Channel Development Advisory Council

Kim Cesena

Global Director of Channel Marketing, DropBox

Kim is a channel veteran with channel roles in small business up to enterprise. In the 22+ years in channel, Kim developed go-to-market- strategies, enablement and acquisition plans leading to growth in the channel. Currently, Kim is Senior Global Director of Channel Marketing for Dropbox driving new growth in the channel worldwide.

Prior to Dropbox,  Kim worked at Intermedia where she built their channel first partner program and developed their blueprint for channel marketing.  She also has worked at HP, Cisco and a number of software companies of all sizes. She graduated from the University of California, Berkeley, with a degree in economics and social sciences. She was an active member of the AIESEC organization and still finds time to mentor college students.

In her spare time, Kim spends time with family and friends, travel and loves soccer where she has coached, played and continues to be a student of the game.

Ray Orsini

CEO, OIT, LLC

Experienced Chief Executive Officer of OITVOIP with a demonstrated history of working in the telecommunications industry. Champion for the MSP community, Moderator of the MSP Subreddit (r/msp) with over 114k members, featured speaker on process and procedure and Expert at generating sticky VoIP revenue for IT professionals. Strong business development professional with a Masters of Engineering focused in Computer Systems Networking and Telecommunications from DeVry University-Florida.

Kris Blackmon

Chief Channel Officer, JS Group

Kris Blackmon serves as Chief Channel Officer for channel consultancy JS Group. In this role, she develops and consults on channel strategy for vendors, carriers, distributors, partners, and startups looking to expand into the indirect sales channel. A partner advocate, veteran content creator, and channel community-builder, she believes in the power of storytelling as a way to make friends—and customers—of strangers. Prior to JS Group, Blackmon served as senior content director for Channel Partners and Channel Futures, where she was responsible for overseeing the strategic content direction for Informa Tech’s channel media, events, market intelligence, and communities.

Blackmon took over the long-running MSP 501 awards program in 2017, leading it to more than 40% growth in three years. She developed Channel Futures’ Market Intelligence and Channel Educational Series initiatives, and was responsible for programming two of the largest channel events in the world, Channel Partners Conference & Expo and Channel Partners Evolution. Over the last decade, Blackmon has created content strategies for SaaS providers, hardware vendors, software providers, technology angel investors, media outlets, and industry-leading events. Partners first—always!

Tim Acker

VP, Global Channels & Alliances, NINJIO

As an accomplished technology executive and entrepreneur, Tim has more than 25 years of demonstrated success with specific expertise in cloud, mobility, IoT, digital media, software, fulfillment and e-commerce. As a leader and individual contributor in sales, channel and business development, product marketing, and information systems; he has helped companies dramatically grow revenue, develop new go-to-market models, create alliances, optimize processes, develop new products, and improve profitability.

Vicky Bruns

Manager of Ecosystem, ConnectWise

Vicky began her career at ConnectWise in early 2015 as a Business Development Manager. In 2017, she attended CompTia’s ChannelCon in Austin, Texas, and was instantly hooked on becoming more involved in the channel community. Later that year, she was promoted to the ConnectWise Growth Org to assist with orchestrating the onboarding, sales, and management of strategic channel vendors within the Ecosystem. In 2020, she took on the additional role of helping to manage partner experience and strategy for the ConnectWise eCommerce Marketplace, which experienced 40% additional growth in 2021 over the prior year. Currently as Manager of the ConnectWise Marketplace Concierge and Vendor Specialist teams, she is responsible for helping to lead customer adoption, expansion and retention efforts of 3rd party products and services within the ConnectWise IT Nation community on a global scale.

Tim Coach

Global Channel Chief, Pia

Tim Coach, Pia’s Global Channel Chief, is focused on bringing new technology to MSPs to help increase the efficiency of a single employee all the way to an entire department; as well as to relieve the burden of current labor issues. He has been in IT for the last several decades and most recently in the MSP arena. Whether he has been rebuilding MSPs or as a consultant, his main focus was to help businesses achieve their overall vision.  Tim has worked in all facets of the channel from being a client, to a vendor, from helpdesk to MSP executive, to Channel Chief. He is passionate about MSPs, with his driving vision being to assist MSP owners to take their businesses to the next level.  When not speaking at channel events, you can find him curating his expansive whiskey collection or riding his motorcycle. 

Bob Coppedge

CEO, Simplex-IT

With over 40 years’ experience in IT, Bob has worn just about every hat there is. Developer, Network Engineer, IT Director, CIO (Chief Information Officer), Consultant and, since 2007 CEO of Simplex-IT. He created Simplex-IT, an IT Managed Services Provider (https://Simplex-IT.com) to be the “good guys” in the IT world, making IT work for businesses with or without internal IT departments. Simplifying the Complex. Simplex-IT. Bob has authored three books “A CEO’s Survival Guide to Information Technology”, “The MSP’s Survival Guide to Co-Managed IT services”, and his latest “I Don’t Want Your Job: Is Co-Managed IT services the Right fit for You?”. A sought-after speaker, Bob speaks at about 20 events annually frequently on Co-Managed IT services (or "CoMITs"), including IT Nation, MSP World, DattoCon, and more. You’ll immediately get a feel for Bob’s style of delivery. Bob is known for a no-nonsense but humorous style of delivery, getting right to the point of critical topics. He has an uncanny ability to take a complicated topic and break it down into simple components. The topic? He takes seriously. Himself? Not so much. Bob can translate the technical “geeky” side of IT to business folks and understands the needs of business.

Dennis Crupi

VP of Marketing, Ingram Micro

Dennis Crupi leads the marketing business for Ingram Micro U.S.

Under his leadership, Ingram Micro’s marketing team continues to innovate and execute business-building campaigns and events for today’s leading and emerging technology brands. Using creativity, data and differentiation, the U.S. marketing team works to deliver timely services, with real ROI, to help businesses grow in ways they haven't imagined.

Pulling from his more than two decades of channel experience, and 25 years with Ingram Micro, Crupi established and continues to grow Agency Ingram Micro (AIM), a full-service marketing agency operating inside of Ingram Micro. AIM has enabled countless IT companies across the U.S. to transform their brands, differentiate their value, and grow their business through omni-channel demand generation strategies. AIM also works for Ingram Micro, delivering compelling marketing campaigns and customer experiences across the country.

J.B. Fowler

Chief Product Officer, Domotz, Inc.

J.B. Fowler is the Chief Product Officer for Domotz, Inc., a SaaS-based company that helps managed service providers, IT departments and integrators run their business more efficiently using Remote Network Monitoring and Management. J.B. has over 20 years of experience in the Audio/Video Networking industries, including a couple of years as VP of Business Development with Luxul, several years with Control4 as a Product Manager of their Controller and Audio/Video products and more than a decade with Texas Instruments, Managing their Video Communications and VoIP Telephony Product Lines. With a wife and two young boys, free time is rare. That said, living in Utah provides J.B. with the opportunity to pursue some outdoor hobbies, including Mountain Biking in the summer, Skiing in the winter and driving his motorcycle the rest of the year.

Heather Harlos

Sr. Director of Global Partner Enablement and Program, Proofpoint

Heather has been helping companies optimize their business operations and go-to-market strategies for over 15 years. Before joining JumpCloud, she served in multiple global roles for Fortune 500 companies, helping them create live experiences, leverage modern digital platforms, and empower their customers to thrive. In her free time, she trains hunter/jumper horses and actually could ride before she could walk.

Michelle McBain

Vice President, North American Channels, SonicWall

Bio coming soon! 

Rafael Sanguily

Vice President of Strategic Alliances, Glasshive

Rafael got his start in IT industry sales in 2006 where he built and managed teams that produced millions in recurring revenue. His ability to run a successful team led to teaching and consulting opportunities within the industry’s largest international brands. Through years of working with the industry's top vendors, distributors, and partners, he began to see that many IT Companies experienced the same challenges when it came to revenue growth: insufficient marketing skills.

This led Rafael to work with his brother Gio in developing TRIdigital Marketing. He filled a consultative role for IT companies and vendors while spearheading hundreds of creative projects and go-to-market strategies, generating millions in revenue. As services grew with the opportunity to provide to even more IT companies, Gio and TRIdigial Marketing envisioned and then crafted GlassHive, a sales and marketing Work OS explicitly developed for the IT industry.

To date, Rafael has helped thousands of IT companies and vendors transform their sales and marketing during his career. His expertise has helped tech companies across 29 countries generate over 100,000 leads and over $900,000,000 in new sales revenue, making him one of the most sought-after sales and marketing consultants in the IT industry.

Dan Shapero

President, TeamLogic IT

Dan Shapero has served as president of TeamLogic IT since March 2018. He has held executive positions at Ingram Micro Cloud, Kaseya, Avamar (EMC), Vicinity (Microsoft), State of the Art (Sage) and Platinum Software Corporation (Epicor). He founded and owns ClikCloud Digital Marketing. Dan is a past member of the CompTIA Board of Directors and is a frequent speaker on topics including managed IT services, cloud, cybersecurity, business transformation and digital marketing.

Mark Sondergaard

Channel Chief/VP of Sales, EnTelegent Solutions

Dynamic, entrepreneurial sales management strategist with a 30+ year record of achievement and demonstrated success driving substantial sales growth while providing award-winning sales leadership in highly competitive markets. Adept at driving growth of company revenues and improving sales-team / channel performance. Exceptional mentor and coach. Tenacious in building new business, securing customer loyalty, and forging strong relationships with external business partners.

Marnie Stockman

CEO, Lifecycle Insights

Marnie Stockman, Ed.D. started her career in Customer Success with the toughest customers of all - high school math students. Her passion for education and using data and humor to help others grow and succeed took her from the classroom to Sr. Director of Customer Success of a leading Ed Tech company - and now to co-founder and CEO of Lifecycle Insights - a vCIO/Customer Success platform for MSPs. With her default setting locked on "Smiles," she aims to create raving fans for Lifecycle Insights and help MSPs do the same for their customers. She strongly believes your clients’ success becomes your success. When she isn't Lifecycling, she can be found playing volleyball with her husband and two 20-something kids in Greensboro, MD.

Travis Woods

CEO, Fort Point IT

Building relationships is core to Travis’ business experience. For the past 15 years, he’s fostered new and existing relationships to grow sales and build a thriving managed IT services practice (MSP). He transcends typical transactional relationships with vendors by aligning their success with his ability to deliver high-value IT service to his company’s clients.

In his quest to expand his industry knowledge and experience, he serves as Vice-Chairman of The Channel Company’s NexGen Advisory board to help to create a conference that identifies new technology and business trends essential to successful MSPs. He’s a member of the Pax8 Advisory Council, serving to help strengthen the service and relationships between the distributor, vendors, and MSP partners.

Recognized for his industry leadership and experience, Travis is regularly invited to speak at industry conferences and panel discussions. The topics he’s discussed include, “MSP Branding and Marketing for the Future”, “State of Cloud Market Places”, and “Driving Revenue with Addigy Mac Management.”