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September 2026 brought a broad reshuffling of technology leadership. The 30 moves identified in CRN’s monthly roundup span CEO succession at Apple, Zayo Group and Omnissa; interim leadership at MongoDB and SolarWinds; and new CIO, CTO, CFO, COO, channel, alliance and growth appointments across providers, vendors and enterprises.
The list is an editorial roundup rather than a census of every job change. Several additional CIO appointments were reported separately by Heller Search Associates and the IT Executives Council, particularly in healthcare, finance, manufacturing and professional services.
The 30 executive moves
The table distinguishes external hires, internal promotions, interim assignments and expanded mandates where the published announcements make that clear.
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| Executive | September 2026 move | What the appointment adds |
|---|---|---|
| John Ternus | CEO, Apple | Apple named its longtime executive as chief executive, marking a succession at one of technology’s highest-profile companies. |
| Sowmyanarayan Sampath | CEO, Zayo Group | Succeeded retiring CEO Steve Smith, who remained on the board. Sampath previously led Verizon’s consumer division. |
| Amit Singh | CEO, Omnissa | Succeeded Shankar Iyer after serving as Palo Alto Networks’ chief business officer; he also co-founded Google Cloud. |
| Pavlo Deshchynskyy | CEO, N-iX | Promoted internally after roughly 20 years with N-iX and serving as COO since 2020. The company assigned him strategy, execution, P&L, operational performance and executive-team leadership. |
| John Ende | CEO, Synergy IT Solutions | Joined from Great Lakes Dental Technologies with responsibility spanning managed services, cybersecurity, cloud, data and emerging-technology offerings. |
| Fred Purdue | CEO, Cyber Advisors | Joined from West Monroe, where he worked on technology-services-provider mergers, acquisitions and integration. |
| Bill Wosilius | CEO, Omega Systems | Brought more than 25 years of cybersecurity and IT-services leadership, including a previous tenure as NexusTek CEO. |
| Sheila Rohra | COO, HPE hybrid-cloud business | Returned to Hewlett Packard Enterprise after serving as president and CEO of Hitachi Vantara. The hybrid-cloud business was described as generating $5.75 billion. |
| Puja Jaspal | Chief people officer, Proofpoint | Joined from Fastly after earlier senior people-leadership work at Cisco. |
| CJ Desai | Chief enterprise platform officer, Meta | Left MongoDB’s president and CEO role to join Facebook parent Meta. |
| Tim Regan | CFO, Delinea | Joined from Dropbox, where he had been CFO and adviser. CRN reported that he helped scale Dropbox revenue to $2.5 billion. |
| Dev Ittycheria | Interim CEO and president, MongoDB | Returned to MongoDB after previously serving about 11 years as president and CEO. |
| Kurt Mills | Channel chief and SVP of global channel sales, KnowBe4 | Joined from Trellix, where he led global channels. |
| Cullen Childress | Interim CEO, SolarWinds | Moved up from SVP and chief product officer after Sudhakar Ramakrishna’s departure. |
| Dean Jarnac | EVP and chief sales officer, Intel | Joined after about a decade at Marvell Technology. |
| Allison Clarke | VP of go-to-market strategy and partner programs, WatchGuard Technologies | Joined from SonicWall after earlier channel work at Sophos. |
| Marc Botham | Global VP of channel and alliances, Bitdefender | Joined from Jamf. CRN attributed to his prior Jamf work a 300% increase in partner-sourced revenue and more than $500 million in annual recurring-revenue contribution. |
| Heather Somerville Gonzalez | Strategic alliances leader for the Americas, Infoblox | Tasked with building technology and cloud ecosystem relationships. |
| Nick Jeffery | COO, Charter Communications | Joined after leading Frontier Communications and helping guide its $20 billion sale to Verizon. |
| Jason Bernstein | COO, Blue Mantis | Promoted from CFO, expanding his remit to operations, workforce and strategy. |
| Anand Birje | CEO, combined Hitachi Digital Services and GlobalLogic | Added the combined-company role to his leadership of Hitachi’s Digital Engineering and AI Solutions. Predecessor Srini Shankar became executive adviser. |
| Kathryn Wetherby | Chief strategy officer, Scope Infotech | Joined after about a decade at the U.S. Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, where she led Marketplace IT operations, strategy, governance and security. |
| Jeff Zima | CFO, Focus Technology | Joined from N-able after earlier finance leadership at Carbonite and OpenText. |
| John Toney | SVP of security services, Thrive | Joined after about three years as Vermont’s CIO and earlier service as global CISO of City Electric Supply. |
| Ivan Skerl | Chief digital and technology officer, QTS Data Centers | Joined from Bosch, where he was president of Bosch Digital Americas and CIO for Bosch Americas. |
| Ryan Rohr | Chief growth officer, Lentech | Joined from Thomson Reuters Special Services after earlier leadership at Empower AI. |
| Narayanan Sundaresan | Chief information and technology officer, Conduent | Will lead the company’s global technology organization and strategy, with an emphasis on transformation, growth and AI-powered capabilities. |
| Jonathan Nikols | President of the Americas market, DXC Technology | Joined from Mobile Communications America after senior enterprise leadership at Verizon. |
| Sumita Pandit | CFO and SVP, Genpact | Succeeded Michael Weiner after finance and operating leadership at Radian Group. |
| Diana Santariello | Head of channel partnerships, Sourcepass | Joined from NexusTek to lead distributor, technology-adviser and partner strategy. |
What the moves show about technology leadership
CEO succession was concentrated but varied
Apple, Zayo Group and Omnissa supplied the most prominent CEO changes. The appointments combine internal continuity, as at Apple, with outside succession: Sampath came from Verizon’s consumer business and Singh from Palo Alto Networks after earlier Google Cloud experience. N-iX chose a long-serving internal operator, while Cyber Advisors, Omega Systems and Synergy IT Solutions brought in leaders with services, M&A or managed-technology backgrounds.
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MongoDB had both a departure and a stopgap return
MongoDB’s change was unusually visible because two moves were connected. CJ Desai departed the president and CEO position for Meta, and Dev Ittycheria returned as interim CEO and president. Ittycheria’s earlier approximately 11-year tenure gives the company an experienced temporary leader while it determines its next permanent arrangement.
Interim appointments kept product and operating knowledge in place
SolarWinds promoted product chief Cullen Childress to interim CEO after Ramakrishna’s departure. MongoDB likewise turned to a former chief executive rather than an external caretaker. Interim appointments can preserve decision-making continuity, but they do not by themselves establish the timing or outcome of a permanent search.
Partner ecosystems remained a major hiring priority
KnowBe4, WatchGuard Technologies, Bitdefender, Infoblox and Sourcepass all added leaders focused on channels, alliances, partner programs or go-to-market execution. The responsibilities range from distributor and adviser relationships to technology-cloud ecosystems and global channel sales, showing that partner routes to market were treated as a distinct executive capability rather than a routine sales function.
Transformation mandates crossed technology and business functions
Several appointments connect IT leadership directly to business change. Sundaresan’s Conduent remit combines global technology strategy with transformation, growth and AI capabilities. Rohra’s HPE role sits inside a hybrid-cloud business described as $5.75 billion, while Birje’s combined Hitachi Digital Services and GlobalLogic mandate joins digital engineering and AI solutions. Finance, people, security and growth leaders were also recruited with operating backgrounds rather than narrow functional credentials.
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Additional CIO appointments reported in September
Separate September reporting identified four further CIO appointments:
- Arun Kumar Bhaskara-Baba, CIO of Mayo Clinic.
- Guillermo Veiga, CIO of Capital Group.
- Wasi Ahmed, CIO of Patterson Companies.
- Dr. Natalie Pageler, CIO of Seattle Children’s.
The IT Executives Council’s September list also named Nathaniel Arnold at Entegris, Joe Simon at Production Resource Group, Shamyo Chatterjee at Moore, Bridget Collins at Progress Software and Rex Young at Spinnaker Support, while corroborating the Bhaskara-Baba, Veiga and Ahmed appointments.
Quick Recap
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- Author: Bungay Stanier, Michael.
- Publisher: Page Two
- Pages: 244
- Publication Date: 2016-02-29
- Edition: 1
How to interpret this month’s list
- It covers the full leadership stack: CEOs and interim CEOs appear alongside CIOs, CTO-equivalent technology chiefs, COOs, CFOs, chief people officers, security executives, sales leaders and channel chiefs.
- It is not a complete market count: CRN’s figure of 30 is the size of its editorial roundup, not a verified total of every technology executive move in September 2026.
- Prior experience matters: The appointments emphasize operating scale, cybersecurity, cloud, AI, healthcare informatics, enterprise architecture, M&A integration and partner ecosystems.
- Scope can be as important as title: Several executives received expanded mandates covering P&L, workforce, transformation, alliances or combined companies, making the practical change broader than the job title alone suggests.
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