Woman of the Year - Vendor/Distributor

Michelle Welch

Chief Marketing Officer and Senior Vice President of Business Strategy

WatchGuard Technologies

Michelle Welch joined WatchGuard in 2015 and is responsible for shaping the company’s growth and transformation initiatives. She serves as the company’s chief marketing officer, responsible for the development and execution of WatchGuard’s global marketing strategy and channel operations team. As the senior vice president of business strategy, Michelle also leads critical, cross-functional initiatives focused on fueling operational excellence and company evolution.

Prior to WatchGuard, Michelle served as vice president of marketing at SafeNet, one of the largest information security companies in the world, where she worked to rebuild the company’s channel program and partner enablement platform. Michelle has also served in a variety of product, field, sales operations, and corporate marketing leadership roles and brings nearly 20 years of experience in security-focused B2B marketing to WatchGuard.

Michelle works tirelessly to enable WatchGuard’s partner ecosystem to deliver critical security protections for organizations battling increasingly sophisticated threats despite insufficient IT expertise, budgets, and skilled security staff. She and her team are key in supporting WatchGuard’s channel community and mission to make enterprise-grade security accessible to businesses of all types and sizes through simplicity.