By Khali Henderson
Dina Moskowitz, founder and CEO of SaaSMAX, was recognized by Cloud Girls in collaboration with Women in the Channel (WiC) and Channel Partners, the leading resource for the telecom and IT channel community, as a Trailblazer in the second annual Cloud Girls Rising Awards announced April 12, 2017, at the Channel Partners Conference & Expo in Las Vegas.
The Cloud Girl Rising award was created to honor women in the telecom and IT channel who have shown leadership and innovation in the emerging cloud space as well as to inspire more women to step forward and follow their example. This year the award was given to two Trailblazers and one Rising Star.
As a Trailblazer, Moskowitz was chosen by a panel of seven female technology executives in the cloud space as one of the highest achievers across three categories: Achieving personal success; evangelizing knowledge and change in the cloud space; and advancing the cloud conversation among women from classroom to boardroom. The award also recognized Moskowitz as a female technology industry veteran who is paving the way for her organization, customers and industry in advancing cloud and next-generation technology solutions; she was also commended as a role model and mentor to colleagues and others at work and the partner community.
“For me, Dina (Moskowitz) embodies a female leader with not only vision but kindness,” said Cloud Girls Co-founder Jo Peterson, vice president of Cloud Services, Clarify360. “She takes time and makes time to advance other women along the way.”
Moskowitz is recognized as one of the IT channel’s top influencers and innovators. As founder of SaaSMAX Marketplace and the PartnerOptimizer business intelligence solution, she was recently ranked No. 20 out of more than 2,800 channel executives, included in the 2015 VAR Guy’s Top 50 Channel Influencers, recognized by CRN as a Women of the Channel Power 50 Solution Provider, by CRN as one of the Top Women in the Channel (2016, 2015, 2014), served on the prestigious CompTIA Vendor Advisory Council and now serves on their Business Applications Council, and more.
She has been leading and/or consulting to cloud-based, SaaS and other technology companies throughout her career. Prior to SaaSMAX, Moskowitz was CEO and founder of Critical Digital Data Solutions Inc., which developed cloud-based data storage solutions. She has presented at various IT Channel events, including Channel Partners, SaaS University, CompTIA Breakaway, RetailNOW (RSPA) and gSocial 2.0. She is a member of Cloud Girls, a Board Member of The Small Business Web, judge and/or mentor for San Diego Women’s Hackathon and other San Diego startup organizations, and an advocate of women in SaaS and IT.
Cloud Girls is pleased to share more about Moskowitz in this edited excerpt from her award application.
Share one cloud related success that qualifies you to win this award.
I think my primary qualification is the continued evolution and growth of SaaSMAX, which is pioneering distribution and sales channels for the SaaS software sector. SaaSMAX is a rapidly growing marketplace and distributor that is like a Match.com between SaaS companies and resellers. Our growing client base includes more than 200 SaaS applications and thousands of channel partners. Our SaaS vendors range from well-established IT-focused vendors to emerging, pioneering SaaS vendors. We now enable SaaS channel partners to have their own quote-to-cash SaaS webstores!
How have you innovated in the cloud space and shunned the status quo.
SaaSMAX has innovated in the cloud space in multiple directions. In a nutshell,
- We are one of the pioneers, if not the first, to provide a SaaS-only neutral marketplace that combines channel education, channel marketing, channel matchmaking and channel program implementation/consulting to facilitate SaaS distribution one app at a time and for the SaaS sector as a whole.
- We bring innovative, channel-friendly SaaS applications to channel partners, enabling those partners to accelerate their awareness, selection and sales of SaaS applications.
- We’ve innovated the first-ever business intelligence automated solution, PartnerOptimizer, for providing actionable partner intelligence. Besides serving enterprise customers to profile current partners and identify net new partner prospects, it is enabling us to compile the largest actionable database about partners (VARs, SPs, Agents, MSPs, SIs, ISVs) in the world. It enables channel chiefs (and SaaSMAX) to affordably and quickly identify the right partners for their products.
We offer an online SaaS Channel Manager course that can also be taken as a certification.
What examples can you share of your ability to motivate your employees and team members around cloud services?
We must be aware of the continually evolving sector. Every day we are meeting, talking, seeing demos and matching up new SaaS and cloud-based products, such that we live and breathe cloud and everything “as a service”.
SaaSMAX is a born-in-the-cloud company. Our core platform is in the cloud, our innovations are in the cloud, our customers are cloud-based SaaS companies and resellers of cloud-based solutions. My team references me as the “Chief WiseSaaS” and we encourage each SaaSMAX team member to take on a “WiseSaaS” title. Our blog is named http://www.wisesaas.com/and we utilize all sorts of “SaaSisms” in our day to day internal and customer- focused
conversations.
How have you advocated for other women and enabled them to learn from you in the cloud space?
First, I’ve been trying to develop my own leadership strengths and CloudGirls has been an amazing influence on me. Within the SaaSMAX organization we have had the opportunity to mentor several female interns, one who was just promoted to the position of SaaS Vendor Success Manager!
I am a proud member of CloudGirls, do my best to support CompTIA’s AWIT group … and to be a role model to my team and the SaaSMAX customer community of SaaS vendors, enterprise technology vendors and channel partners.
I had the great honor of presenting the keynote at the Women in Channel session at the 2015 Channel Partners Conference in Vegas. The primary topic was “Convergence & Collaboration in the Cloud” with an emphasis and exercises on how women can help each other.
Since 2014 I’ve been a founding judge and fundraiser for the San Diego Women’s Hackathon, which to date has had four events, which have consecutively grown in size. The last one included approximately 80 girls, ranging in age from 16 to 22 years old. I’m proud as well that I lobbied for and won the Hackathon a $5,000 grant from the CompTIA Advisory Councils.
Finally, I’ve been an avid member and speaker at the women’s workspace/accelerator HeraHub for the past 5 years.
About the Author/Editor
Khali Henderson is senior partner at BuzzTheory Strategies and chair of the Cloud Girls Communications Work Group.