Birch Communications has named Tony Tomae as the company’s next president and CEO.
Tomae succeeds Vincent M. Oddo, who will be assuming a new position as president and CEO of Birch’s sister company, Birch Equity Partners.
Tomae is a 25-year-plus communications and data industry veteran who comes to Birch from FairPoint Communications. There, he served as chief revenue officer and was responsible for sales, marketing and product management functions. He has served in a number of executive positions at Deltacom –now EarthLink– and WilTel Communications, and has also held positions with AT&T and Broadwing Communications. Tomae holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Marketing from Fairleigh Dickinson University in Madison, N.J.
“As we celebrate our 20th anniversary, 2016 has uniquely served as a year of transition,” said R. Kirby Godsey, Chairman of the Board for Birch. “Tony will be instrumental in shepherding Birch as we continue transitioning to a more organic sales model. As we look toward our next 20 years, we will continue to seek opportunities for growth through acquisition; however, organic growth will remain our top priority. Tony’s experience in sales, marketing and product in the voice, data, and access space will prove invaluable as we move forward with our strategy and I am confident that we have found the right person as we continue this growth path.”
Tomae added: “I have watched Birch’s recent network and product expansions in Metro-Fiber, cloud services and unified communications, and I am honored to lead Birch as we continue on the path to become the technology ally for businesses of all sizes. In the short term, we will continue to expand our Metro-Fiber footprint, working with our business customers with operations across the U.S.-Canada border to consolidate services to a single provider, and we will deepen our feature set within our Cloud portfolio to supply the enterprise-class features our customers need.”
Tomae succeeds Oddo, who assumed leadership and partial ownership of the company in 2003 and led the company through 28 acquisitions, including the purchase of Birch Telecom in 2008, Cbeyond in 2014, and most recently the asset purchase of Primus Telecommunications. Over the past 13 years, Oddo grew the company from a UNE-P-focused telecommunications company in its original nine-state footprint to an industry-leading technology company with a network owned and operated across North America.
“I am sincerely appreciative for Vinnie’s leadership that has brought us to our 20th year in business,” says Godsey. “Through his strategic direction, Birch has built a product portfolio that serves both communications-centric and technology-dependent businesses of any size and positions the company perfectly for the next decade of growth.”
Tomae will be based at the Atlanta Operations Center, and plans to relocate to the Atlanta area.
