Time To Choose Your Chief: 2023 CRN Channel Madness Voting Is Now Open!

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

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

The 2023 CRN Channel Madness Tournament of Chiefs kicked off on Thursday, March 16, 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 ninth annual tournament will make their way, round by round, through the bracket, moving closer and closer to the championship match.

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Scott Mann of Scale Computing, the 2022 Channel Madness Champion, is back to defend his crown. Also returning to the tournament are fan favorites like Cato Networks’ Frank Rauch, Veeam Software’s Kevin Rooney, and Intel’s Jason Kimrey.

There are also some tournament first-timers to watch, including Kaseya’s Dan Tomasewski, N-able’s David Weeks, Red Hat’s Stefanie Chiras and Palo Alto Networks’ Tom Evans.

Will you give your vote to an industry veteran who’s had your back? An up-and-cover 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.

Selected from CRN’s 2023 Channel Chiefs list, CRN editors selected the 32 participants, representing a variety of vendors across the technology industry. Each represents one of four technology “regions:” Cloud, Hardware, Infrastructure and Security.

Voting for Round 1 opened on Thursday, March 16 with 16 executive face-offs and will remain open until Wed., March 22 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 for a chance to win a new ThinkPad laptop provided by Lenovo.

Here’s a look at the 2023 CRN Channel Madness tournament match-ups.

Infrastructure

Dan Tomaszewski, Kaseya vs. Christian Goffi, Nutanix

Oliver Tuszik, Cisco Systems vs. Shannon Sbar, Schneider Electric

David Weeks, N-able vs. Jenni Flinders, NetApp

Steve Loeb, Eaton vs. Phil Soper, Hewlett Packard Enterprise

Hardware

Scott Mann, Scale Computing vs. Rola Dagher, Dell Technologies

Scott Lannum, HP Inc. vs. Kimberly King, Hitachi Vantara

Donna Grothjan, Aruba, a Hewlett Packard Enterprise company vs. Jason Kimrey, Intel

James Robbins, Dynabook Americas vs. Rob Cato, Lenovo

Cloud

Ruba Borno, Amazon Web Services vs. Kevin Rooney, Veeam Software

Kevin Ichhpurani, Google Cloud vs. Stefanie Chiras, Red Hat

Jonathan McCormick, Intermedia vs. Nina Harding, Microsoft

Kate Woolley, IBM vs. Ricky Cooper, VMware

Security

Michael Rogers, CrowdStrike vs. Bob Skelley, Arctic Wolf

Frank Rauch, Cato Networks vs. Michelle Welch, WatchGuard Technologies

Lori Cornmesser, Deepwatch vs. Ken Marks, SentinelOne

Tom Evans, Palo Alto Networks vs. Kendra Krause, Sophos

So, Channel Madness fans, prepare to choose your chief!