Celebrating Barracuda’s 2024 CRN Women of the Channel winners

In recent years, there’s been a noticeable shift toward championing diversity, equity, and inclusion within professional environments. Such encouraging trends have given rise to various programs and recognition initiatives aimed at spotlighting the remarkable achievements of women in the corporate landscape, with one such accolade being CRN’s Women of the Channel award.  

This annual award highlights a list of women who have made significant strides in their respective fields and at their organizations, underscoring their leadership and dedication to promoting continuous innovation and success. This year, six of our very own female leaders have been featured on the list. The honorees include:

• Maria Martinez, VP of Channels, North America

• Karen Ward, Regional VP, MSP Sales, Americas, Barracuda MSP

• Lindsay Faria, Senior Director, MSP Marketing, Americas, Barracuda MSP 

• Jenna Renaud, Director of National Accounts

• Alli Oneal, Senior Manager, Global Partner Programs & Partner Experience

• Aisha Eugene, Senior Manager, Partner Enablement, Barracuda MSP

To help get a sense of their roles and responsibilities, we asked these six women about some of their channel-related accomplishments over the last year as well as a few goals that they have for our channel business in the coming months.  

What are some significant milestones you’ve reached in your channel activities over the last twelve months?  

“Over the last year, I’ve worked with my team to establish a regular cadence of partner strategy sessions and executive interlocks to uplevel our engagement with partners in addition to our standard reviews. Internally, I’ve instituted one-to-one and one-to-many sessions to evangelize and drive execution of our channel strategy.” — Maria Martinez, VP of Channels, North America

“Over the last year, I helped establish a go-to-market plan for our MSP sales division in North America, led our sales team to double-digit growth of annual contract value year-over-year in the first half of the fiscal year with a shared success model, and maintained strong employee retention.” — Karen Ward, Regional VP, MSP Sales, Americas, Barracuda MSP

“In my role, I have the pleasure and privilege of overseeing and continuously developing a high-performing team. From my perspective, my key accomplishment is the high level to which my team commits to delivering results, provides value to our partners, and drives innovation on a day-to-day basis.” — Lindsay Faria, Senior Director, MSP Marketing, Americas, Barracuda MSP

“I have a young channel team, and one of my biggest accomplishments over the past year has been helping mentor and challenge them to excel. Whether it is an on-site floor day, virtual training, call campaign, or an account alignment session, my team shows up! I’m extremely proud of them.” — Jenna Renaud, Director of National Accounts

“This year, I supported the modernization and launch of the new Barracuda Partner Success Program. The project included collaboration and requirement scoping with key stakeholders across multiple business units, partner feedback, development and delivery of program materials and resources, internal enablement, and partner community launch communications and program training.” — Alli Oneal, Global Partner Programs & Partner Experience

“Over the last year, we have broadened the reach of the XDR Enablement team across the globe to provide better service to our partners. This expansion has helped improve the retention and growth of XDR, reducing the time it takes to realize its value and increasing overall satisfaction with implementations.” — Aisha Eugene, Senior Manager, Partner Enablement, Barracuda MSP

What are some objectives you have moving forward?

“My primary goal is to continue to elevate the partner experience, increase the partner enablement from a technical perspective, and make our interactions more outcome-based for our partner community. In the channel, it's common meet with a partner, leave, and then when you connect again in 90 days, what’s happened? My intention is to bring outcome-based interactions with our partners to help ensure that our engagement is elevated and drives outcomes.” — Maria Martinez 

“To exceed our goals of double-digit growth through a shared success model with the Managed Service Providers we partner with, I would like to see partners continue to increase their investments in XDR and Security Operations Center (SOC) offerings to help strengthen and improve their security practices.” — Karen Ward

“My goal is to see continued adoption of Barracuda’s security offerings. In particular, our XDR offering, which empowers them to provide holistic managed cybersecurity services, around the clock. This positions partners to defend customers against any attack vector and is backed by an experienced team of security operations center (SOC) analysts. This blend of technology and human expertise and oversight – and the ability to distill actionable next steps out of a lot of noise, is the combination today’s businesses need.” — Lindsay Faria

“Barracuda’s recently launched global Partner Success Program will help make Barracuda even easier to work with by giving our partners agility and the power to choose how they want to leverage Barracuda. I’m excited to help our partners make the most of the advantages of this new program and the new ways it will enable their shared success with Barracuda.” — Jenna Renaud

“As we continue improving our channel program offerings over the next year, my main goal is to provide effective, simple, and repeatable programs by continuing to provide best-in-class channel programs, tools, and support while continuing to simplify the partner experience.” — Alli Oneal 

“My goals for the year include optimizing our partners’ ability to action our products as self-service, and taking out the manual nature that exists today. This will hopefully get our partners to realize the value of their services faster. This will also give the team more time for a white-glove approach to the implementation experience.” — Aisha Eugene

Honoree fun facts 

To close out this Q&A, we'll leave you with a fun tidbit about each of our award winners:

“Most of my spare time is spent at the beach, on the water, or horseback riding. And I’ve even swam with sharks — although not intentionally on one snorkeling trip!” — Maria Martinez 

“I was a Communications and English major in college with the hopes of becoming a journalist. I thought because I love to talk to people and be part of the action this would be a perfect fit for me. Instead, I felt awkward inserting myself into situations without the background and knowledge I needed to confidently ask questions.” — Karen Ward

“I’ve heard myself described as a “social butterfly” more times than I can count. But, overall, I think I am much more introverted than others might perceive me. While I enjoy good company, I also find comfort in quiet and solitude, and that’s where I go when I need to recharge most.” — Lindsay Faria

“I enjoy coaching my three young girls in both soccer and basketball. Seeing my girls work hard and build confidence in the sports that they love means the world to me. I hope to set a good example, as a working mom who manages a work-life balance, who is also driven and passionate, and who goes above and beyond to get any job done while having fun along the way.” — Jenna Renaud

“Before deciding to pursue a degree in marketing, I actually wanted to go to school to study studio art and painting. While I do still love exercising my formalized artistic side when I have free time, I’m so glad that my background and career moves have led me to the channel. There are so many great ways to introduce creativity into a channel programs role that really makes for the best of both worlds.” — Alli Oneal 

“I’m in the middle of eight children. It helped to build a lot of resilience, a sense of humor, patience, and self-sufficiency. You have to be resourceful if you want to get the best pancakes for breakfast. It also gives me a strong sense of community, which is likely where my passion for being out in the community stems from.” — Aisha Eugene