The Most Powerful Women Of The Channel 2021: Power 100
The Power 100 is culled from the ranks of CRN’s Women of the Channel and spotlights the female executives at vendors and distributors whose insight and influence help drive channel success.
The 2021 Power 100
This year, CRN honors over 1,000 women whose channel expertise and vision are deserving of recognition in its annual Women Of The Channel showcase.
Of those, an elite group of executives were named by the CRN editorial staff to the Power 100 list. These women are leading their vendor and distribution organizations from a variety of backgrounds and experiences as they all try to navigate an ever-changing IT landscape.
Here are the 100 women that made the Power 100 list this year.
By Company:
Sandy Carter
VP, Worldwide Public Sector Partners, Programs
Amazon Web Services
2020 saw 45 percent year-over-year growth in the number of businesses joining the AWS Public Sector Partner Program, representing 73 percent of public sector revenue. New programs helped partners grow by 55 percent year over year, with a focus on inclusion, diversity and equity.
Barbara Kessler
Global Partner Programs Leader
Amazon Web Services
Kessler and her team have evolved the AWS Partner Network Program to offer more flexibility and increased benefits. She introduced a new program structure for ISVs, ISV Partner Path, removing the traditional tiered model for these partners, and restructured MDF benefits to increase value for all AWS partners with differentiated, specialized solutions.
Renee Bergeron
SVP, GM
AppSmart
Over the past year, Bergeron has led the integration of five acquired master telecom agencies and drove a sales effectiveness program that resulted in 3X growth in year-over-year bookings. She also developed a pandemic support program for AppSmart’s advisers and created a road map for them to build their businesses in fast-growing markets like cloud.
Donna Grothjan
VP, Worldwide Channels
Aruba, a Hewlett Packard Enterprise company
To better enable partners’ success, Grothjan has led Aruba’s efforts in transforming its partner base to enable the delivery of XaaS/NaaS offerings. To do this, she has had to transform all elements of the partner operating model, from partner go-to-market strategy to all aspects of partner enablement and sales.
Carolyn Crandall
Chief Security Advocate, CMO
Attivo Networks
Crandall has executive oversight for Attivo Networks’ partner programs for channel, integration and industry alliance partners. She is directly responsible for ensuring the partner program is compelling and supported globally. This includes providing supporting resources and tools to incent selling and collaboration with the channel community.
Stacey Marx
President, National Business, Channels
AT&T
Marx invested an immense amount of resources to grow the channel. She stood up Centers of Excellence to provide life-cycle support and created COVID-19 response command centers for real-time support of priority orders during the pandemic. She also launched FiberFast initiatives, a new solution provider portal, and made improvements in automation.
Sarita Rao
SVP, Portfolio Integration, Partner Solutions
AT&T
Rao launched new products and services to meet the needs of solution providers’ customers including 5G nationwide, DDoS, Global Security Gateway and SD-WAN OTT. She focused on making it easier to sell new technologies, including new revenue growth opportunities with IoT, cybersecurity and wireless WAN sales opportunities.
Dee Dee Acquista
SVP, Global Channels
BeyondTrust
Acquista joined BeyondTrust in March 2020. She was hired to lead the channel strategy globally and spent her first quarter on a look-and-listen tour to get a deeper understanding of the business. The plan she formulated was laser-focused on assessing the programs, talent and tools needed for the future.
Colleen Hatala
Director, Worldwide Channel Sales
Broadcom
Hatala was responsible for optimizing the channel organization post-acquisition and managed a project to migrate over 58 entities down to 7. This led to benefits for the top, most dedicated partners while still allowing for others to participate. It reduced cost and drove productivity and profitability.
Natalie Gregory
VP
Carahsoft Technology
This past year, Gregory worked with channel partners to create a specialized proactive approach to understand their business model and how to help enable them to sell more. She also worked with software manufacturers to vendors to enhance their channel programs with partner recruitment
and deal registration.
Julia Chen
VP, Partner Transformation, Global Partner Organization
Cisco Systems
Chen enabled Cisco’s channel partners to achieve higher wallet share and profitability through three transformation pillars: First, accessing new buying centers (e.g., line-of-business or DevOps buyers); second, developing differentiated business outcome solutions on top of Cisco platforms; and third, ensuring customer success to increase renewal rates and opportunity from life-cycle services.
Isabella Yani
Director, Sales Operations, Business Development
Cisco Systems
Yani came into this role immediately following a company reorganization and was tasked with ensuring that the organization’s sales operations and business development teams were right-sized and focused on the right areas to move the business forward and deliver growth through critical ecosystem and managed services teams.
Tricia Atchison
Managing Director, Partner Enablement, Marketing, Communications
Citrix Systems
Atchison focused on the expansion of worldwide enablement, marketing and communication programs across the entire Citrix partner ecosystem with distributors, hyperscalers and global systems integrators. Programs drive deeper engagement with the partner community and offer a better opportunity to enhance their skills, expand their offerings, increase demand and ultimately drive more business.
Dalyn Wertz
Executive Director, Indirect Program Management
Comcast Business
2020 was an unprecedented year. In an industry that is so event- and relationship-heavy, Wertz’s team had to pivot quickly and shift over 100 events to virtual activities. She created virtual team-building opportunities for channel managers to connect with partners to keep mindshare and engagement high.
Karen Pugliese
Partner Leader, Americas
CommScope
Pugliese’s focus has been keenly on the redevelopment of CommScope’s Consultant and Integrator Programs as an extension of the Partner Program. A “listening tour” was the kick-off in order to understand the opportunities and challenges facing partners.
Lamia Megdiche
VP, Partner Strategy, Programs
Commvault
Megdiche enhanced and simplified the Partner Advantage Program with competitive, rewarding win, growth and performance incentives and streamlined partner tier requirements for higher tier achievement and lucrative benefits. She also set the strategic direction for partnerships across solution providers, global systems integrators, alliances, service providers and cloud providers, all while recruiting and hiring talented team members.
Lori Cornmesser
Channel Chief, VP, Worldwide Channel Sales
CyCognito
Cornmesser’s focus remains 100 percent channel-led and grounded in bringing the best experience to her team, channel partners and ecosystem. At CyCognito, she will lead the charge to grow the share of its channel business from 63 percent to 95 percent year over year.
Tina Fisher
Vice President, Vendor Management
D&H Distributing
Fisher helped to quickly migrate and manage D&H’s teams and business practices to work-from-home environments due to the impact of COVID-19. She took the lead as an executive sponsor for D&H’s Esports and ProAV teams. This included helping them round out initiatives, partnerships and expansions to capitalize on these distinct segments.
Jennifer Walcott
VP, Marketing
D&H Distributing
When the business community locked down, D&H was one of the first channel companies faced with converting a live conference into a virtual event since the company had its West Coast Show scheduled for late March. Within a week, Walcott developed the new THREADcast virtual engagement format.
Cheryl Cook
SVP, Global Partner Marketing
Dell Technologies
Cook spearheaded stimulus/relief so partners could maximize benefits via digital channels. She pivoted the organization to curate, create and drive digital enablement partner resources in the market. Cook also collaborated with the Dell CMO and other marketing executives to share best practices on a Digital Marketing Forum series.
Rola Dagher
Global Channel Chief
Dell Technologies
Dagher’s philosophy is “Learn It, Earn It, Return It,” and one of her key focuses as global channel chief is returning her experience to the partner community that raised her. Partners know she will build a program that helps them execute today while elevating their businesses for tomorrow.
Erica Lambert
SVP, Global Services Sales, Channel, Alliances, OEM Solutions
Dell Technologies
One of Lambert’s key accomplishments was helping partners adapt to the many changes and challenges of the pandemic. Dell partners provided services that were crucial to keeping their customers’ businesses running, and Dell was there with flexible delivery models, remote services, more training and increased automation.
Shawn Trotter
VP, North America Channel Sales
Dell Technologies
This year as everyone pivoted to remote work quickly, Trotter shifted her focus to best support employees and the partner community. She keyed in on employees and remote availability to be able to provide critical technology needs and best practices to partners.
Sommer Goodknecht
Manager, Channel Marketing
Eaton
Over the past year, Goodknecht has dedicated time to ensuring Eaton is learning from its partners by gaining input on what they were going through during the pandemic. Her goal was to be a part of their experiences by maintaining relationships, identifying their needs and providing support.
Jules Johnston
SVP, Global Channel
Equinix
Johnston exceeded targets and grew partner-connected bookings to consistently contribute greater than 30 percent of the company’s new-business in every region and on-boarded new talent. Last year she also studied Equinix’s regional channel models and created a blueprint for a new globally integrated, more scalable partner coverage model that was publicly launched this year.
Natalia Vianden
Director, Global Channel Programs
Extreme Networks
Due to business impacts from COVID-19, Vianden adapted the company’s approach to partners. She created the Lending Enablement and Assistance Program (LEAP) in response to the crisis to support partners with preferential financial terms, postponed program requirements and free training options.
Lisa Citron
VP, Worldwide Channel Sales
F5 Networks
In 2020, Citron’s focus was on helping the channel organization and partners navigate through massive change by finding new ways of working and new routes to market. She has led efforts to pilot new programs that have provided a foundation for how to continue to improve the partner experience.
Maria Jacobson
Sr. Director, Channel Programs, Enablement
Fortinet
Jacobson launched the new Engage Partner Program, which includes new specializations and Solution Hubs to provide additional enablement resources focused on core initiatives. She has developed new marketing campaigns and invested in marketing-as-a-service for partners who need additional resources to expand their reach and drive demand.
Carolee Gearhart
Global Channel Chief, VP, Global SMB Sales
Google Cloud
Gearhart worked with partners to help customers quickly adapt and transform during changing conditions. She fully transitioned the partner marketing plans and infrastructure to all-digital, including a fully virtual Next conference. She also is leading a fully integrated launch with partners for a new, free Google Meet offer and launching Google Workspace in collaboration with partners.
Nina Parker Harding
Global Chief, Partner Program, Strategy
Google Cloud
Harding is leading the growth of Google Cloud’s worldwide ecosystem with Partner Advantage, designed for flexibility to partners’ desire to build their Google Cloud business. She is also collaborating with customers and partners to drive innovative new offerings and profitable incentives to the market.
Leslie Maher
VP, North America Partners, Inside Sales, SMB
Hewlett Packard Enterprise
Amid the pandemic, Maher spent time engaging with partners in one-on-one sessions and roundtables. She stayed closely connected with partners and understood their needs for business continuity and how to best support them in those critical early months of uncertainty.
Renee Pizarro
Director, North America Channel Development, Inside Sales
Hewlett Packard Enterprise
In the past year, Pizarro and her team built a portfolio of differentiated offerings focused on re-engaging dormant partners, accelerating partner development and recruiting new HPE partners. These efforts increased the HPE partner population by over 20 percent year over year and resulted in a record number of partner graduations across the program.
Joy Shanks
Financial Services Worldwide Head of Sales, Strategy
Hewlett Packard Enterprise
In response to the pandemic, Shanks reassessed roles within the channel team to provide the best partner experience. She worked closely with her team to set clear key performance indicators that included driving meaningful, purposeful engagements that were measurable. She also implemented an analytics-based go-to-market strategy.
Jas Sood
VP, GM Infrastructure, Services
Hewlett Packard Enterprise
Over the past year, Sood was tasked with growing HPE’s North America commercial and SLED sales business with a limited sales resource pool. She had built a go-to channel partner program five years ago that she expanded to include key SLED partners.
Cheri Wesinger
Director, Channel Marketing, North America
Hewlett Packard Enterprise
In the last year, Wesinger has become a stronger “partner-first” advocate by increasing partner executive sponsorships to learn more about partners’ marketing practices and thought leadership. Thanks to these external perspectives, she has been able to nurture conditions for greater mutual success.
Kimberly King
VP, Global Strategic Partners, Alliances
Hitachi Vantara
King has prioritized choice and flexibility within partner engagements and making it easier for partners to do business with Hitachi Vantara. Deliverables include investment funds and attractive incentives, accelerated deal pricing guidance, and automated deal approvals—all resulting in continued partner business growth.
Luciana Broggi
Head of Global Routes To Market
HP Inc.
In 2020, Broggi was instrumental in designing and implementing HP’s progressive new partner program, HP Amplify. Since launching in November, 99 percent of HP’s commercial revenue partners have opted into this collaborative program centered on the capabilities partners need to succeed today, including solutions for data, relationship-building, optimizing outcomes and sustainability.
Mary Coucher
VP, Partner Ecosystem Sales
IBM
Coucher remodeled the systems incentive structure for partners in every country, the first time it has been transformed in a decade. She successfully managed a very large revenue quota, growing the channel faster than the overall business. Coucher also grew a diverse sales team with excellent engagement results.
Christine MacLaughlin
Chief Marketing Officer, Partner Ecosystem
IBM
Leading the partner ecosystem marketing team, MacLaughlin focused on bringing enhanced benefits to partners, simplifying the user experience for partners, contemporizing the PartnerWorld brand and building the pipeline. One of her pandemic pivots was transforming the PartnerWorld conference into a digital event in under 60 days with 70-plus percent attendance year to year.
May Mitchell
SVP, Global Marketing
Iboss
The iboss SASE Cloud Platform is designed for partners who are looking to build a growing, profitable and predictable recurring revenue model. Mitchell launched the company’s partner program, which offers opportunity protection, training, tools and demand programs to drive new business growth and renewals.
Jennifer Anaya
SVP, Marketing, Global Technology Solutions
Ingram Micro
In addition to leading Global Technology Solutions marketing efforts, the 2020 virtual Ingram Micro One event was a huge undertaking and accomplishment. In record time, Anaya pivoted from an in-person event to a remote event featuring a follow-the-sun format with hundreds of speakers from around the world.
Susan O’Sullivan
VP, U.S. Sales
Ingram Micro
2020 was all about bringing calm and confidence to teams, partners and their customers. O’Sullivan made sure Ingram Micro’s people were safe and could do their jobs effectively remotely. Next, she reached out to partners—asking what they needed, how she could help and sharing experiences.
Sarah Good
NPSG, GM, Distribution Sales
Intel
2020 was about reimagining partner engagements to support virtual environments and identify and support new revenue growth opportunities. To achieve this, Good virtually hosted many partners for trainings, road map planning and events. As a result, she increased marketing investments and implemented flexible pricing that enabled partners to win.
Stephanie Hallford
GM, Business Client Platforms, VP, Client Computing Group
Intel
Hallford helped launch Intel’s 11th-generation Intel vPro platform that has advanced security and AI features. It’s meant for thin and light laptops, it’s highly mobile and is built with verified level of experience on battery life, system display and overall experience.
Irina ShamkovaEVP, Product Management
Intermedia Cloud Communications
Intermedia partners cannot be successful without an easy-to-use, deploy and maintain feature-rich product set to provide to their customers. This past year, in particular, proved that. It is up to Shamkova to make sure the product team understands this and challenges themselves to ensure this promise always holds true.
Kelly Nagel
President, GM, North America
Jabra
Nagel drove channel partners to embrace the new hybrid work strategy and worked together with them to ensure all their customers had the needed audio/video products necessary to adapt to the changing work-from-anywhere climate. This led to double-digit growth for Jabra and its partners.
Sara Valtin
VP, North America Channel Sales
KnowBe4
Valtin focused and aligned her team to both the company channel goals and her North America strategic vision amid the constant change and challenge of the pandemic. She made it a priority to increase communication and keep her team moving as fast as it could in the right direction.
Wendy Welch
Executive Director, U.S. Distribution, Partner Sales
Lenovo
Welch championed transparent communications throughout the unique challenges that presented themselves due to the pandemic. She supported her organization as it converted, overnight, from a field sales organization to 100 percent virtual channel account management. She never shied away from a difficult conversation to ensure everyone had the support they needed.
Jennifer Whaley
Director, North America Data Center Group Channel Programs
Lenovo
As the director of the North America Data Center Group channel team, Whaley has led the design of programs and promotions that have been well received by the partner community. Partners are seeing some of the highest rebates since the adoption of these programs.
Rachel Meuser
Head of NSP Channel
Logitech
For Meuser, it was incredibly difficult this past year to manage the channel as she has in the past. Her biggest accomplishment was to be able to grow the business and continue fostering relationships, while at home, without a single customer visit.
Alyssa Fitzpatrick
GM, Worldwide Partner Co-Sell
Microsoft
Fitzpatrick focused her attention this year on culture shift. During the pandemic, she directed the attention of sales leaders, sales managers and sellers toward a partner-inclusive approach through a drumbeat of learning, partner evangelism, enhanced sharing process with partners, performance tracking and celebrations of co-selling through awards programs.
Leslie Pickering
Sr. Director, U.S. One Commercial Partner
Microsoft
There were 243 new partner solutions launched in the market across Azure, business applications, modern work and security. There also were 114 industry-aligned solutions built for health care, financial services, manufacturing, retail, education, and state and local government customer use.
Sherlaender "Lani" Phillips
VP, U.S. Channel Sales, One Commercial Partner
Microsoft
Phillips has architected an operating model that is mainstreamed in the field sales organization. She is helping partners have a seamless co-sell engagement with the field sales team to accelerate progress with customers.
Lou Anne Reynolds
Director, Global Pathways Programs
NetApp
Reynolds updated the NetApp partner programs, focusing on four areas: simplify, expand, invest and differentiate.
Cathryn Valladares
VP, Enterprise Solutions
Nextiva
By focusing on the enterprise for Nextiva, Valladares has been able to set records with some of the top performers in the channel. She has been able to change the mindset of how partners do business and opened the door in the conversation about telecom.
Claudia Lee
VP, Worldwide Partner Marketing
Nutanix
Lee’s organization as part of the Nutanix channel business helped bring a modern, simplified new partner program to market last year, called Nutanix Elevate. This program provides a holistic competency-based framework to build the success of the partner ecosystem as the industry shifts to hybrid and multi-cloud solutions.
Cathy Timmerman
Director, Global Partner Programs, Strategy
Nvidia
Timmerman was responsible for the launch of three strategic programs in the partner ecosystem: Global Systems Integrator, Federal Systems Integrator and Data Center Provider Programs. She also made significant enhancements to the Regional CSP Partner Program.
Emma Carpenter
VP, Global Service Provider, MSSP
Palo Alto Networks
In 2020 Carpenter was responsible for redefining the Service Provider Americas team, integrating the team into the wider Americas organization and growing the business year over year.
Jennifer Bodell
SVP, Global Channel
Pax8
Bodell strategically vets and manage Pax8’s 170-plus channel events, including the Pax8 partner education and enablement events in North America and the U.K. She is a trusted adviser and advocate for partners and communities, gaining their feedback to uncover new solutions to improve, strengthen and grow their businesses.
Carola Cazenave
VP, Global Partner Ecosystem
Pegasystems
Cazenave designed the ecosystem strategy that will fuel the new Pega go-to-market, based on levers of growth, including accelerating sales effectiveness efforts, vastly improving delivery capabilities and assuming a partner-centric mentality.
Leslie Lorenco
Americas, Director, Channel Sales
Puppet
Lorenco revised the Americas’ go-to-market course and refined the distribution strategy. She also implemented a two-tier distribution process for Latin America and South America and rebuilt the North America channel team.
Elizabeth (Liz) King
Chief Revenue Officer
Quantum
Quantum is transforming itself into a SaaS and solutions company, and partners are vital to that success. For that reason, last year King created the role of—and hired—a global channel chief, James Mundle. Together, they have improved the Quantum Alliance partner program.
Terri Hall
VP, Global Partners, Alliances
Red Hat
In 2020, Hall prioritized and focused on delivering increased value to the partner ecosystem. Her team led multiple cross-functional workstreams to deliver a co-sell program with supporting metrics and tooling as well as a field sales incentive for direct sellers to drive proactive partner engagement and co-sell.
Lisa Del Real
VP, Strategic Partnerships, Avaya Cloud Office
RingCentral
After signing their partnership in October 2019, RingCentral and Avaya launched Avaya Cloud Office by RingCentral in February 2020. Bringing together two organizations of this magnitude involved countless stakeholders, and Del Real was primarily tasked with ensuring everyone involved was given due consideration throughout the process.
Michelle Pas
Director, Global Channel Marketing
RSA Security
Pas’ team migrated to one partner platform for all partner deliverables. The team executed a relevant, well attended, multiple partner webinar series, streamlined communication, created a social media schedule, and was recognized with 2020 Forrester/Sirius Decision Program of the Year award.
Wendy Bahr
Chief Commercial Officer
Rubrik
Over the past year at Rubrik, Bahr has continued to build strong alliances with NetApp, Microsoft and AWS. She has also seen tremendous success in the second year of the Velocity Partner program and Rubrik’s continued commitment to doing 100 percent of customer business through channel partners.
Sara Grofcsik
Sr. Director, U.S. Sales
Samsung Electronics America
Over the past year, Grofcsik has built a strong level of trust between partners and her team. The team built an ecosystem with partners to go to customers as one consultant, not as multiple companies. Her first priority is to make sure partners are successful and supported as best as possible.
Cathy Daum
SVP, Global Partner Organization, Go-To-Market, Scale Partners
SAP
Daum helped partners through the pandemic by driving projects to reduce the cost of partnering with SAP, improve their experience,and enable remote work. She also co-chaired and drove a COVID-19 task force to support partners. The result was that SAP indirect cloud average contract value grew by more than 40 percent.
Marlena Fernandez
VP, Marketing
Scale Computing
When the pandemic hit, Scale Computing quickly introduced a remote work offering, and Fernandez worked with partners to enable them to make this available to their customer base. This success led Scale Computing to change the way it works with partners to enable and assist them with their customers’ buying journey.
Shannon Sbar
VP, Channels, North America
Schneider Electric
Last year was challenging, and to ensure partners had the support they needed, Sbar and her team quickly pivoted and adapted the business’ strategies. She challenged her team to think differently and led several key initiatives to better support partners through the power of simplification.
Leslie Vitrano Hubright
Director, Global IT Channel Programs, Digital Experience
Schneider Electric
As the channel drives service practices, Vitrano Hubright enabled that growth through the management and services opportunity of edge computing. In 2020, she focused on expanding that opportunity into industrial edge through the collaboration across IT and OT channels. She also deployed a specific response plan to support partners through the pandemic.
Maureen Perrelli
SVP, Chief Channel Officer
Secureworks
With Perrelli’s leadership, Secureworks in 2020 launched its Global Partner Program and built out a global channel team. She also recruited over 200 partners, with 20-plus partners bringing multiple security deal wins to Secureworks. The channel organization is contributing growth in security software sales and the acquisition of new logos and customers.
Colleen Kapase
VP, Worldwide Partner, Alliances
Snowflake
Kapase’s team delivered some remarkable results amid a global pandemic while helping propel Snowflake into the public markets with a record-breaking IPO. Kapase launched the Snowflake Partner Network, including programs for services and technology partners is seeing phenomenal scale in the business.
Kendra Krause
SVP, Global Channels, Sales Operations
Sophos
As part of maintaining Sophos’ “channel-best” status, Krause oversaw a significant revamp of Sophos’ partner program this year. In efforts to streamline processes and rules of engagement, as well as provide added benefits for partners, the program was consolidated from 17 different programs to one foundational global partner program.
Erin Malone
SVP, Americas Sales
Sophos
Malone led several channel initiatives across the Americas, one being a sales reorganization, which created three new segments: SMB, midmarket and large enterprise. Other accomplishments included the Sophos Rapid Response launch and growth of MSP Connect. Her team also increased average sale sizes 6 percent year over year, providing greater customer protection.
Caralyn Stern
VP, Global Channel, Americas Marketing
Sophos
Over this past year, Stern helped launch Sophos’ enhanced Global Partner Program, which is aligned around Sophos’ next-generation technology and aims to streamline processes and also further support partners in how they want to sell and how their customers want to buy.
Michelle Kadlacek
VP, Enterprise Partner Program
Spectrum Enterprise
Kadlacek spent an extensive amount of time gathering direct feedback from partners in a focused effort to improve their experience. As a result, she helped launch a robust serviceability API and added support resources such as a Managed Services Specialist to assist partners with selling the company’s managed offerings.
Brooke Cunningham
Area VP, Global Partner Marketing, Experience
Splunk
Most recently, Cunningham helped create a virtual program for over 9,000 registered partners at .conf20 —the largest gathering of Splunk partners ever. She also helped launch an upgraded Splunk Marketing Hub for partners with new features and functionality to get them to leverage Splunk marketing assets and campaigns.
Michelle Accardi
President, Chief Revenue Officer
Star2Star Communications
Over the past year, Accardi prioritized changing her approach to company communications, partner outreach and facilitating successful customer experiences to accommodate a remote-work-based environment.
Jeannine Edwards
Sr. Director, Channel Marketing
StorageCraft
The shift to a remote and distributed workforce created an opportunity for StorageCraft to highlight one of OneXafe Solo’s differentiators for partners. Edwards worked cross-departmentally to create messaging that connected the dots between partners’ need to best serve the distributed workforce and OneXafe Solo’s ability to be configured remotely.
Willa Flemate
VP, Sales
Synnex
Flemate created an Integrated Solutions Advisory Board and each partner focuses on a different vertical market. This allows everyone to be very open and transparent and share best practices. She and her team have been able to add services to drive growth and success with these partners.
Reyna Thompson
SVP, Product Management, North America
Synnex
Thompson expanded investments in resources for new vendor recruitment, technology solutions development and channel enablement. She launched innovative offers specific to COVID-19 remote working, including Work-From-Home Readiness Assessments, Hands-Free Wi-Fi Installations and a robust seed/demo unit program to offset vendors that could not go into the field.
Tracy Holtz
Director, Security Solutions
Tech Data
Holtz and her team were responsible for customer enablement, sales and go-to-market campaigns for vendors’ products, services and solutions, playing a significant role in accelerating the security business. They also executed streamlining vendor sales operational processes and go-to-market coverage models, delivering a best-in-class customer experience.
Kaye McMillan
VP, Transformation, Americas
Tech Data
McMillan is responsible for directing, managing and coordinating strategic transformation activities on behalf of the Americas Executive Board. She provides leadership to a team responsible for various strategic initiatives under the Americas Transformation efforts.
Catherine Solazzo
SVP, Marketing
Tech Data
Solazzo has more than 16 years of demonstrated digital, routes to market and marketing expertise in the IT industry. In her current role at Tech Data she is focused on digital marketing, platforms, data and analytics and agency services.
Louise McEvoy
VP, U.S. Channel Sales
Trend Micro
McEvoy focused on working with three individuals who were building Trend Micro’s MSP, NCP and channel programs. These segments were growing and had huge potential—and so did the people running them. She was their “coach,” and two were promoted and a third moved into a visible role within sales.
Dangvy Keller
VP, Americas Alliance, Distribution Sales
Veeam Software
Despite all the challenges in 2020, Keller’s team worked effortlessly to establish the right alliance and distribution strategy and plan to support the overall business and all channel partners. This included making sure that Veeam has the right landscape, program and engine to accelerate the business and partnerships.
Wendy Taccetta
SVP, Global Leader, Commercial Operations, Channel Chief
Verizon Business Group
Taccetta led the curation of the team bringing together channel strategy, sales enablement, program management and operations functions across the entire company to better serve stakeholders. Verizon now has a single organization focused on a diverse partner ecosystem across all segments, all markets and all business.
Alison Webb
Sr. Director, Marketing
Vertiv
Webb launched a strategy to accelerate the channel business through partner recruitment. She designed a comprehensive partner recruitment strategy and exceeded annual targets to bring more channel partners into the Vertiv family. She also provided leadership to 10 channel marketers who executed programs to activate and engage current partners.
Mary Catherine Wilson
Sr. Director, Global Marketing
Virtustream, a Dell Technologies business
In her role, Wilson looked at how to engage channel partners to offer Virtustream offerings in joint marketing and go-to-market activities. She enabled partners with customer-facing material and expertise and joint demand generation.
Tara Fine
Canada Channel Chief
VMware
Over the past year, Fine spearheaded Canadian efforts to help partners navigate new challenges presented by the pandemic and led extended partner teams through the evolving Partner Connect Program. This was to ensure customers continued to drive success and digital transformation with the support of VMware.
Sandy Hogan
SVP, Worldwide Partner, Commercial Organization
VMware
In just over six months, Hogan successfully realigned the Partner and Commercial Organization to ensure that partners play an expanding, critical role in delivering customer-for-life value across the connected ecosystem. This has included an extensive cultural shift to embrace a VMware-wide “partner-first” mentality and position partners as VMware’s go to market.
Amber McGough
Sr. Director, Cloud Provider Sales MSP
VMware
In this past year, McGough doubled the MSP portfolio of services and scaled consumption across a range of managed service provider segments: asset-heavy and asset-light cloud providers, telco MSPs and systems integrator MSPs.
Tracy-Ann Palmer
VP, Partner Programs, Experience
VMware
Coming into a new organization, Palmer came in and hit the ground running. She was able to help form the strategy for the recent Customer Lifecycle Incentives launch. This offering plays an essential role in accelerating the cloud adoption for VMware and encompasses the value of creating customers for life.
Michelle Welch
SVP, Marketing, Channel
WatchGuard Technologies
Welch was instrumental in managing WatchGuard’s acquisition of Panda Security, and subsequent efforts to utilize a common, channel-centric go to market across both organizations and make the combined company’s complete portfolio available to all partners. She has continued to focus on driving innovation around the partner experience working with WatchGuard.
Laurie Mitchell
VP, Partner, International Marketing
Wasabi Technologies
With Mitchell’s leadership, Wasabi’s channel strategy starts with a “better together” story with technology alliances to add significant value for the channel. Wasabi partnered with 350-plus technologies, including leaders in backup and recovery like Veeam, and has made it easy for channels to add Wasabi as an affordable, simple cloud storage offering.
Sarah Morgan
Director, Channel Sales
Webroot+Carbonite, an OpenText Company
Morgan’s efforts leading the MSP team has resulted in massive growth within the MSP partner base. She has provided the MSP community with vital security offerings and tools to further grow their managed service offerings. She works tirelessly to bring partner enablement to all MSPs.
Charlene Fischer
VP, U.S. Channel Sales
Xerox
Fischer was successful in converting a field sales organization to one that effectively managed partner relationship through virtual means. She was able to find ways to stay connected with partners through a variety of avenues including enrichment webinars and remote marketing and sales strategy sessions.
Laura Padilla
Head of Global Business Development, Channel
Zoom Video Communications
With a focus on Zoom Phone, Padilla advocated for launching a master agent program and worked with top master agents globally to sign as partners. She also created an ISV partner program, which resulted in a new revenue stream for Zoom and enhanced offerings to partners.
Shannon Bodnar
Sr. Director, Global Partner Marketing
Zscaler
Bodnar is building a best-in-class partner marketing organization from the ground up at Zscaler. Bodnar joined Zscaler with the wonderful challenge of inheriting a white sheet of paper and a big list of goals for what partner marketing could be there.