Hilda Lee

Hilda Lee

Sales Director Asia

Hilda has started her Telecom journey in Hong Kong and Canada since 1992.  She has experienced the opening of the telecommunications market from the call-back service, and voice service competition from the well-developed countries to telecommunication evolution.  She performs to  develop her career on different positions (system operations, customer services, technical supports, International business relationship, network implementation, technical development and project managements).  She started to change from voice to data services in 2005. 

She focused on managing all data businesses / opportunities from outside China to China.  She also proved to manage many business solutions / opportunities in Olympic Beijing 2008.  After 7 years data experience in China / Global market, she moved to the back-end voice management and business strategic roles. Hilda has focused on managing business strategic plans in Asia market and dealing management in wholesales market since 9 years ago.

Christophe Erny

Christophe Erny

Sales Director Africa and France

Christophe joined Apelby in 2018 with solid achievement & competence with over 15 years telecommunications experience in the Middle East, African and Indian Ocean regions.
He gladly accepted the position of Sales Director for Africa and France being responsible for business development activities in the region and relationship management with the key partners that Christophe brought on board and helped to expand Apelby’s portfolio in the region.
He gained, throughout his career, significant experience in strategy, P&L responsibility, leadership, innovation, product development and management, business optimisation and partnership management. Over his carrier, Christophe has managed to close multi-millions dollars deals with key partners such as Orange, Airtel, MTN...
He is well versed in identifying growth opportunities and has vast experience in developing, managing and marketing new ventures in rapidly developing markets.
He has held Senior management position in several large companies including IDT, Gateway (PCCW today), Mahindra Comviva and he also provided senior consultancy services to various important companies on the telecom market.

Marco Cacciaglia

Marco Cacciaglia

Sales Director South Europe and North Africa

Marco joined Apelby in 2018 as Director for South Europe & MENA. He is a senior level sales professional with long experience in telecom sales and business development for data & voice services. Thanks to his excellent contacts with international carriers and past experiences in a multi-cultural organization he helped to grow Apelby to the next levels bringing new important customers on board and maintaining excellent relationships with his customer portfolio.
Marco has a proven track record in telecommunications for more than 20 years. He started as a Project Manager in CIS Sud, a telecommunication infrastructure company. 3 years later, he joined Infostrada SpA as National Wholesale Key Account Manager, being responsible for optimizing use of company network infrastructures, defining the portfolio of Bandwidth Capacity Services, Voice Services and Data Services offered to National and International Carriers, developing agreements with the goal of reaching assigned commercial objectives. After the merging with Wind Telecomunicazioni SpA he took the position of Sales Regional Manager for Southern Europe and Balkans. After 5 years and under the creation of WIS Telecom SpA he expanded his footprint as Area Manager for South Europe, Middle East & Africa.

Oliver Smook

Oliver Smook

Regional Director Europe

Oliver joined Apelby as its first Regional Business Development representative focusing his attention mainly on very important German market, adding also Austria and Switzerland. Oliver is based in Frankfurt Area, Germany. He interconnected new major partners and took over all the German speaking customer portfolio.
Oliver managed to strengthen relationships and bring the company long-term fruitful business. Now he is managing the business relations with Apelby’s Key Partners and he is also managing one direct report to ensure that DACH region gets all the proper attention.

Oliver has more than 20 years of experience in telecommunications, starting his telco career as an Account Manager in o.tel.o communications, a subsidiary of German energy suppliers VEBA and RWE. After acquisition of o.tel.o by Arcor (merged to Vodafone) he moved to Star 21 Networks, which was a wireless local loop provider in Germany. After doing sales from the scratch in Star 21 Networks he moved to Verizon, being responsible for acquisition and management of national and international major accounts in Voice, Data and IP. Later he was promoted to the position of Country Sales Manager for Germany, where he was managing the full Wholesale Sales Channel in Germany and leading 8 Account Managers, till he joined Apelby in 2010.

Denis Brnčič

Denis Brnčič

Sales Director South-East Europe

Denis joined Apelby in 2015 as a very experienced sales professional with a demonstrated history of working in the telecommunications business for more than 15 years. He took the position of Sales Director for South-East Europe bringing the company his deep knowledge of voice business in Balkans. Denis is based in Ljubljana, Slovenia. He proved his excellent relations on the market by growing margin and revenue in Balkans and bringing new important incumbents and carriers on board.
Denis started his telecom career in Telekom Slovenije where he spent 6 years on several different positions. Then he moved to TUSMOBIL as a Key Account Manager for Voice Wholesale where he developed his relations even more and actively contributed in building their WS department. He became very important sales force for the whole company.

Katja Hanstein

Katja Hanstein

Sales Manager & Head of Product Management DID

Katja also joined Apelby in 2019 with over 20 years’ experience in telecommunications with German market specialization as well as proper knowledge in international Carrier market. She is reporting directly to Oliver Smook and she is based in Frankfurt area. Katja is managing accounts mainly from German speaking countries being also focused on business development activities with local German carriers and alternative network operators.
Katja worked for 3U Telecom Company from 2007 where she gained all her experience not only with sales, routing and systems but she also built excellent relationships with clients which is now one of the keys to her success in Apelby.

Reham Ahmed

Reham Ahmed

Account Manager Middle East

Reham joined Apelby in 2021 as an experienced sales account manager with a good history of working in the telecommunications business at Telecom Egypt (WE) for 15 years. She started her telecom career for 5 years as head of the department of international affairs for switches operation and maintenance sector. Then she moved to the international voice department as international Account Manager for Asian, African and European region, where her contribution in building global long term business relationships makes her an important sales force at the voice department. She has good experience not only as sales account manager but also as supervisor for routing order at LCR bases, following up routing implementation, solving problems and removing obstacles to ensure highest quality service.

Reham is based in Egypt Cairo, she proved her excellent relations on market by growing margin and revenue and rapidly developing the business with her newly interconnected carriers. She is distinguished by motivated, proactive, and forward thinking account manger with vast knowledge in telecom field, her passion for business and attentiveness in meeting customer needs has its impact on rapid growth in total business with different incumbent and aggregator companies at Telecom Egypt.

Sara Malik

Sara Malik

Sales & Market Manager, Middle East

Sara Malik is based in Karachi, Pakistan. She has an educational background in Business Administration.

Starting off as a Business Development Executive in 2014 with a Telecom Company, she built and grew excellent relationships with clients mainly in Asia. Over a period of time, she mainly worked on the acquisition and management of accounts residing in national and international markets. Her key responsibilities included managing Operators, Tier-1 Carriers and the LDI accounts of International and Pakistan clients respectively. Along with that, she gained a detailed knowledge of routing and destination management to ensure quality and cost control. She also worked on closing short and long term swaps with partners globally.

She is focused on identifying potential growth areas in terms of business, adding new partners and generating opportunities that can add value to the company.

Massimiliano Cesnik

Massimiliano Cesnik

Senior Sales Manager

Massimiliano (he will tell you: “please, call me Max") joined Apelby in 2024 as Senior Sales Manager. Max is a Sales professional with a long experience in telecom sales and business development for Voice, SMS and Digital Security services. Thanks to his vast and solid contacts network with both Italian and International Carriers and past experiences in multi-cultural organizations, he will endeavour to help Apelby in bringing in new important customers as well as maintaining excellent relationships with his customer portfolio.

Max has a proven track record in the international telecommunications to which he dedicated his last 20 years. He started off as writer/editor of infotainment SMS services destined to Telecom Italia Mobile's (TIM) customers back in 2003. He then became Content Acquisition manager with the mission to onboard Music and Games Majors' songs and mobile games onto the very first MNOs internet portals. Thanks to Max, Italian mobile customers were able to play Namco Bandai’s Pac-Man on their handset for the very first time and finally eat as many coloured ghosts as they liked! 

In 2009 Max joined WIND International Services SpA (then WIS) as Account Manager, where in his first 8 years he had the chance to manage the most important Telco operators in the World, spanning from Europe to the Middle East, from Africa to AsiaPac and Americas. In 2017 he moved to WaveCrest to strengthen the UK based company's business with Tier 1s. In late 2019, he joined again WIS to successfully  take care of and expand the business with the most important and "historical" MEA Customers as Area Sales Manager. 

Max adores her daughter, skiing, reading and as a genuine Italian of course, nice food and a buon bicchiere di vino!