Women Of The Channel 2020: Power 40 Solution Providers
As part of the 2020 Women of the Channel, CRN is highlighting 40 female executives at solution provider organizations whose insight and influence in their respective companies help drive channel success.
Power 40 Solution Providers
CRN's Women of the Channel list is an annual honoring of the accomplishments of female executives within the channel. For the seventh straight year, the project is highlighting an elite subset of female executives at solution provider organizations whose insight and influence in their respective companies help drive channel success.
For more Women of the Channel coverage, check out the Power 100 list. You can also see the full listing of the 2020 Women of the Channel in our searchable database.
By Company:
Lorraine Azzinaro
Chief Operating Officer
Aspire Technology Partners
Azzinaro contributed to distributor-led initiatives and led the vetting and on-boarding for all ecosystem partners. She also oversaw expansions in managed services operations and supervised the implementation of Aspire Technology Partners’ ITIL-based processes.
Elizabeth Kubycheck
Chief Marketing, Administrative Officer
ATSG
Kubycheck has been driving demand and opportunity into ATSG through a focus on the entire life cycle of support. Taking a new approach, inclusive of both the company’s front office and back office to partner together to improve programs, offerings and functionality, the aim is to give clients, partners and prospects the best possible outcomes.
Maryann Pagano
CEO
BlackHawk Data
Pagano says her business is based on trust, and she has spent the past 20 years building up her reputation for staying true to her word and has personally built every channel relationship at BlackHawk Data, which specializes in infrastructure, security, business intelligence and data analytics.
Maryam Emdadi Smith
VP, Sales
Carahsoft Technology
In 2020, Emdadi Smith's team grew the solution provider’s Dell channel business by over 46 percent, on-boarding and enabling over 143 new partners into the Dell federal channel program. She also launched sales campaigns that helped generate over $42 million in incremental sales for top channel partners.
Shauna Hassett
VP, Marketing
Carousel Industries
Hassett rebranded and evolved Carousel’s popular "Always On" virtual technology forum, bringing together thousands of technologists through the "Always On" webinar series, podcast series and “pizza cast” series, a combination of live and virtual events involving customers, prospects, Carousel subject matter experts and technology partners.
Kelly Ireland
CEO
CB Technologies
Ireland focused CB Technologies on staying the course in building engineered solutions around Industrial IoT, OT-IT convergence, edge compute and artificial intelligence/big data with an emphasis on high-performance computing and data analytics.
Alyssa Hall
VP, Marketing, Business Development
CDI
Hall’s mission to help increase CDI’s partner relationships has proven a successful and game-changing strategy. As the face of CDI’s channel relationships, Hall works directly with each partner to determine the topics, campaign and events that will support them and offer mutually beneficial results.
Sonal Malavia
President
Cloud 9 Infosystems
With nine years in the cloud business influencing the company's growth and expansion, Malavia has achieved her goal of ensuring clients have a smooth and memorable experience in their digital transformation journey. She has achieved multiple Gold competencies for Cloud 9 by designing programs to reward team members for getting certified.
Kathleen Kinka
VP, Marketing
Comport Consulting
Kinka is helping to drive the transformation of the company's brand as Comport shifts its focus toward cloud and managed services, business solutions, "as a service" and pay-as-you-go consumption of IT. This includes ongoing sales enablement, new generations of messaging and supporting materials, and campaigns with analytics.
Haley Montgomery
Director, Marketing
Corsica Technologies
With Montgomery's leadership and strategic campaign direction, lead generation has increased over 100 percent—the company did not yet have digital campaigns or ROI tracking in place until she took the role at Corsica in October 2019. Since her arrival, marketing has generated 200-plus leads for the organization, many resulting in closed revenue.
Tera Davis
Managing Director
Critical Start
Davis led MSSP CriticalStart’s strategic decision to move its managed detection and response services’ go-to-market strategy to a channel-only model. She also brought on and new vice president of channels and alliances and signed distribution agreements with Ingram Micro and Synnex to give them access to the company’s nationwide network of cybersecurity resellers.
Sonia St. Charles
CEO
Davenport Group
As the head of a Titanium Dell Technologies partner and member of Dell EMC's Partner Advisory Board, St. Charles engaged with the vendor to improve channel strategies, which impacted all partners. Her continued focus on the relationship with Dell Technologies positions Davenport Group to advocate for its customers, ensuring that the channel continues to grow and that both sides benefit from the relationship.
Tanya Hall
Director, Marketing, Partner Programs
Decisive Technologies
Hall created a custom IT inbound trade show for local clients and technology partners. This featured multiple speaking engagements, keynotes and a trade-show floor. In addition, she created a training platform with partners for sales and technical teams to gain knowledge and peer-to-peer support.
Jeanne Michele Miller
President
Ener Systems
Miller has lofty goals for Ener Systems, working this year to double profitability and continue to grow its monthly recurring revenue. She’s also laser-focused on providing top-notch customer service and building stronger relationships with partners such as Microsoft to get access to training for her employees, boost profitability and deliver products to clients.
Mari Rodish
CFO
Evotek
Rodish’s primary role is to ensure Evotek’s financial health. Toward that end, she implemented a financial system, a CRM system and a tax system, all while building an operations team that can support each tool as well as the integrated system. She’s working to ensure that the company’s back end can scale to keep pace with its projected revenue growth over the next five years.
Dawn McCale
VP, Sales
Groupware Technology
McCale led her team to grow business through expansion into existing accounts and the penetration of new accounts and territories. She continues to grow Groupware’s business in artificial intelligence and professional services. Her team crushed their sales goals in 2019 and started 2020 with tremendous momentum.
Elise Hernandez
CEO
Ideal System Solutions
One of Hernandez’s top priorities is to strengthen and build channel relationships for Ideal System Solutions, which focuses on government, education, health care and enterprise clients. She also won accolades as an Innovation & Performance Award winner from the
U.S. Women's Chamber of Commerce.
Kerri Fry
COO
IGNW
Fry works to maintain a customer-centric approach with OEM partners as well as end clients. One of her top priorities this past year was creating a streamlined process for managing and interacting with channels efficiently. As a result, she was able to free up her team’s time to focus on strategic tasks.
Alma Du Preez
VP, Global Sales
Insight Enterprises
Du Preez makes it a top priority to engage with the channel at all levels. This includes scheduling quarterly workshops and account planning and strategy sessions aimed at solidifying mutual strategic goals in a way that is beneficial for Insight, clients and partners.
Amy Protexter
SVP, North America Marketing
Insight Enterprises
Insight has more than doubled in size during a rapid evolution since 2016 from a traditional hardware/software reseller into a full-service systems integrator. Leading a marketing team of more than 200, Protexter has architected a strategic repositioning of Insight's purpose to create meaningful connections that help businesses run smarter.
Michelle Andreas
VP, Marketing
Logicalis U.S.
Andreas led development of a customer-centric approach to marketing in the channel, emphasizing customer stories and executive thought leadership through a dedicated content and media strategy and a strong web presence. This generated increased awareness and growth across platforms, and a pipeline of significant leads that directly influenced revenue.
Sarah Morreau
VP, Licensing, Software Asset Management
Long View Systems
Morreau has been the driving force behind the Software Asset Management and Licensing Services. Her leadership has led to the addition of many new customers in 2019 and recognition for Long View Systems as a two-time Microsoft Canadian Country Partner of the Year Award winner.
Brenda Stallings
CEO
Matrix Integration
Stallings has 41 years of experience in the technology industry. As CEO of Matrix Integration, she gives her company the leadership that has the expertise to solve complex IT business problems. She also holds the role of President of Current Blend, a local co-working space in Dubois County to support the next generation in entrepreneurship and startups, one of them being Blended Coders, a group where young women learn how to code and receive an introduction to robotics.
Susan Kozak
President
MNJ Technologies
Kozak’s top priority is maintaining 18-year-old MNJ Technologies’ culture, which is centered on family. She prides herself on having a close working relationship with all of her employees and considers her clients as part of the family as well. The key, she says, is “to maintain the family culture no matter how big we grow.”
Kelly Jones
President, COO
NetGain Information Systems
Jones is not only the owner of a growing MSP and cloud solutions provider but is also the U.S. president of Ingram Micro’s Trust X Alliance and is an active leader in the community, serving on boards and donating her time as a speaker and presenter. Trust X Alliance currently has 350 solution provider members across the U.S., Canada and the U.K.
Patty Krieger
CEO
Netrix IT
Through her relationships with Netrix IT’s vendor partners, Krieger was able to develop a clear path for both current clients and prospects to move their IT spend from a Capex model to an Opex strategy. From financing partners to cloud service providers, she assembled a rock-solid implementation plan.
Janice Newlon
Chief Operations Officer
Novacoast
Newlon’s experience in the services and technology industry has helped Novacoast grow year over year, both in revenue and employee count. She helped shape early company policies and has been a critical member of the management team, providing logistical and strategic input on acquisitions, expansions and new business units. She handles negotiations for Novacoast acquisitions and has successfully facilitated the acquisition of two leading services and strategy businesses in the past 12 months.
Peggy Miller
CEO
PacStar
Miller has been a leader and significant contributor to PacStar's success, providing strategic guidance as the company moved become recognized within the Department of Defense for its quality products and customer service. Under her leadership the company has won a number of major U.S. Department of Defense programs of record. This past year she has expanded the sales and installation business to increase customer service and increase profitability.
Rosina Kling
President, CEO
Panamerica Computers
Kling is directing a company transition to become a principal cybersecurity solutions provider to the federal government. With strategic partners, this includes staffing enhancement, a new technology lab and expanding warehouse capabilities. She also guided strategic planning with partners to secure a number of large contracts.
Liz Stuart
Alliance Director, Emerging Solutions
Perficient
Stuart raised awareness with a key cloud partner about the cloud-native advocacy activities the marketing team was pursuing. Her efforts positioned the assets within the partner's community and demonstrated Perficient’s thought leadership and capabilities in this space. As a result, the partner recognized Perficient with a prestigious partner award.
Amy Williams
CEO
Pier Group
Williams has strategically guided Pier Group's vendor and distributor relationships in an effort to fully align with the company’s key partners. This alignment ultimately created a unique environment allowing Pier Group's channel business to grow more than 50 percent year over year.
Felise Katz
CEO
PKA Technologies
As CEO, Katz continues to develop talent and mentor both new and legacy PKA employees, especially women as well as partners in the ecosystem. At the same time, many of PKA’s partnerships have had triple-digit growth with it this year. The solution provider has also raised the bar on its medallion status achievements with both new and legacy vendors.
Kirsten Craft
Head of Business Development, Marketing
Prolifics
Craft created a new focus on driving channel revenue for Prolifics, leveraging her executive relationships with key channel partners and her own peers to make bold plans, then drove the follow-through. She also served in multiple channel advisory roles, providing valuable feedback to help evolve the channel as a whole.
Vanessa Simmons
VP, Business Development
Pythian
Simmons drove record-breaking channel-influenced services revenue, doubling that of 2018. Pythian was recognized as Google Cloud's Data Analytics Partner of the Year in April and plans to launch its first-ever resell practice beginning with Google Cloud services, followed by Pythian Google Cloud Managed Services, in response to clients' growing demand for expert cloud data planning, migration, management and optimization services.
Sara Onyschuk
North American Director, Business Director, Client Solutions
Softchoice
Onyschuk values diversity, enabling empowerment, innovation and execution. This has resulted in delivering creative solutions to Softchoice’s customers and partners, recognized by multiple channel accomplishments, such as Intel Client Partner of the Year and Intel Services Partner of the Year, among others.
Heather Gonzalez
VP, Marketing, Strategic Alliances
Technologent
This past year, Gonzalez put a lot of emphasis on what she calls her 4 C's: Communication, Collaboration, Community and Celebration. She enhanced corporate and vendor communications, resulting in deeper collaboration and a stronger partner community—which led to record revenue for the organization.
Georgia Vasilion
VP, Public Sector
Technology Integration Group
Vasilion conducts negotiations and manages federal, state and local and education contracts. She has continued to grow the public sector business, which today accounts for over half of TIG’s total U.S. revenue. She develops and negotiates cost proposals, reviews and analyzes contract documents, provides contract support to the operations and accounting departments, and acts as a contract liaison between the company and customers and vendors.
Bonnie Luton
VP, Business Alliances
TeraMach, A Pivot Company
Since joining TeraMach in a newly created role, Luton has brought structure, process and governance to a program for the channel that didn't previously exist. She has updated previous contracts, elevated the TeraMach brand within the vendor community, increased its social presence and positively impacted the bottom line.
Dawn Leavitt
VP, Business Operations
vCore Technology Partners
Last year saw continued investments in people by vCore for clients in key areas like cloud computing, DevOps enablement, and managed cloud services. Providing financial resources and recruiting/on-boarding support for those investments was a challenge met by the team.
Jackie Groark
Director, Security/CISO
Veristor
Groark has worked to expand the Veristor security practice to embrace the innovative security solutions of over 80 vendor partners. Together with Veristor partners, she has built the professional services offerings that provide the security foundations customers require to protect their business from the risk of cybersecurity threats.