When CRN published its International Women’s Day 2026 feature, I started reading through the channel philosophies and stopped on three names. Not because they gave the best quotes (though some of them did). Because these three women are running channel organizations at companies where the channel isn’t a side project. It’s the business.
Ruba Borno, VP of Global Specialists and Partners at AWS. Elisabeth De Dobbeleer, SVP of the Cisco Partner Program. Denise Millard, Chief Partner Officer at Dell Technologies.
Between them, they influence how billions of dollars flow through the technology channel. And each of them got there on a path that would make a good movie.
Ruba Borno, AWS
Borno’s background is aerospace engineering. She spent years at Cisco before moving to AWS, and her career arc makes more sense when you stop thinking about the channel as a sales function and start thinking about it as a systems problem. Engineers think in systems. Borno runs partners the way an engineer runs a complex deployment: find the constraints, remove them, measure the output.
Her IWD statement focused on partners as a “force-multiplier for customer outcomes,” and she backed it with a number that actually means something: partners are achieving up to a $7.13 multiplier for every $1 of AWS sold. That’s not a feel-good stat. That’s a business case for why the channel matters, expressed in the only language that gets boardroom attention.
What strikes me about Borno is that she doesn’t talk about the channel in abstract terms. She talks about specific programs: the AI Competency Program, the Migration Acceleration Program, Marketplace innovations. These are built products, not slogans. When I wrote about women running the channel earlier this year, I noted that the most effective leaders are the ones building things, not just running things. Borno fits that pattern.
If I could ask her one question, it would be this: when you were 25 and working in aerospace, did you see yourself here? My guess is no. And that’s the point. Career paths in this industry are rarely straight lines. They’re more like network diagrams.
Elisabeth De Dobbeleer, Cisco
De Dobbeleer took over the Cisco partner program at one of the most consequential moments in the company’s channel history. Cisco 360 launched in January, the biggest partner program overhaul the company has done in over a decade. Nearly 90% of Cisco’s revenue flows through partners. Redesigning that program while it’s running is like rebuilding an airplane mid-flight.
Her philosophy, as she described it to CRN, centers on “active listening, truly understanding partner needs and challenges.” That sounds simple. It’s not. Active listening at the scale of Cisco’s partner ecosystem means processing feedback from thousands of partners across dozens of countries, filtering signal from noise, and making program decisions that will affect partner profitability for years.
What I find interesting about De Dobbeleer is her emphasis on trust as something earned through consistency. “Trust is the cornerstone of long-term partnerships,” she said. “It’s earned by consistently showing up, being transparent, and delivering on promises.”
That’s a harder standard than most people realize. Consistent transparency means telling partners when the news is bad. It means explaining why a program change happened, even when the explanation makes the vendor look less than perfect. Most vendor communications are designed to present every change as a gift. De Dobbeleer’s framing suggests she knows that partners see through that, and she’d rather be honest and trusted than polished and doubted.
Denise Millard, Dell Technologies
Millard holds a title that didn’t exist at most tech companies ten years ago: Chief Partner Officer. That title matters. It signals that partners have a seat at the executive table, with someone whose entire job is representing their interests internally.
Dell’s channel is massive and complex. Hardware, software, services, cloud, edge. Partners span the full range from small VARs to global systems integrators. Running that ecosystem requires someone who can hold conversations with a 10-person reseller in Ohio and a multinational consulting firm in the same week, and make both feel like Dell is built for them.
Millard’s IWD statement emphasized bringing “industry-leading talent, technologies, and the partner ecosystem together.” The word “together” is doing a lot of work in that sentence. In practice, it means aligning Dell’s internal product teams, sales organization, and channel program so that partners aren’t caught between competing priorities. Anyone who’s worked in a channel that’s also running a significant direct business knows how hard that alignment is.
What They’d Tell Their 25-Year-Old Selves
I didn’t get to interview these three directly. But based on everything I’ve read and everyone I’ve talked to who knows them, here’s what I think each of them would say to a 25-year-old woman starting out in tech.
Borno would say: learn the math. Understand the business model. The channel respects people who can explain why something works, not just that it works. Being technical isn’t enough. Being strategic isn’t enough. The combination is what opens doors that stay open.
De Dobbeleer would say: be patient with the system, but don’t be passive. Big organizations move slowly. That doesn’t mean you have to. Find the places where one person can make a measurable difference, deliver results there, and let the results do the talking.
Millard would say: get close to partners early. The channel teaches you how business actually works. Not the boardroom version. The version where someone is betting their livelihood on a product decision. That perspective changes how you think about everything.
These three women aren’t running channel orgs because someone decided it was time for more diversity in leadership. They’re running them because they’re exceptionally good at a job that most people underestimate. The channel is complicated, political, and high-stakes. Leading it well requires skills that take decades to build.
The next generation of women in this industry doesn’t need to follow the same paths. But they can learn from the fact that these paths exist. You can start in aerospace engineering and end up running cloud partnerships. You can prioritize listening in an industry that rewards talking. You can hold the title of Chief Partner Officer at one of the world’s largest technology companies.
These aren’t aspirational stories. They’re happening right now. And if you’re 25 and reading this, wondering whether there’s room for you in this industry, look at what these three built and tell me there isn’t.