1Password’s Cornmesser, Cloudflare’s Evans To Compete For Championship: Channel Madness

The Semifinal round of the 2025 CRN Channel Madness tournament is complete, and the winners are ready to go for it all.

The Semifinal round of the 2025 CRN Channel Madness Tournament of Chiefs put the spotlight on a quartet of strong channel advocates who made it to the Field of Four, but only two can advance into the final round for a shot at the championship.

Let’s take a look at who’s advancing to the final round and the paths they took to get there.

1Password’s Lori Cornmesser came out strong in her matchup against tournament rookie Mike DePalma of OpenText and did not let up, winning 66 percent of the vote to DePalma’s 34 percent.

On the other side of the bracket Cloudflare’s Tom Evans, who won the tournament last year competing for Palo Alto Networks, will have a chance to repeat after orchestrating a come-from-behind win against Scott Barlow of Sophos. Barlow held a solid lead as of Friday afternoon, but a flurry of weekend voting tipped the scales Evans’ way. Evans ended with 59 percent of the vote to Barlow’s 41 percent.

With that, the championship round of Cornmesser vs. Evans is set to open later today.

Representing the Acceleration region, Cornmesser’s road to the final included a Round 3 victory over Kaseya’s Dan Tomaszewski. She also bested Intel’s Dave Guzzi in Round 2 and Snowflake’s Tyler Prince in Round 1.

Carrying the banner for the Evolution region, Evans was victorious over Lenovo’s Rob Cato in Round 3, held off Schneider Electric’s Gordon Lord in Round 2 and beat out Microsoft’s Ralph Haupter in Round 1.

Voting for the 2025 CRN Channel Madness championship kicks off today at 4:00 p.m. ET and closes Wednesday, April 2 at 10:00 a.m. ET. Visit CRN.com/madness to cast your votes and choose your chief!