Santa Clara, CA - May 6, 2002 - Noosh announced the appointment of Mike Gardner as president and chief executive officer late last week. Gardner, former EVP of Blue Pumpkin Software, brings more than thirty years of enterprise sales, marketing, and customer care experience to Noosh. He succeeds Ofer Ben-Shachar who will continue as chairman of the board of directors. "After a very extensive search I'm very pleased to have Mike join Noosh as president and CEO," said Ben-Shachar. "Mike's strong sales and marketing experience combined with his leadership and vision are a great addition to the Noosh team. With Mike leading the organization, I'm confident we will be successful in taking Noosh to the next level." The e-sourcing marketplace is changing with huge opportunities for Noosh," said Gardner. "Noosh is poised for success because it has a powerful combination of assets: great customers, rich intellectual property, superior technology, and a talented team. We have the opportunity to grow a very robust, long-term business that will bring value to its customers and its shareholders." In addition to the CEO role, Gardner will be head of Noosh's Worldwide Field Operations, a role he previously held at Blue Pumpkin Software, Sybase, and Ungermann-Bass. Gardner started his career with IBM in sales and after 14 years directed the largest US region with over $1B in revenue. He has held senior management positions with Hewlett-Packard, Sybase, and Ungermann-Bass. At Hewlett-Packard he marketed enterprise application software and at Sybase he was SVP of worldwide field operations. At Ungermann-Bass he managed sales growth in the very competitive LAN market from $60M to $425M. Gardner's background includes three successful start-ups. He was President and COO at ACC, a company eventually sold to Ericcson for $285M. Most recently, he served as the EVP of worldwide field operations at Blue Pumpkin Software, an industry leader in enterprise workforce optimization solutions for the CRM market, where he helped build sales and support operations and grew revenues ten-fold. Today Blue Pumpkin has 750 world-class customers.