CRN handed out trophies in 15 categories to individuals, teams and companies, part of a months-long process that included two rounds of judging.
Hosted in the Egyptian Ballroom at Atlanta’s landmark Fox Theatre by CRN and parent The Channel Company, the event spotlighted the exceptional leaders helping shape the future of the IT channel.
Fifteen awards were presented throughout the night, recognizing standout individuals, teams and companies. The winners were determined in a months-long process featuring two rounds of judging and concluding with the 2026 Best of the Channel Awards Gala.
The celebration also featured the presentation of the Best of the Channel Lifetime Achievement Award.
CRN editors evaluated the initial round of entries and selected the finalists. For the final round, CRN’s editorial team was joined by IT channel industry judges to choose the winners.
Read on to meet the winners of the 2026 CRN Best of the Channel Awards.
Stacie Nadeau, Ingram Micro
Best Emerging Leader of the Year
The Best Emerging Leader of the Year award honors a promising up-and-comer in the channel who is on the path to channel greatness.
Stacie Nadeau, director of global strategic alliances at Ingram Micro, has helped drive the company’s market presence, advance its transformation narrative and elevate the distributor’s influence across partners, analysts and the broader IT channel. She led initiatives to develop a solution-focused strategy aligned to AI, cloud and cybersecurity, and she helped launch a ground-breaking digital experience platform, redefining how partners engage and transact with their company.
Nadeau accepted the award from CRN Senior Editor Kyle Alspach.
Brook Lee, Rev.io
Best Channel Achiever of the Year
The Best Channel Achiever of the Year award honors an individual for their exceptional performance, significant contributions and notable accomplishments throughout the past 12 months that were instrumental to the success of their channel-focused organization.
Brook Lee, senior director of community at Rev.io, built the company’s channel community function up from zero, including developing a role-based community platform with an online marketplace for MSPs, co-branded partner webinars, an MSP 101 company-wide training initiative, a mentorship program, a newsletter, and the company’s MSP podcast.
Lee accepted the award from CRN Senior Editor Joseph Kovar
Jim Keller, Quantiphi
Best Channel Visionary of the Year – Solution Provider
Celebrating a trailblazing executive with a fresh perspective, the Best Channel Visionary of the Year Award for a solution provider goes to a person who has shown an outstanding capacity to instigate channel evolution for their company and the channel at large.
Over the last 12 months the core mission for Jim Keller, global head of Amazon Web Services and Snowflake partnerships at Quantiphi, has been architecting an ecosystem-led growth model that’s capable of navigating the complex, rapidly shifting AI landscape. By positioning his company at the intersection of a unique “trifecta partnership” with AWS and Snowflake, he has led his organization to a market leadership position in the fast-growing “Data + AI” workload space.
Gordon Lord, Schneider Electric
Best Channel Visionary of the Year – Vendor/Distributor
The Best Channel Visionary of the Year, Vendor/Distributor, Award recognizes an executive who is anticipating trends and driving innovative change.
Gordon Lord, vice president of U.S. Channels, Schneider Electric, describes his job as “meeting partners where the market is heading,” and he is providing the programs, tools and support to win. In the last year his focus has been on building partner capability in software and AI by training and enabling more than 2,300 partners, and redesigning the partner experience around the core principles of simplicity, transparency and consistency.
Lord accepted the award from CRN’s Joseph Kovar.
Jon Groves, Logicalis US
Best Solution Provider CEO of the Year
The Best Solution Provider CEO of the Year is an award given to the top executive who is most deserving of recognition for achievements in driving a solution provider business over the past 12 months.
Jon Groves, CEO of Logicalis US, has focused on positioning the company as not just a technology provider, but as a strategic partner that helps clients navigate one of the most complex periods of IT transformation in decades, including AI acceleration, security risk, and infrastructure reinvention. Rather than chase every emerging trend, he has taken the approach of doubling down on core strengths while evolving them to meet modern demands and ensuring that every customer engagement starts with business objectives, not technology.
Groves accepted the award from CRN’s Kyle Alspach.
Wade McFarland, Lenovo
Best Channel Chief of the Year
The Best Channel Chief of the Year Award goes to the channel executive who is most deserving of recognition for achievements in the IT channel over the past 12 months as an all-around standout in channel acumen and leadership.
Wade McFarland, vice president, North America channel at Lenovo, has transformed their company’s channel strategy into a clear competitive advantage, reinforcing a partner-centric model with more than 90 percent of its global revenue driven through the channel. He has overseen the evolution of Lenovo’s channel framework into a comprehensive partner program that has been a resilient performance driver at a time of macroeconomic challenges.
TD Synnex
Best Channel Team of the Year
The Best Channel Team of the Year Award recognizes a group of channel management leaders from a technology vendor, distributor or marketplace for its efforts to help its channel ecosystem succeed.
This year’s winning team, TD Synnex, has elevated what IT distribution can deliver for the channel: not just providing access to products, but bringing specialized expertise, scalable platforms and future-focused capabilities together to help partners grow, adapt and lead. The company supports tens of thousands of partners with such innovative programs as PartnerLINK and PartnerFirst. And through its Destination AI market enablement program, the team helps partners monetize AI with technical guidance, enablement and outcome-driven market support.
TD Synnex accepted the award from CRN Executive Editor, News, Steven Burke.
GuidePoint Security
Best Solution Provider Team of the Year
The Best Solution Provider Team of the Year Award spotlights a group of company executives at an MSP, VAR, systems integrator, consultant or other type of solution provider for overall excellence in business leadership.
The winning team from GuidePoint Security is the senior leadership group that oversees all aspects of the fast-growing company’s operations. It has been most notably successful over the last year proving that high growth and strong culture can scale together. Through a sustained commitment to employee growth, workforce development, veteran hiring, scalable people practices and remote-first culture-building, the GuidePoint team has built an environment where employees from diverse backgrounds can grow, contribute and thrive.
GuidePoint accepted the award from CRN Executive Editor Jennifer Follett.
Zscaler
Best Channel Marketing Team of the Year
The Best Channel Marketing Team of the Year award goes to an outstanding group that’s responsible for marketing at a vendor or distributor that can quantify the generated demand and increased brand awareness they drove for their channel business and that of their solution provider partners.
This year’s winning channel marketing team, Zscaler, supports a nearly 3,500-partner-strong ecosystem on a worldwide basis. The 15-person team operates with discipline, leverage and an obsession with partner outcomes. Over the last year, the team’s accomplishments included scaling and accelerating partner demand-generation and raising the quality and consistency of partner storytelling—all with the goal of turning the Zscaler’s partner ecosystem into a force multiplier.
Zscaler accepted the award from CRN’s Steven Burke.
AHEAD
Best AI Solution Provider of the Year
The Best AI Solution Provider of the Year award recognizes an MSP, VAR, systems integrator, consultant or other solution provider business for overall excellence and technical acumen in delivering AI-focused solutions to end customers.
At a time when many businesses are still focused on AI proof-of-concept or pilot projects, AHEAD is helping clients move beyond experimentation and into production-scale AI that delivers measurable business value by designing, building and operating enterprise-grade AI systems that are secure, governed and tied directly to business outcomes. It also brings serious credibility to its AI services thanks to its own extensive use of AI.
AHEAD accepted the award from CRN’s Jennifer Follett.
Cyera
Best AI Vendor of the Year
The Best AI Vendor of the Year Award recognizes an IT manufacturer for overall excellence in channel leadership in delivering AI-focused offerings to market through indirect channels.
Cyera stands out for its combination of AI-driven innovation and a partner-first channel strategy that has delivered strong results over the past year. New and expanded product offerings position the company as a strategic platform for navigating data security, privacy and AI transformation, while giving partners new ways to lead high-value customer conversations. Equally important is the company’s channel momentum and execution, including formalizing and expanding its partner program and investing heavily in partner enablement.
Cyera accepted the award from CRN’s Steven Burke.
World Wide Technology
Best Security Solution Provider of the Year
The Best Security Solution Provider of the Year award is given to an MSP, VAR, systems integrator, consultant or other solution provider business for overall excellence and technical acumen in delivering IT security-focused solutions to end customers.
Earlier this year, World Wide Technology made what it describes as a defining move in AI security with the launch of its AI Readiness Model for Operations Resilience or “ARMOR.” This comprehensive, chip-to-cloud AI security framework, developed in collaboration with Nvidia, goes beyond point solutions to help customers confidently adopt AI while maintaining robust security, compliance and operational resilience. ARMOR is the embodiment of WWT’s philosophy of embedding security at every stage of AI adoption, and reflecting its broader posture as a security thought leader.
WWT accepted the award from CRN’s Jennifer Follett.
Arctic Wolf
Best Security Vendor of the Year
The Best Security Vendor of the Year Award recognizes an IT manufacturer for overall excellence in channel partnership in delivering security-focused offerings to market through the indirect channel.
For Arctic Wolf, this has been a year of ground-breaking innovation, consistent execution and measurable impact delivered through the channel—fundamentally advancing how partners bring AI-driven outcomes to market while continuing to scale a high-performing, global partner ecosystem.
Recent technology achievements include the launch of the company’s Aurora Superintelligence Platform and Aurora Agentic SOC.
It also added more than 1,000 new partners and expanded its investments in partner enablement and experience.
Arctic Wolf Vice President of Global Channel Strategy Bob Skelley (center) accepted the award from CRN’s Steven Burke and Jennifer Follett.
Quantiphi
Best Solution Provider of the Year
The Best Solution Provider of the Year Award celebrates an MSP, VAR, systems integrator, consultant or other type of solution provider for overall excellence in business and technology acumen.
Quantiphi is an AI- and digital transformation-focused company that excels in solving complex business problems through the convergence of artificial intelligence, data engineering, and cloud technologies. The company, which describes itself as an “AI-native service provider,” has redefined solution delivery with its pioneering “technology-enabled services-as-software” approach and its outcome-based pricing that aligns revenue directly with client value.
Quantiphi accepted the award from CRN’s Jennifer Follett and Steven Burke.
Halo
Best Vendor of the Year
The Best Vendor of the Year Award recognizes an IT manufacturer for overall excellence in channel partnership.
Halo has demonstrated exceptional commitment to its channel-first strategy, delivering sustained growth, innovation and measurable success for its global partner community. The company’s technical sales, onboarding, customer success and partner enablement teams work closely with partners to grow recurring revenue opportunities and ensure rapid time-to-value for customers. Notable achievements over the past 12 months include the company’s pioneering use of AI for service delivery, the launch of major enhancements to its PSA and ITSM platforms, and a significant expansion of its partner enablement program.
Halo accepted the award from CRN’s Steven Burke and Jennifer Follett.
Felise Katz, PKA Technologies
Lifetime Achievement Award
For nearly three decades, Felise Katz, co-founder and CEO of PKA Technologies, has built a career around a simple but powerful philosophy: Listen to your customers, understand what they truly need and always show up when they are counting on you.
She was honored with the Best of the Channel Lifetime Achievement Award for her role in evolving PKA Technologies into one of the industry’s most respected solution providers, with expertise spanning infrastructure, storage, networking, security, cloud and AI.
She is also a trailblazer for women in technology and the channel, opening doors, developing leaders and demonstrating that combining strength, empathy and an unwavering commitment to customers and community is a powerful formula for success.
Katz (left) accepted the award from CRN’s Jennifer Follett.
Congratulations to all the winners of the 2026 CRN Best of the Channel Awards!
