About the Panel
Penny Byron
Penny Byron is the president and founder of Blazing Channels Consulting. She is the founder of two successful start-ups with a long history of senior marketing leadership roles and consultative services to industry leaders like Cisco Systems, Adobe, Check Point, Juniper and Extreme Networks. As a strategic global marketing leader, Penny works with clients to identify new opportunity and drive revenue growth with innovative marketing and demand generation strategies.
Gordon Mackintosh
Gordon Mackintosh has many years’ experience leading high-performance teams in executive sales and channel management roles. At Juniper, he is responsible for driving partner go-to-market strategy and sales, along with the company’s virtual sales organization. Gordon’s team is chartered with delivering greater business outcomes through Juniper’s broad portfolio, as well as simplifying the process of doing business with Juniper.
Prior to joining Juniper, he was Global Head of Channels and Distribution at Extreme Networks, where he deployed new partner programs and initiatives, driving partner growth and profitability, as well as managing investments in growing virtual sales teams. Before Extreme Networks, Mackintosh held a number of positions at Cisco Systems developing industry-leading partner GTM programs and leading direct and indirect sales teams for cloud and software solutions in small and medium enterprise markets.
Nick Tidd
Nick Tidd has occupied the technology industry for 30 years and, as a result, has extensive experience in global business, partner ecosystems, marketing, distribution and operations. He has a demonstrated track record for building, mentoring and motivating sales teams while remaining focused on revenue growth and business alignment. In his role as Vice President, Global Channel Sales, at Poly, he leads the global partner strategy and program to accelerate Poly’s worldwide partner business.
Nick’s channel influence and advocacy is well known and has earned him many accolades over the years by the technology and channel community, being repeatedly named Channel Chief by CRN, a “builder and visionary” by CDN, “Channel Maverick” by ChannelWeb; and more recently, Nick was named to CRN’s “Top 25 IT Channel Sales leaders” and a “Top Gun 51” by Channel Partners.
Natalia Vianden
Natalia is the Global Director of Channel Programs at Extreme Networks, having worked in the networking industry for 20+ years. She has a proven track record of devising and implementing strategic channel programs. Most notably, launching the Global Channel Partner Program for Extreme Networks. Natalia moved into a global channel role, leading the integration of the Extreme Networks and Enterasys Partner Programs in 2014, followed by the expansion of the programs based numerous integrations with Zebra, Brocade, Avaya, Aerohive and Ipanema.
Natalia is laser focused on delivering the best outcomes to Extreme’s partners and their customers, earning her the CRN 5* Partner Program Awards eight years in a row. She has extensive experience as a leader and presenter and sits on a number of partner advisory boards.