Arctic Wolf’s Skelley, Eaton’s Loeb Force Lead Changes: Round 1 Updates

With voting set to close tomorrow in Round 1, some chiefs are refusing to go quietly in CRN’s 2025 Channel Madness tournament.

With less than 24 hours of voting left for Round 1 of the 2025 Channel Madness Tournament of Chiefs, some channel chiefs are trying to change their fortunes with come-from-behind victories.

When we last looked at the scores Monday, Red Hat’s Stefanie Chiras and Arctic Wolf’s Bob Skelley were locked in an intense battle in the Innovation region in which Chiras had the lead with 51 percent of the vote to Skelley’s 49 percent. But Skelley has turned up the heat and is now ahead with 53 percent to Chiras’ 47 percent. This one could come down to the wire as the two chiefs, both veterans of this tournament, adapt their game plans in the face of this fierce competition.

In the Acceleration region, Eaton’s Steve Loeb looked like he didn’t have the legs to best tournament rookie Lisa Citron of F5, as he sat at 37 percent of the vote Monday, but Loeb has dug down deep to take the lead. He’s now ahead with 57 percent of the vote to Citron’s 43 percent. Time will tell if Loeb can keep going to outlast Citron, who is hungry for a win in her first tournament appearance.

Another close match continues to unfold in the Evolution region between Schneider Electric’s Gordon Lord and WatchGuard’s Michelle Welch. Lord is still holding on to a lead with 52 percent of the vote to Welch’s 48 percent.

In the Transformation region, another tournament rookie, SentinelOne’s Brian Lanigan has seen his lead narrow to 54 percent over Jenni Flinders of NetApp, who’s at 46 percent. Can Flinders draw on her past tournament experience to craft a winning game plan?

We’ll find out tomorrow!

Here’s a look at the full results so far:

Transformation

Michael DePalma, OpenText, 74 percent vs. David Weeks, N-able, 26 percent

Kate Woolley, IBM, 68 percent vs. Michael Khoury, Palo Alto Networks, 32 percent

Kevin Rooney, Veeam Software, 69 percent vs. Tom Henderson, Wiz, 31 percent

Jenni Flinders, NetApp, 46 percent vs. Brian Lanigan, SentinelOne, 54 percent

Acceleration

Kobi Elbaz, HP Inc., 24 percent vs. Dave Guzzi, Intel, 76 percent

Lori Cornmesser, 1Password, 77 percent vs. Tyler Prince, Snowflake, 23 percent

Ken McCray, Fortinet, 41 percent vs. Dan Tomaszewski, Kaseya, 59 percent

Steve Loeb, Eaton, 57 percent vs. Lisa Citron, F5, 43 percent

Innovation

Gordon Mackintosh, Juniper Networks, 45 percent vs. Tara Fine, Broadcom, 55 percent

Christian Goffi, Nutanix, 55 percent vs. Craig Weinstein, Nvidia, 45 percent

Scott Barlow, Sophos, 80 percent vs. Rodney Clark, Cisco Systems, 20 percent

Bob Skelley, Arctic Wolf, 53 percent vs. Stefanie Chiras, Red Hat, 47 percent

Evolution

Tom Evans, Cloudflare, 80 percent vs. Ralph Haupter, Microsoft, 20 percent

Michelle Welch, WatchGuard, 48 percent vs. Gordon Lord, Schneider Electric, 52 percent

Rob Cato, Lenovo, 68 percent vs. Denise Millard, Dell Technologies, 32 percent

Michael Rogers, CrowdStrike, 38 percent vs. Erica Volini, ServiceNow, 62 percent

Voting in Round 1 remains open until noon ET on Wednesday, March 19, so there’s still time to head to CRN.com/madness to cast your votes and choose your chief!