Two Round 1 matchups are tied and another is narrowing as the 2026 Channel Madness Tournament of Chiefs heads into its final day of voting.
Two matchups are currently tied as we head into the final day of Round 1 voting in the 2026 Channel Madness Tournament of Chiefs. Let’s take a look at where things stand with less than 24 hours of voting left.
In the Acceleration region, Schneider Electric’s Gordon Lord and CrowdStrike’s Michael Rogers have been trading shots all day and are currently dead even at 50 percent each.
The same is true in the Evolution region where Coreo’s Michelle Ragusa-McBain has overcome a deficit and is currently tied with tournament rookie Landon Scott of Fortinet at 50 percent each.
Meanwhile, all eyes in the Innovation region are on 1Password’s Larissa Crandall to see if she can hold off Exabeam’s Craig Patterson. Crandall is leading with 59 percent to Patterson’s 41 percent, but Patterson has made up a lot of ground since yesterday when he was at 29 percent.
Here’s a look at the full results so far:
Transformation
Christine McElduff, Cloudflare, 73 percent vs. Nick Tidd, Zoom Communications, 27 percent
Scott Lannum, HP Inc., 54 percent vs. Michelle Welch, WatchGuard, 46 percent
Bob Skelley, Arctic Wolf, 55 percent vs. Nicole Dezen, Microsoft, 45 percent
Tara Fine, Broadcom, 40 percent vs. Jennifer Heard, Red Hat, 60 percent
Acceleration
Michael DePalma, OpenText, 64 percent vs. Craig Weinstein, Nvidia, 36 percent
Gordon Lord, Schneider Electric, 50 percent vs. Michael Rogers, CrowdStrike, 50 percent
Dan Tomaszewski, Kaseya, 54 percent vs. Tim Coogan, Cisco Systems, 46 percent
Lisa Citron, F5, 68 percent vs. Jeremiah Jenson, HPE, 32 percent
Innovation
Christian Goffi, Nutanix, 60 percent vs. Michael Park, ServiceNow, 402 percent
Gordon Mackintosh, Equinix, 32 percent vs. Denise Millard, Dell Technologies, 68 percent
Larissa Crandall, 1Password, 59 percent vs. Craig Patterson, Exabeam, 41 percent
Wade McFarland, Lenovo, 57 percent vs. Steve Loeb, Eaton, 43 percent
Evolution
Kevin Rooney, Veeam Software, 57 percent vs. Kendra Krause, ThreatDown, 43 percent
Michelle Ragusa-McBain, Corero, 50 percent vs. Landon Scott, Fortinet, 50 percent
Scott Barlow, Sophos, 78 percent vs. Hope Galley, Everpure, 22 percent
Brian Lanigan, SentinelOne, 54 percent vs. David Guzzi, Intel, 46 percent
Voting in Round 1 remains open until noon ET on Wednesday, March 18, so head to CRN.com/madness to cast your votes and choose your chief!
