As part of CRN’s Top 100 Executives Of 2024 list, we highlight 25 sales executives leading the channel charge.

With technologies such as AI and security becoming top priorities for many businesses, it’s up to vendors’ channel sales leaders to ensure they arm partners with the right offerings for their joint customers and the right resources to set up solution providers for success.

For our list of the Top 25 Channel Sales Leaders of 2024, CRN has chosen executives at channel-friendly tech vendors who are enabling partners to grow and profit from a variety of opportunities, whether those are in security, computing, storage, networking, enterprise software or infrastructure, among other areas.

With vendors tackling the AI opportunity from several different angles, these channel sales leaders are enhancing programs and deploying new resources to train, certify, enable and incentivize partners on selling, integrating and supporting technologies that will help them increase their sales and grow their margins.

These efforts are crucial as partners navigate a rapidly evolving tech landscape, requiring agile channel executives who can not only react to market shifts with new initiatives but also help create new markets by staying ahead of the curve. Their leadership ensures partners are equipped with the resources needed to thrive, no matter what comes next.

What follows is our list of the Top 25 Channel Sales Leaders of 2024, part of CRN’s Top 100 Executives Of 2024.

25. Prem Iyer

SVP, Global Ecosystems

Palo Alto Networks

With Palo Alto Networks leaning in with partners more than ever before during the past year, Iyer has been overseeing the introduction of enhancements for partners, including the expansion of the vendor’s channel team and the addition of new incentives in the company’s NextWave Partner Program.

24. Michelle Welch

CMO, SVP, Business Strategy

WatchGuard Technologies

As WatchGuard has looked to sharpen its focus on enabling MSPs with its unified cybersecurity platform, Welch has been helping to steer the company’s growth strategy with a focus on generating new opportunities for MSPs and other partners.

23. Kimberly King

SVP, Strategic Partners, Alliances

Hitachi Vantara

As the leader of Hitachi Vantara’s global strategic partners and alliances, King is helping partners embrace the company’s enterprise storage, AI and hybrid cloud strategy by equipping them with differentiated solutions and the resources to embrace a variety of business models, including as-a-service, managed services and co-creation.

22. Gordon Lord

VP, U.S. Channels Sales

Schneider Electric

One of the most respected channel leaders in the business, the 27-year Schneider Electric veteran is driving a new era of energy-efficient solutions sales growth for partners with software, services and sustainability. He recently led the charge on a new software and digital services program and has increased partner MDF.

21. Ken McCray

VP, U.S. Channel Sales

Fortinet

As Fortinet has grown beyond its core network security offerings to provide security operations and secure access service edge, McCray has been working with partners to help drive the growth strategy for the new product segments.

20. Stefanie Chiras

SVP, Partner Ecosystem Success

Red Hat

One of the few channel chiefs with a Ph.D., Chiras blends technical know-how with a deep understanding of partner economics to help the Red Hat ecosystem get what it needs to bring customers emerging technologies in AI, edge and other areas.

19. Frank Rauch

Global Channel Chief

Cato Networks

As Cato Networks has continued to build its profile as a secure access service edge innovator, Rauch has been on the front lines of helping partners to capture the opportunities around SASE. Recent moves such as Cato’s introduction of a SASE-managed endpoint protection platform have been touted by Rauch as major wins for the channel.

18. Steven Loeb

VP, Distributed Infrastructure Sales

Eaton

Loeb joined Eaton through its acquisition of former rival Tripp Lite in 2021, and he now leads North American channel sales with a focus on advancing the company’s infrastructure solutions, connectivity capabilities and partner education.

17. Gordon Mackintosh

SVP, Partner Organization, Commercial Sales

Juniper Networks

Mackintosh is taking Juniper Networks to new heights with AIOps managed services opportunities for partners. He has done a lot of heavy lifting to drive AI opportunities with the first AI-native networking platform. Under his leadership, partner-initiated sales were up 33 percent in 2023, and MSP partner designations were up 44 percent.

16. Ruba Borno

VP, Worldwide Channels, Alliances

Amazon Web Services

Borno has been the tip of the spear for AWS’ channel strategy for the past three years with a focus on increasing partner profitability and upskilling solution providers to drive AI sales. Borno’s partner strategy helped AWS achieve record revenue of $25 billion in the first quarter of 2024.

15. Jenni Flinders

SVP, Worldwide Partner Group

NetApp

As NetApp continues to draw on-premises and cloud-based storage together into a hybrid storage infrastructure powered by AI, Flinders ensures the company’s extensive channel partner community has the advanced tools and programs they need to help their customers navigate the intricacies of hybrid storage clouds.

14. Rodney Clark

SVP, Partnerships, SMB

Cisco Systems

Clark is putting in place the incentives to propel a new era of AI-driven sales growth. Key to that is getting partners to go deeper with the Cisco portfolio. To that point, Clark says, partners with more than two to three Cisco solutions are growing on average 12 percent faster.

13. Kevin Ichhpurani

Corporate VP, Head Of Global Ecosystem, Business Development

Google Cloud

Ichhpurani is elevating Google Cloud’s channel partner strategy, incentives and program at a rapid pace to drive AI and GenAI solution and services sales. In 2024, he increased some AI partner incentives by 10X for new customer wins.

12. Erica Volini

SVP, Global Partnerships

ServiceNow

In the year and a half since Volini took over as ServiceNow’s channel chief, she has revamped the company’s channel program and significantly simplified it to make it even easier for the company’s partners, already some of the most loyal partners in IT, be better able to take advantage of ServiceNow’s AI push.

11. Trevor Vickers

VP, GM, Global Partners, Support

Intel

Taking on the role of Intel’s global channel chief at the beginning of the year, Vickers has wasted no time in continuing to evolve the ways the semiconductor giant works with partners, whether that’s helping them build stickier relationships with customers through software or develop efficient AI solutions.

10. Craig Weinstein

VP, Americas Partner Organization

Nvidia

Weinstein has been at the forefront of developing programs to help Nvidia partners grow their business with the company’s expanding portfolio of chips, systems and software for generative AI and other accelerated computing workloads.

9. Nicole Dezen

Chief Partner Officer, Corporate VP, Global Partner Solutions

Microsoft

Dezen is at the helm of one of the largest, most diverse partner ecosystems in the channel and has led a variety of efforts to take Microsoft partners to the next level, from training resources to funds for standing up AI for their customers.

8. Kendra Krause

SVP, Global Channels, Small Business Sales

Sophos

Sophos is continuing its push to expand in the areas of managed detection and response and other key security services, with Krause working closely with MSPs and other partners to support the delivery of security services to customers with understaffed IT and security teams.

7. Rob Cato

VP, North America Channels

Lenovo

As Lenovo’s North America channel chief, Cato is seizing on opportunities in AI to help partners grow their business by enabling and incentivizing them to sell more offerings from the company’s broader portfolio, whether it’s PCs, servers, storage solutions or services, as part of the One Lenovo initiative.

6. Scott Mann

VP, Sales, Global Channel Chief

Scale Computing

Mann is one of the best at building deep, long-lasting, highly profitable relationships with partners and providing a go-to-market model to drive sales growth. He launched a highly successful rip-and-replace program to woo partners hit hard by VMware changes and also a global partner services network.

5. Kate Woolley

GM, Ecosystem

IBM

The face of IBM’s partner program has steered new investment into more resources for partners—including a new MSP program—to help customers get the most out of a wide-ranging portfolio from hybrid cloud to AI.

4. Phil Soper

North America Head Of Channel Sales

Hewlett Packard Enterprise

The 28-year channel sales veteran has established himself as one of the premier sales leaders in the business, pushing HPE to new heights in the GreenLake-as-a-Service business. HPE now has over $1 billion in GreenLake contracts through partners and has already reached its goal for partners selling five or more deals.

3. Christian Goffi

VP, Americas Channel Sales

Nutanix

Goffi is providing the hands-on leadership that is powering big channel gains for Nutanix. Partners credit Goffi for ensuring that the company’s disciplined channel model is enforced under any and all circumstances. Look for him to play a big role in driving new channel connections with Cisco and Dell.

2. Kobi Elbaz

SVP, GM, Global Channel, Sales Innovation, Operations

HP Inc.

With an expanded purview to lead HP Inc.’s global channel, sales innovation and operations teams, Elbaz is building out programs to help partners seize on new opportunities in AI, get business done faster and benefit from selling the company’s growing portfolio of PCs, printers, peripherals, software and services.

1. Denise Millard
Chief Partner Officer
Dell Technologies

Dell Technologies’ Millard has been traveling the globe and meeting with partners nonstop since being named to her new role as chief partner officer last October, on a mission to recruit the brightest partners for the AI era.

“Over the years we have seen and we have led some of the largest transformations together, but it pales in comparison to what lies ahead,” Millard told partners at Dell Technologies World. “In terms of picking the right partner, the stakes have never been greater. Today’s opportunities in AI, in edge, cloud and security are far too complex and too pervasive for any one of us to go it alone.”

Millard said her goal is to build trust and predictability with the channel.

“For those partners building meaningful AI capabilities, we’re giving you access to Dell-validated designs,” she said. “We’re giving you access to engineering to make sure those deployments are repeatable and scalable.”