2023 Next-Gen Solution Provider Leaders
For the fourth year we present CRN’s Next-Gen Solution Provider Leaders list, recognizing today’s up-and-coming solution provider executives, directors and managers who are poised to be tomorrow’s channel leaders.
The New Generation
Innovation is the lifeblood of the IT industry. Not just in the technology itself, but also in how to best bring that IT to businesses and utilize it to its maximum potential. For the IT channel, that requires people with new ideas, new talents and new life experiences—as well as the drive and the passion—to develop and deliver leading-edge IT solutions.
For the fourth year we present CRN’s Next-Gen Solution Provider Leaders, highlighting the rising solution provider executives, directors and managers who are poised to be tomorrow’s leaders.
The list recognizes solution provider employees 40 years of age or younger who have made significant contributions to their company’s strategic direction and driving growth in the channel during the past year.
The list includes people who have followed very different career trajectories, from those who have started their own solution provider business to people who began as interns where they work today and have risen to influential positions. There are people who have been in the IT industry (and even the IT channel) since the start of their professional careers while others have come from other industries (and even some with non-business backgrounds such as the military), bringing with them their unique experiences, expertise and insight.
The contributions of these next-generation leaders have been all the more important in 2023, a year marked by economic uncertainty and the ever-accelerating pace of technological change—the wave of AI development racing through the IT industry being the most visible example.
With their passions and new approaches to problem-solving, the people on this list—and many others like them—are helping solution providers thrive in these turbulent times.
Here’s a look at 64 rising stars in the channel, including a brief overview of what they see as some of their biggest accomplishments and most innovative ideas over the past year.
(by last name)
Kim Abrams
Director, Inside Sales
Davenport Group
Abrams supported Davenport Group’s sales organization through a time of rapid growth. She developed an on-boarding program for hiring and training new team members, helping them quickly enter their roles and have an immediate impact. She also staffed a new inside account manager team to support the solution provider’s growing territories and helped the operations team design new internal tools for the sales team.
Abhijeet Baneka
Director, Client Services, Enterprise Cloud Apps Salesforce
Jade Global
Baneka leads Jade Global’s Salesforce practice, working with sales, marketing and support teams within customer accounts. Recently promoted to global Salesforce practice head, he grew the Salesforce operations from 180 to 270 employees in fiscal 2023 and achieved the year’s $11.5 million target. He also launched the Center for Excellence for Salesforce for building industry-focused solutions and proposals.
Dave Blake
Director, Process, Integration, M&A
Convergence Networks
Blake joined Convergence Networks in August 2022 through its acquisition of SWAT Systems. Post-acquisition, he assumed a leadership role in integrating and streamlining critical business systems and processes and designed an M&A process for future acquisitions. He also assembled a business intelligence department and conducted quality control reviews of multiple departments to improve operational efficiency and service quality.
Alex Boots
Director, Business Development
Sequentur
Boots helped position Sequentur as a trusted next-generation solution provider in the Midwest, in under two years generating more than $700 million in annual recurring revenue and new sales over $3 million in the Columbus, Ohio, market. His sales efforts have strengthened Sequentur’s Microsoft Gold Partner standing, and he created a lead-generation process through customer visit “pop-ins.”
BJ Bradley
VP, Engineering Services
Davenport Group
Bradley has played a pivotal role in expanding Davenport Group’s solution provider offerings, including building an end-user computing practice and refining its approach to the security market. He also led the development of Davenport Group’s fast-growing managed services practice and, through engineering team certifications, solidified the company’s leadership position in Dell Technologies’ midmarket storage solutions.
Holly Brooks
Director, PMO
CDI
Brooks joined CDI as an intern through her LSU MBA program and has quickly risen in the company, in less than three years becoming the youngest and only female director within the Modern IT Operations division. She set up and led the Project Management Office division, including all processes and standards, streamlined customer on-boarding and improved revenue recognition.
Becca Campbell
Regional Director, Managed Services
Logically
Campbell has worked at Logically for 10 years, primarily in service delivery roles including direct management of service delivery coordinators. During her time as Service Quality Director she transformed the organization to improve customer satisfaction and exceed service quality targets. Recently she was named Regional Director of Managed Services for the East Managed Services Team.
Chuck Canton
Founder, CEO
Sourcepass
After working in roles at iCore Networks, Vonage and Compass, Canton launched Sourcepass in 2020,including raising $135 million in funding, with the goal of democratizing IT services and providing businesses of all sizes with equal access to competitive technology. Under his leadership, Sourcepass has grown to more than 500 employees and completed nine acquisitions.
Scott Church
Director, Client Experience
Insight Enterprises
With his 11 years at Insight Enterprises, Church has leveraged his unique combination of military and business education (U.S. Military Academy at West Point, University of Texas MBA) and experience. He has played a leadership role in the company’s Client Experience practice, including the development of the solution provider’s Client First initiative.
Jessica Colatosti
Cisco Practice Team Lead
Insight Canada
Colatosti has worked at Insight Canada for seven years and been promoted several times. She is currently the team leader of the Cisco practice, an operation she built from the ground up, and is responsible for process execution and evaluation, workload leveling, strategic implementation of improved processes and building customer relationships.
Brandon Cole
VP, Sales
Davenport Group
Cole leads Davenport Group’s sales organization, leveraging his 17 years of IT business experience to develop and execute the company’s sales and marketing strategy and working with vendors and customers to improve the customer experience. He recently expanded the sales organization, hiring new directors and account executives, and improved alignment between the inside and field sales teams.
Paul Cooke
Director Sales
ANM
Cooke’s track record and leadership skills led to his promotion two years ago to sales director of ANM’s Colorado and Wyoming division. There he has played a key role in formulating and executing regional sales strategies and driving annual sales increases of greater than 20 percent. He also has assisted in growing ANM’s cybersecurity and data center divisions and fostering new partnerships with numerous OEMs.
Mauro Cretari
Automation Freak
CIO Landing
Cretari leverages his deep IT knowledge—especially in computer operating systems—and his love of automation by finding and investigating new tools and processes that simplify manual procedures and operations for all departments within CIO Landing. This year he introduced automation tools for accounting department billing reconciliation and help desk support ticket operations. He also launched CIO Landing’s first franchise branch in Miami.
Shane Cronin
RVP, Sales
SoftwareOne
Cronin has held multiple posts through his dozen years with SoftwareOne and currently manages the company’s sales efforts in the North America East Coast region and in the state, local and education market. He has helped drive the company’s efforts to leverage data and analytics for sales and played a key role in implementing a CRM system redesign.
Ana Curreya
Director, Field, Channel Marketing
DigitalEra Group
Cybersecurity industry veteran Curreya has been with DigitalEra Group since 2018 and currently serves as director of field and channel marketing. In the past year she has focused on executing multiple collaborative programs with partners and developing customer and end-user events to improve customer satisfaction and retention, generate leads and boost revenue.
Khaled Daher
Account Executive
Denali Advanced Integration
Daher has been with Denali Advanced Integration since 2016 and counts among his achievements his vital role in the company’s expansion into Europe and the establishment of sales operations there. More recently he helped build a global sales team to bring Denali’s services to Fortune 100 clients. This year he also spearheaded an effort to bolster Denali’s global professional service offerings.
Dustin Edwards
Director, Infrastructure Services
Davenport Group
Edwards joined Davenport Group in 2013 and today leads a team of engineers working to meet customers’ technology needs. A major focus over the past year has been expanding the team’s technical knowledge and skills around the entire Dell Technologies portfolio, including obtaining PowerStore certifications and strengthening relationships with the Dell support team.
Zack Finstad
Director, Cybersecurity Operations
Logically
Finstad led a strategic sales training initiative in 2023, identifying sales team training needs and developing comprehensive content around Logically’s cybersecurity products and services. That significantly improved the sales team’s proficiency in selling to core managed services customers and fostered cross-team support engagements between managed services and cybersecurity operations.
Nelly Gage
VP, Partner Marketing
Trace3
Gage has expanded Trace3’s partner marketing program and taken the solution provider’s relationships with strategic manufacturer partners to the next level. Manufacturer funding for the program has more than doubled in the last year. Gage also launched the Sharpen Your Edge virtual enablement training platform that vendor partners use to educate Trace3 sellers and engineers on their latest product innovations and features.
JR Garcia
Solutions Engineering Director
ANM
During the past year, Garcia has played a key role in the development of a suite of customer-facing technical workshops that ANM engineers use to provide customers with insight and actionable recommendations on industry trends such as zero trust and ransomware recovery. He also developed an internal certification program in these areas for ANM presales engineers.
Salim Gheewalla
VP, Marketing, Alliances
Calian IT & Cyber Solutions
Gheewalla oversees the integration of products and services provided by Calian IT & Cyber Solutions’ vendor partners and develops go-to-market strategies around those solutions. In the past year, he incorporated hundreds of products and services from four business units under one umbrella and built an accessible, foundational product suite architecture that sellers across all of the company’s business units can resell.
Jen (Locsey) Hansberry
Director, Sales, Acquisition
Insight Enterprises
Hansberry has 14-plus years of experience in managing customer accounts and developing account executives. During the past year, she helped build an acquisition sales team from scratch, including implementing a new-hire training program for college graduates and individuals with less than two years of corporate world experience.
Kelly Harris
VP, Marketing, Partner Programs
ID Technologies
Harris built ID Technologies’ partner marketing program from scratch and manages relationships with 80-plus vendor partners, including collecting some $5 million annually in MDF. In the past year, she automated partner on-boarding requests and partner evaluation workflows and created a vendor data repository of ID Technologies’ partner tiers, certifications, MDF programs, discount structures and key contacts.
Tom Hearn
VP, Architecture
Insight Enterprises
Hearn leads Insight Enterprises’ Field and Architecture Team, which helps customers navigate increasingly complex cloud, hybrid data center, automation, security and containerization environments. Over the past year, Hearn, a passionate developer at heart, has focused on modernizing and adapting his team’s skill sets to effectively solve customers’ IT challenges and support their rapidly changing business needs.
Bryan Heraty
Director, Operations
Insight Enterprises
Heraty’s many roles in his 16 years at Insight Enterprises (including positions in sales, project management, partner management, quality, production scheduling and more) serve him well in his current job overseeing all North American integration services. In the past year, he has championed the company’s expanded sustainability efforts, including new sustainability centers that help customers reduce their carbon footprint.
Brian Hill
President
Imperium Data
Hill manages Imperium Data’s key manufacturer relationships, working to set goals and jointly create business plans. He also led the rollout of the company’s Wi-Fi-as-a-Service offering in conjunction with Juniper Networks that includes planning, installing, monitoring and management of wireless connectivity.
Bryan Hoffman
VP, Growth
Blackwood Associates
In building out Blackwood Associates’ growth division, Hoffman evolved what previously was siloed into a cross-functional business. The company’s ability to develop and deploy resources across demand generation, sales, engineering and customer experience to deliver outcome-based value helps separate it from the pack.
Laleh Honar
Director, Partnerships
GTS Technology Solutions
Honar has forged close relationships with GTS’ technology partners, working together to craft a solid go-to-market strategy, particularly as the company seeks to diversify its portfolio to bring in strategic offerings. She prides herself on the creativity her team shows in its innovative marketing programs.
Kurt Huegin
VP, Sales, Marketing
ANM
Huegin’s game plan helped drive double-digit growth across all regions for ANM in 2022, supported by the adoption of new data center and security selling motions as well as new compensation models. He also hired and built out a proposals team and helped recruit top leadership and sales talent.
Antwine Jackson
President
Enitech
Under Jackson’s leadership, Enitech has adopted automation and AI throughout its delivery stack as well as its security stack, where the company has added penetration testing as a service. These innovations and expanded offerings helped drive new client acquisition and grow revenue.
Brandon Johnson
Director, Operations, Logistics, North America
Insight Enterprises
Johnson made a splash at Insight Enterprises by implementing goods-to-person automation technology that increased efficiencies by 30 percent, totaling a savings of over $1 million annually. He’s been laser-focused on how the company captures and utilizes data to help it optimize for growth.
Michael Johnson
Director, SAP Solutions
American Digital Solutions
As the thought leader of American Digital’s SAP practice, Johnson kept ahead of changing trends such as cloud and AI, expanded a strategic partnership with Microsoft Azure, grew the solution provider’s SAP managed services clients by 35 percent and increased recurring revenue by approximately 20 percent.
Ledda Kerr
Director, Partner Management, Alliances
Insight Enterprises
Kerr oversees over 100 key partnerships, building out strategic brand management, driving growth targets and drawing connections throughout the ecosystem. One campaign she led aimed to position Insight Enterprises as an expert in the device market and served as a foundation for its Modern Workplace Solutions Day event.
Blake Kerwood
Network Security Manager
Logically
A U.S. Air Force veteran, Kerwood played a pivotal role in improving performance markers by coordinating manpower across Logically’s internal technical teams. He also reworked a monthly employee reward program within his division to celebrate top performers and help retain critical technical talent.
Shawn Kitzmiller
RVP, Sales
SoftwareOne
Kitzmiller helped develop a go-to-market transformation while adjusting SoftwareOne’s operating model in Canada. As a result, the company grew its Central and Canadian markets by 30 percent year over year. He also drove the development of a new approach to how customers buy and manage their software estates.
Josiv Krstinovski
Founder, CEO
KRS IT Consulting
Krstinovski has built a business that prides itself on its security focus and its quick response times. That’s why he’s put so much focus on building up the company’s cybersecurity stack and partnered with a third-party firm to perform audits of its own and its customers’ networks.
Kailynn Lambert
VP, Operations
Davenport Group
Lambert’s work to create a new quoting tool and a customer purchasing portal helped Davenport Group strengthen relationships with customers and grow its business. The optimizations she introduced internally also saved time, cut down on redundant work and lessened burnout.
Paul Mansur
CEO
NXT GEN Technologies
Mansur’s philosophy is to keep IT simple to use and manage, all while ensuring industry best practices are in place. He gives his senior leaders autonomy to run their departments and help grow the organization. With everyone driving toward the same mission, the company grew 60 percent year over year.
Aaron Martin
Director, Security Engineering
High Wire Networks
Martin has taken High Wire’s desire to automate to heart, playing a lead role in rolling out a Security Orchestration And Response (SOAR) platform that enabled the company to become entirely U.S.-based in its Security Operations Center and reducedticket volumes. The processes he developed eliminated 99 percent of false positives.
Rachel Mason
Director, Solutions Marketing
Insight Enterprises
Mason oversaw go-to-market plans for over 20 services launches over the last year, managed two technical enablement summits and played a key role in developing Insight Enterprises’ verticalization strategy. Her efforts helped drive an over 60 percent increase in cloud consumption and an over 40 percent increase in security partner revenue year over year.
Bill Nickley
Director, Services Sales
Insight Enterprises
As Insight Enterprises pushed itself to evolve from a traditional VAR to a solutions-focused integrator that delivers business outcomes, Nickley has played a lead role in changing how customers view the company by getting his team to talk more about business impact and user needs than technology.
Cara Parfitt
VP, Technology Alliances
Logically
Parfitt rolled out a focused framework Logically now uses to go to market with its strategic technology partners, implementing action plans for field sales alignment, marketing and engineering that have led to pipeline growth as well as improved returns on MDF utilization.
Rob Parsons
Director, Infrastructure Portfolio
Insight Enterprises
With a team that nearly doubled in size, Parsons is playing a key role building out innovative solutions and positioning Insight Enterprises as a thought leader in modern data center platforms and digital transformation. Advances he drove in in automation have helped solve customer problems faster.
MJ Patent
VP, Marketing
Logically
When Patent joined Logically in November 2022, she introduced a comprehensive service portfolio management approach that has helped better differentiate the company’s value proposition as an MSSP while boosting its brand clarity and resonance in the marketplace.
Manthan Pawar
Group Product Manager, Robotics, AI
Barcodes
It took Pawar less than seven months to build a robust eight-figure robotics pipeline with 70-plus enterprise customers for Barcodes once he built out exclusive AI-driven multivendor solutions from key OEM partners. That includes his critical collaborative efforts to integrate the solutions with ERP platforms and warehouse management systems.
Daron Plummer
CEO
BizTek Connection
With a restructuring now behind him that revamped BizTek’s services team to better deliver IT management services and solutions, Plummer has streamlined staff training and ushered in innovative solutions to customers, relying on his strong personal connections to foster new long-term business relationships.
George Redfearn
Director, Operations
Insight Enterprises
Redfearn’s biggest recent win was the establishment of Insight Enterprises’ automated Client Fulfillment Center, which he supported by driving vendor negotiations and building a team of subject matter experts to optimize processes, automate tasks and identify ways to save costs.
David Schwartz
SVP, Channels
Dataprise
Schwartz launched a channel program at Dataprise, an MSP with 300 certified engineers, IT support staff and subject matter experts, and also expanded the channel program at Wireless Watchdogs, a Dataprise Company. He created a dedicated channel team and streamlined process to bring the companies’ managed services to partners.
Volodymyr Shevchyk
CEO
Indeema Software
IoT consulting firm Indeema Software has built up a portfolio of complex IoT projects and strong alliances, including one project funded by the United Nations. The company also obtained ISO certifications at Shevchyk’s urging, which he sees as essential to delivering high-level services.
Elena Shorb
VP, Channels, Alliances
Mission Cloud
Shorb turned heads by launching Mission Cloud’s AWS Marketplace business, which generated over 35 new customers for the company in 2023. She also built an organization of dedicated AWS segment channel managers and added generative AI marketplace offers that have helped accelerate the company’s data business.
Sara Siddiqui
Director, Partner Strategy
Red River
Siddiqui’s efforts to add emerging technologies helped grow Red River’s OEM business, increasing the company’s revenue by more than 60 percent. She also teamed closely with technology partners by participating in advisory boards and negotiated incentives that led to the creation of a specialized sales engineering team.
Mark Sokolowski
VP, Sales
Sierra Experts
Sokolowski landed several key customers, including some that are now among the company’s top five monthly managed accounts. He also uncovered new security tools that have been added to Sierra Experts’ stack, leading to decreases in downtime and less information being exposed to risk.
Carolyn Southern
Business Applications Director
RSM US
Southern is frequently labeled as a “game-changer” at RSM US for the role she plays in leveraging Oracle NetSuite to deliver digital transformation services, SaaS and professional services to a wide range of clients. She also leads a chapter of the company’s employee network group focused on advancing women.
Bill Tennant
CRO
BlueCloud
Tennant has nurtured an opportunity-focused culture at BlueCloud that has driven effective partnerships and customer retention. Over the past year, he has helped grow the sales team by over 200 percent, add 60 new customers and expand partnerships with leading cloud providers.
Lauren Toler
Director, Customer Care
Logically
Toler reshaped the responsibilities of a team focused on service quality to ensure the company is hitting the highest marks in its daily interactions and increased Logically’s SLA response rate by 6 percent over 12 months. She also redesigned a customer satisfaction response program and spearheaded a customer profitability initiative.
Steven Tyler
Director, Commercial Sales
Insight Enterprises
Tyler played a key role in Insight Enterprises’ Integrated Technology Roadmap Project, described as a massive effort focused on changing all of the company’s mission-critical applications. He also put a lot of focus on leadership development in areas like communication, collaboration and decision-making among managers closest to customers.
Eric Valero
Director, Cloud Engineering
Zivaro
Valero replaced old operations support systems with cloud-based automated delivery mechanisms, enabling Zivaro to reconfigure and modify systems at scale. One of his crowning achievements was leading architecture and delivery to integrate 63 AWS accounts with a federally owned identity provider, all within the prescribed timeline.
Joe Venero
Director, Corporate Strategy
Future Tech
Venero created strategic initiatives to diversify Future Tech offers into new service lines, open new depots and attract new talent. He also enhanced the company’s global delivery model, streamlining processes in over 30 countries and enabling Future Tech to deliver globally in-country on time.
Victor Wieczorek
VP, AppSec, Threat, Attack Simulation
GuidePoint Security
Wieczorek introduced vendor-agnostic penetration testing as well as breach and attack simulation services in a way that blended manual expertise with vendor technologies. He also tailored security assessment findings to recommend solutions to customers, an approach that drove 35 percent year-over-year growth in his practice.
Kristy Wilke
Director, Outside Sales
Davenport Group
Wilke put a lot of focus over the past year on strengthening Davenport Group’s ties to Dell Technologies, including guiding account executives to build relationships with Dell representatives and Davenport customers, mentoring the team on sales strategies and collaborating with Dell sales leadership.
Jeremy Williams
Chief of Staff
Logically
Integration and standardization were the name of the game for Williams over the past year as he led a migration to a standard documentation platform, implemented a standardized monthly client service report and standardized the inventory tracking of clients’ infrastructure.
David Wright
Founder, CEO
Disruptive Innovations
Wright recognized the sizable prospects his company had ahead of it in the health-care and financial services verticals and took steps to optimize a scalable consulting model to catch those opportunities. He hosts the “Disruptive Innovators” podcast, in which he interviews people from around the world, and the company welcomed 60 CIOs to its first event last December.
Chris Zadrima
Managing Director, Managed Services
Align
A revamp of Align’s three main cybersecurity solutions spearheaded by Zadrima led to a doubling of recurring cybersecurity revenue by year’s end. At the same time, his establishment of a dedicated team, the introduction of new vendors and the implementation of scalable processes all helped reduce client risk.
Joe Zinna
VP, Sales, U.S. East
Comport Consulting
Zinna’s tactics for focusing on select partners, jointly defining go-to-market strategies, hosting local “micro” events and driving executive-level relationships were among the reasons Comport saw greater sales execution with OEMs across the board. He also helped streamline the company’s value proposition and got his team all delivering the same message.