The Women of the Channel Awards honor women whose channel expertise and vision are deserving of recognition. Content originally posted by CRN.
Irina Denisenko is the CEO of Knox, a cybersecurity pioneer delivering "FedRAMP as a Service" to help SaaS companies enter and scale in the government market. A seasoned operator, Irina previously co-founded and served as COO of Class Technologies, where she grew annual recurring revenue to $50M, scaled the team to 200 employees, and raised over $350M in funding. Prior to that she built a leading U.S.-based Drone Technology company, PrecisionHawk, into an industry leader, ultimately acquired by Norway's The Field Group. With deep expertise in technology, government, and enterprise Irina brings a track record of building trusted, scalable systems at the intersection of innovation and compliance.
At Knox, Irina has driven strategic partnerships with VARs (particularly Carahsoft), cloud hyperscalers AWS, Microsoft, and Google, commercial software providers, integrators and Federal agencies. She unified partner engagement, simplified vendor onboarding and accelerated SaaS providers' readiness for Federal adoption, enabling secure cloud capabilities to reach government users faster and more predictably.
Over the past year, Irina has been the driving force behind Knox's channel expansion, personally architecting the partnerships and motions that now power the company's go-to-market engine in the pursuit of one mission: To unlock secure cloud innovations for government customers. She built a unified channel strategy that brought together cloud providers, integrators, advisory firms and SaaS vendors into a single, repeatable process that enabled 20+ SaaS vendors to enter the Federal market in 2025. She led the development of partner programs that simplify reseller onboarding, clarify roles and align incentives across the ecosystem, enabling vendors to accelerate compliance and reach government users faster. This resulted in 11 referral deals, including one customer, Celonis, who achieved FedRAMP authorization in under 30 days, and implementation for a government customer 30 days after authorization. That company is now live with its third government customer. Building on her deep understanding of the slow, manual, and costly compliance processes that stall innovation, Irina championed automation-driven partner workflows that reduce friction and shorten time to authorization. Her work has made Knox's channel ecosystem a force multiplier for vendors seeking faster, more accessible paths into regulated environments.
Irina's goal is to unlock an order of magnitude more applications for FedRAMP authorization - more than the FedRAMP program itself can address. More technology companies need a fast, affordable path to accessing and serving government agencies; while agencies urgently need access to current, secure technology. Irina will harness the power of the channel to bridge the gap and rapidly deliver agencies needed access to transformative capabilities. For 2026, she is leading Knox in driving repeatable, scalable processes that streamline onboarding and reduce the friction companies face when entering regulated markets, combining automation, strong customer support and a cloud-first approach.
Her key to success in 2026 is maintaining a focus on serving Knox customers' missions. “At the end of the day,” she says, “it's about knowing the problem you are actually solving and making sure that you're teaming up with the right people. There is a litany of software that the world has produced that is currently not accessible to the United States government. Our channel partners must ensure they not only understand the customer's mission, but the technologies required to achieve mission success.”
Irina cites deepening her appreciation for context and long-term thinking in her work as the best company-related happening this year. “Engaging more deeply with history, ideas, and thoughtful discussion helped sharpen how I approach strategy, communication, and decision-making. That broader perspective made me more intentional in my work and reinforced the value of understanding where we've come from in order to better shape what comes next.”
When asked how she’d spend an extra hour in the day, if she had it, Irina shared, “First, I'd finish the biography of Oliver Cromwell. It's my latest obsession and because 2026 is the America 250 milestone, we have to know where we came from. Then I would read the U.S. Constitution and the Federalist Papers, which is next up for my book club.”
