The PKA CEO and CRN Lifetime Achievement Award honoree has spent decades building lasting customer relationships, adapting to technology’s biggest shifts and proving that success in the channel is about far more than selling products.
For Katz (pictured left with CRN Executive Editor Jennifer Follett), it was simply what you did when someone was counting on you.
“We took out servers from our demo room and brought them to customers who were underwater,” she told CRN. “That’s where you are able to show your value. That’s where you’re able to just make things happen. And people remember those things.”
For Ricky Liber, PKA’s vice president of operations who has worked with Katz for more than 31 years, the story captures the philosophy behind the company’s success.
“She didn’t just teach me how to do my job,” Liber told CRN. “She taught me how to take care of the people who do theirs.”
That approach has helped Katz steer PKA through decades of change, from its beginnings as a consulting business to its growth across infrastructure, storage, networking and other IT solutions. It has also earned her a reputation as a hands-on leader whose relationships extend well beyond her customers to employees, vendors, industry peers and even competitors.
Katz was honored with the Lifetime Achievement Award at CRN’s 2026 Best of The Channel Awards ceremony Tuesday night at Atlanta’s historic Fox Theatre. Those who have worked alongside her for decades say the honor reflects the careers she has shaped, the relationships she has forged and the example she has set for women in technology.
From Family Values To A Channel Business
Katz traces her approach to leadership to her parents, who immigrated to the United States from Germany and Austria with little more than the clothes on their backs. They rebuilt their lives from the ground up, instilling in their daughters a strong work ethic.
“They imbued in my sister and I a certain type of culture that I’ve tried to set at PKA,” Katz said.
She said three principles have stayed with her: lead with integrity, treat people as you want to be treated and give people opportunities they might not otherwise receive. Her father also emphasized operational excellence. Those values eventually became part of the Montvale, N.J.-based solution provider’s culture.
Katz’s path into technology was not a straight line. She worked in operations, sales and management across other businesses while her husband, Peter Katz, was building his reputation as a technologist. Together they saw an opportunity to start a solution provider business to serve midmarket customers they believed were being overlooked by larger IT providers.
“We were both end users. We were customers, and we did not like the way that we got treated,” she said. “We said, ‘We can do a much better job in the midmarket space,’ and that’s really what was the fuel behind starting the company.”
Peter initially ran the company while Felise focused on sales and marketing. But around 2000, their responsibilities switched, with Felise taking over as CEO.
“But I had a rule,” she said. “I never missed a school trip, and I had to be within driving distance of the dentist, the orthodontist, the pediatrician and everything else. My kids were my kids, and they still are. Everything had to balance out, and it did. It just came at the right time.”
Their son, Eli Katz, grew up watching both of his parents build the business. Now PKA’s director of cloud and consumption, he said that in a technology channel still largely dominated by men, his mother has earned a level of respect that reaches well beyond PKA’s own customers and partners.
“It’s really interesting to watch where most of the time it’s men sitting in the boardroom and men sitting around the table, and then my mother walks in and she commands the room,” he told CRN. “She walks into an event, and everyone walks over and says, ‘Oh, I have to go say hi to Felise.’ And it’s not just the vendors. It’s the competition, it’s our partners, it’s our fellow resellers who understand the value proposition that PKA brings because of the culture and the values she has grown and demonstrated in our organization. That has radiated out toward the industry.”
Relationships Are The Business
“I’m a listener,” Felise Katz said. “I listen to know what people have to say, and I try to bring those nuggets into myself and into the culture of the company.”
She has also learned from executives across the industry, watching how leaders handled pressure, spoke to people and navigated difficult decisions.
Frank Rauch, who has known Katz for about 25 years through his work as a channel executive at Hewlett Packard and later VMware, said she consistently understood the importance of balancing the needs of the customer, the vendor and PKA.
“She was proud of her brand. She was proud of PKA,” Rauch said. “They built something sustainable, not based just on customer loyalty, but on their ability to serve the customers. They understood what I was interested in, what HPE was interested in at that time, what our goals were and found that really good midpoint between what PKA needed, what the customer needed and what the vendor wanted.”
Brian Demay, former divisional vice president of IT at Coach, said the retailer had many vendor and VAR relationships over the years, but its relationship with PKA stood out as the company was more than just a partner, but a friend.
He credited PKA’s strong OEM relationships with helping drive operational success, but said the relationship ultimately reflected Katz’s leadership.
“Felise was the consummate business professional, and her technical teams were outstanding,” Demay told CRN in an email. “I look back on those years with a warm sense of nostalgia and gratitude to Felise and her team at PKA. It recognizes a career built on integrity, expertise and genuine care for your customers, and I can personally attest to all three.”
Katz said PKA has never tried to be everything to everyone. The company is selective about the vendors it works with and focuses on recommending products that actually fit what customers need. That approach, she said, is why relationships can last for decades, even when customers move to new companies. They have often brought PKA with them because the trust is already there.
“We have customers who have been with us almost since the inception of the company,” she said. “They may change jobs, they may change companies, but they take us along with them. That’s the breadth and the depth of the relationship.”
Terry Richardson, who met Katz after joining HP in 2010, said her commitment to customers, vendors and employees was evident from the beginning. She attended industry events, asked questions and was never reluctant to raise an issue when something needed attention.
“She was a very hands-on leader and would be involved in every important customer meeting,” Richardson told CRN. “She really led by example, and she set a pretty high bar for what commitment looks like.”
Evolving With The Technology
Katz understood that loyalty only goes so far in a fast-changing technology business. To keep earning that trust, PKA had to keep building new expertise as customer needs shifted.
One of the clearest examples was networking.
“We had no idea what it meant to have the backbone of a company or organization be on the networking side,” she said. “We got together as a leadership team and said, ‘How are we going to do this? How are we going to hire? Who are we going to bring in?’ And that’s how you evolve.”
Richardson remembers encouraging Katz to expand into networking and other areas that were becoming important to HP’s strategy. The move required her to invest outside PKA’s traditional strengths, but it eventually became a significant part of the business.
He recalled her thanking him years later for pushing her toward the opportunity.
“She said, ‘I’m so glad you pushed me to do that. That’s a big, thriving part of our business. So thank you,’” Richardson said. “She remembered it and wanted to acknowledge it. It was a little uncomfortable at the time because she wasn’t sure whether it was going to be a waste of time and money or whether it would lead to something. It proved to be really valuable.”
Eli Katz said PKA’s staying power reflects his mother’s willingness to take calculated risks without losing sight of the business fundamentals.
“We’ve never had a situation where we’ve had to lay people off. … Especially through COVID, going back to 2008 and all the different market dynamics, PKA stayed strong,” he said. “A lot of that was due to how she led the business, how we were able to sustain our market and how we took certain risks that paid off while also staying away from other ideas.”
Felise Katz said the willingness to adapt is necessary as the industry moves into cloud computing and AI.
“We’ve gone from infrastructure to now AI, and yet I have to keep the lights on,” she said. “I still have to sell hardware, software and services, and we’re in a whole new world. You have to keep adapting.”
Making Space For Women In The Channel
Liber said Katz’s influence went far beyond teaching her the mechanics of the job, lessons that continue to guide her as a manager.
“When I’m dealing with something as a manager, I ask myself, ‘What would Felise do?’” Liber said. “She gave me the tools and the confidence to become a leader myself.”
Rauch said Katz helped inspire other women to pursue executive roles and develop leadership styles of their own.
“A body of work is how many people you’ve influenced, how many careers you’ve grown, how you’ve affected the industry and how you’ve affected your gender in the industry,” he said.
Katz is still looking forward, embracing the challenge of figuring out what comes next for PKA and how the company can better serve customers in a rapidly changing industry.
And the principle that drove her to deliver a server to a customer after Hurricane Sandy remains as relevant as ever: When people are counting on you, show up.
Eli Katz said he is pleased his mother is receiving the Lifetime Achievement Award because he believes her influence on the channel deserves broader recognition.
“I think it’s due time for her to be recognized for the value she’s brought to the industry, to PKA, to our customers and to the outcomes we’ve enabled for them,” he said. “I’ve seen how other organizations operate, and I’ve seen how other CEOs lead. My mother leads with such class and exuberance and excitement and respect, and it really is a testament to the fact that without her at the helm, I don’t know where our business would be.
“When I think about the difference we’ve made, and the teams over the years under her stewardship and leadership, I think about what we’ve all accomplished together,” he added. “That really has impacted, dare I say, the world.”
