.

Bob Haddleton of Nokia is our "Demonstrate Craftsmanship" award winner. This award highlights an individual who has demonstrated excellence in their craft and delivered outstanding results for their organization. In the Upbound Marketplace, Bob has also contributed to providers such as provider-aws, provider-kubernetes, provider-helm, and provider-terraform – of which provider-terraform has gone Upbound Official!

Upbound Employee Awards

The "Champion the Customer" award goes to Steven Borrelli, one of our Principal Solutions Architects. This award is for someone who has exceeded expectations in delivering exceptional customer outcomes. Steven has ensured our customer's success since joining Upbound as our first Customer Success professional. He has helped shape our approach to customer success and has played a vital role in building solid relationships with some of our largest customers.

Steven's expertise and experience have been invaluable in working with customers with the most complex and sophisticated environments. He has an uncanny ability to understand their unique needs and challenges and has been able to guide them to success by leveraging Upbound's solutions and expertise. One of the critical reasons Steven has been so successful is his dedication to our cultural values. He consistently demonstrates craftsmanship and acts as an owner, taking full ownership of our customers' success and going above and beyond to ensure they are happy with our solutions and services. In addition, he champions our customers' needs and always advocates for them internally, helping to ensure their voice is heard.

Finally, the "Act as an Owner" award goes to Nageye Rascid! This award is given to our Account Executive of the Year. It recognizes an individual who has taken ownership of their work and contributed to the success of Upbound as a whole. As a result, Nageye achieved 178% of his annual quota and instrumentally brought new customers like BMW, GameLoft, and DKB into our growing list of EMEA-based customers.

Thank You

We want to express our most profound appreciation and gratitude to our employees, partners, and community members for their hard work and dedication. Again, thank you for making Upbound such a great company, and we look forward to recognizing your outstanding contributions through these awards. Let's Build!

What’s Next?

Want to be one among the first to experience something new and exciting from Upbound? Learn more in our livestream on April 5th at 8 am PT / 5pm CEST. Mark your calendars now to learn more about our latest updates and get ready to build above the clouds! http://evt.to/aoudomgmw