Choose Your Chief: 2025 CRN Channel Madness Voting Is Now Open!

Voting is now open in CRN's 11th annual Channel Madness Tournament of Chiefs, which starts with 32 of the industry’s most prominent channel executives and ends with one champion.

https://youtu.be/VZsQYGhzBUQ

It starts with 32 of the industry's most influential channel chiefs. It ends with one.

The 2025 CRN Channel Madness Tournament of Chiefs kicked off on Thursday, March 13, pitting some of the channel's most influential executives against each other in head-to-head battles where CRN readers vote to determine the victors.

Contestants in our 11th annual tournament will make their way, round by round, through the bracket, moving closer and closer to the championship match.

Lots of fan favorites are returning for this year’s contest, including last year’s champion, Tom Evans, who this year is competing for Cloudflare. The field also includes former champions Kevin Rooney of Veeam Software and Ken McCray of Fortinet.

There are also several tournament newcomers, such as Tara Fine of Broadcom, Lisa Citron of F5, Michael DePalma of OpenText and Scott Barlow of Sophos.

Will you give your vote to an industry veteran who’s had your back? An up-and-comer who’s opening new doors? Will you cast a vote for the executive that's advocated on your behalf, or will you vote against someone who didn't step up when you needed help? It's up to you. The power of the vote is entirely in your hands.

One thing's for sure: It will all be a lot of fun.

CRN editors picked the 32 participants, many of whom appeared on the 50 Most Influential list as part of our 2025 CRN Channel Chiefs project, representing a variety of vendors across the technology industry. Each represents one of four "regions:" Transformation, Acceleration, Innovation and Evolution.

Voting for Round 1 opened on Thursday, March 13 with 16 executive face-offs and will remain open until Wed., March 19 at noon ET. You can follow all the action at crn.com/madness and on social media with the hashtag #CRNChannelMadness And there's still time to enter our bracket contest to see if you can predict the winner.

Here's a look at the 2025 CRN Channel Madness tournament match-ups.

Transformation

Michael DePalma, OpenText vs. David Weeks, N-able

Kate Woolley, IBM vs. Michael Khoury, Palo Alto Networks

Kevin Rooney, Veeam Software vs. Tom Henderson, Wiz

Jenni Flinders, NetApp vs. Brian Lanigan, SentinelOne

Acceleration

Kobi Elbaz, HP Inc. vs. Dave Guzzi, Intel

Lori Cornmesser, 1Password vs. Tyler Prince, Snowflake

Ken McCray, Fortinet vs. Dan Tomaszewski, Kaseya

Steve Loeb, Eaton vs. Lisa Citron, F5

Innovation