2025 Channel Chiefs: The 50 Most Influential

In celebration of CRN’s 2025 Channel Chiefs, here’s a look at 50 leaders who drive the channel agenda and evangelize the importance of channel partnerships within the IT industry.

The Most Influential

The channel plays a critical role in the sales and go-to-market strategies for many IT vendors. While the channel’s traditional function of extending a company’s sales and distribution reach still holds true, channel partners today provide much more, from technical skills for IT implementation and support to deep expertise in vertical industries and business processes.

Channel chiefs are charged with maintaining IT companies’ relationships with partners and managing all-important channel programs. But some channel executives play an outsize role in channel leadership—not just within their companies but in the broader channel universe and the IT industry overall.

The 50 Most Influential Channel Chiefs of 2025 are an elite group drawn from the larger pool of channel chief honorees each year—leaders who drive the channel agenda and evangelize the importance of channel partnerships.

All channel chief honorees are selected by CRN’s editorial staff on the basis of their professional achievements, standing in the industry, dedication to the channel partner community and strategies for driving channel growth and innovation.

The complete 2025 CRN Channel Chiefs list is available online at CRN.com and featured in the February 2025 issue of CRN magazine.

The following snapshots include information from channel chief applications (including material in quotes), CRN news stories and other sources.

1Password

Lori Cornmesser

VP, Channel, Alliance Sales

Cornmesser joined 1Password in September 2024 and is the company’s first channel chief. She is responsible for leading the charge on the company’s channel and alliance strategy, building strong relationships with partners and driving significant growth of the company's advanced identity security solutions in the channel ecosystem.

Cornmesser previously worked at Deepwatch as senior vice president of worldwide channels and alliance sales. She says leading the Deepwatch team to an AWS Partner of the Year finalist was a major accomplishment in 2024.

Altogether Cornmesser has more than 28 years of experience in sales, business development and marketing, specializing in channel recruitment, development, and management. Prior to her two years at Deepwatch she served in channel management roles at CyCognito, Infoblox, Ixia, Juniper Networks and Riverstone Networks.

Amazon Web Services

Ruba Borno

VP, Worldwide Specialists, Partners

Borno leads the global specialist and partner organization for Amazon Web Services, focused on bringing together AWS and partner solutions to deliver the best business outcomes for customers.

Borno oversees the AWS specialists who provide customers with expertise on strategic services, segments and verticals. She is also responsible for ensuring that AWS customers benefit from the AWS Partner Network community, including those who provide innovative solutions through the AWS Marketplace and AWS Data Exchange.

Over the last year Borno has met with hun­dreds of partners across geographies and leaned into AWS’ startup partners. She was key to the launch of the Global Startup Program in 2019 and in September 2024 hosted the company’s first-ever Startup Partner Summit.

Borno has been in her current post at AWS for more than three years. Prior to joining AWS, she held several leadership positions over a six-year tenure with Cisco Systems, including serving as senior vice president and general manager of Cisco’s Global Customer Experience Centers where she led a team of 18,000 engineers to deliver Cisco’s full services portfolio of technical, professional and managed services.

Arctic Wolf

Bob Skelley

VP, Channel Strategy, Programs, Development

As vice president of global channel strategy at Arctic Wolf, Skelley leads the cybersecurity company’s expansion into new channel communities and efforts to develop new markets.

More recently Skelley has focused on developing new channel programs and communities in the cybersecurity insurance and incident response markets, providing partners with new profitability opportunities while delivering a vital service to their clients in the event of a cyberattack.

Skelley has more than 30 years of experience in sales leadership, business development, channel sales and marketing, and in building high-performance leadership teams.

Broadcom

Tara Fine

VP, Americas Partner Organization

Fine serves as vice president of Broadcom’s Americas Partner Organization, leading the Americas partner ecosystem and supporting customers across all segments in the region.

During the first year following Broadcom’s acquisition of VMware, Fine has focused on the inte­gration of the companies’ teams, emphasizing bidirectional learn­ing and collaboration and leveraging the best of the two organizations to ensure that Broadcom fully capitalized on the opportunity.

In addition to her primary responsibilities, Fine is passionate about her role as a leader on the Americas DEI Council, which is tasked with creating strategy and advising the executive leadership team.

Prior to her role as vice president, Fine served as the channel chief for VMware Canada, driving growth and transformation with Canadian customers through the partner community. Before joining VMware, she spent more than 19 years with Dell Technologies.

Cato Networks

Karl Soderlund

Global Channel Chief

Cybersecurity channel veteran Soderlund just assumed the top channel executive post at Cato Networks where he will be responsible for the SASE platform developer’s global partner strategy.

Soderlund is taking over the channel executive post being vacated by Frank Rauch, who announced in late January that he is retiring after a four-decade career.

Soderlund most recently served as senior vice president of worldwide partner and alliance sales at Zscaler from March 2023 to July 2024, where he was credited with rolling out numerous changes that enabled the cybersecurity vendor to rely more heavily on channel partners.

Before joining Zscaler, Soderlund held key channel roles at Palo Alto Networks for nearly six years, starting in 2017. He served as senior vice president of worldwide channel sales at the cybersecurity giant from 2018 until his departure in March 2023.

Cisco Systems

Rodney Clark

SVP, Partnerships, SMB

Clark joined Cisco Systems in late 2023. He and his team are responsible for empowering and enabling Cisco’s global ecosystem of partners, scaling and strengthening key routes to market such as managed services and cloud marketplaces, and supporting and growing the company’s small- and medium- business operations.

Since joining Cisco Clark has led what he describes as the company’s most transforma­tive partner initiative in 28 years to help create the new Cisco 360 Partner Program. The strategic endeavor included securing CEO, board and executive leadership support to redefine part­ner value, as well as recruiting key executives, restruc­turing global teams and engaging with strategic partners

Clark joined Cisco from Johnson Controls where he was chief commercial officer. During his time there, he was responsible for global sales, sales excellence, all aspects of marketing, channel engagement and a broad company transformation. Clark also previously spent nearly 25 years at Microsoft where he held various senior sales leadership positions including corporate vice president, channel sales and channel chief. Before that he spent nine years with IBM in strategy, sales, marketing, mergers and acquisitions, and digital transformation.

Cloudflare

Tom Evans

Chief Partner Officer

As Chief Partner Officer at Cloudflare Evans oversees the company’s partner ecosystem with a focus on global market expansion and driving partner revenue growth.

Since joining Cloudflare in April 2024, Evans has brought his transformative leadership style and strategic vision to build and empower a network of partners that is both innovative and growth-oriented. His expertise lies in crafting robust partner sales strategies, fostering alliances around emerging technologies, and creating ecosystems that provide competitive advantages.

Since joining Cloudflare, Evans has concen­trated on establishing a dedicated partner organi­zation designed to drive a partner-first strategy. His efforts have centered on creating a robust frame­work that enhances the partner experience.

Evans