Mike Karban is the VP of Product at The Partner Masters. He owns Partner Command Center, D365 Sales, D365 Customer Insights, reporting and automation. He has worked in Information Technology for over 25 years and spent 7 years at Microsoft working with partners as a Cloud Solutions Architect, Partner Technology Strategist, and Partner Marketing Advisor. Prior to Microsoft, Mike spent 4 years at a Microsoft partner and can relate to many of the pain points that partners feel today. He has a passion for technology and loves creating Power BI reports and Power Automate flows, for both business and personal use.
Mike lives in downtown San Diego, CA, where he and Jennifer love walking everywhere throughout the year and enjoy rarely needing to drive. When not out and about, Mike likes staying up to date on the latest gadgets and technology.
Michelle Elston is a Partner Profitability Executive at The Partner Masters, delivering business consulting and operational support services to build and deepen partners' relationships with Microsoft. Michelle has worked within the Global Partner Solution (GPS) Organization, analyzing pipelines to identify whitespace and creating cube-connected reports as a Strategic Engagement Manager. Her role also involved developing co-sell strategies within the Partner Sales Acceleration Team.
Leveraging her strategic thinking and industry knowledge, Michelle focuses on building a solid foundation, driving revenue attribution, and optimizing partner profitability for clients.
Michelle is a self-motivated individual who strives to add value to all aspects of an organization. She enjoys being with her family, sitting on the sidelines of her kids' activities and working with a non-profit women's ministry in her free time.
Justin Slagle accumulated a wealth of experience during his 10.5-year tenure at Microsoft, where he made significant contributions within the Global Partner Solutions (GPS) Organization. Throughout his career, Justin engaged with a diverse set of Microsoft partners and customers, spanning from small and medium-sized businesses to mid-market and enterprise entities.
His collaborations encompassed a wide variety of partners, including global and national system integrators, independent software vendors (ISVs), licensing solution providers (LSPs), distributors, and hosters.
Justin's exceptional talent for assisting partners in expanding their Microsoft practice earned him multiple Microsoft internal awards and a reputation as one of the world's leading Partner Development Managers.
Before joining Microsoft, Justin himself was a Microsoft partner and established the IAMCP SoCal Chapter (International Association of Microsoft Channel Partners) in 2009. Under his visionary leadership, the chapter flourished into the largest and most prominent chapter worldwide, a position it continues to hold to this day.
Matt Soseman is co-founder and CTO of The Partner Masters. He provides business and technical consulting, advisory and operational support services to Microsoft Partners, helping them grow their Microsoft practice, capabilities, and integrations.
Before The Partner Masters, Matt spent over a decade at Microsoft as a Security Architect in Consulting Services, Partner Marketing, Security Engineering and Global Partner Solutions. He helped Microsoft Partners and Customers, from Global System Integrators and the Federal Government to the Department of Defense and Fortune 100 companies achieve technical excellence with Microsoft’s Cyber Security solutions.
Before Microsoft, Matt participated in industry-leading Unified Communications solutioning at BlackBerry and Sprint.
Matt lives in San Diego, CA, where he runs a popular YouTube channel focused on driving cyber security training and awareness for IT professionals in his spare time.
Jessica Lopez, the Vice President of Operations at The Partner Masters, provides consultation and advisory services. With six years of experience in the Microsoft ecosystem, Jessica worked in the Global Partner Solution (GPS) Organization, developing executive strategies, leadership communications, data curation and diversity & inclusion initiatives to support partner growth and success.
Jessica also worked within the Office 365 ISV GTM Organization, managing partners, and transforming their go-to-market material, as well as running marketing campaigns and creating go-to-market content.
Jessica is passionate about identifying new ways to scale and transform an organization. In her free time, she enjoys being outdoors and strength training.
Ross McKee is the Chief Operating Officer at The Partner Masters, where he leads sales, marketing, Partner Profit Executives, customer success, and technical services. He joined the company in July 2026 after more than 20 years of leadership at Microsoft Corporation.
Most recently at Microsoft, Ross served as General Manager for Security & Azure Infrastructure within the Global Partner Channel Sales organization, leading a nationwide team of cybersecurity and Azure infrastructure architects. His organization was responsible for accelerating partner growth through solution development, technical enablement, and strategic co-selling initiatives with Microsoft's most important partners across the United States.
Prior to this role, Ross led the Partner Technical Strategist organization across the Americas for Global Partner Solutions. In this capacity, he drove technical strategy and deep collaboration with key partners to develop and scale cloud, security, and AI solutions. His teams played a pivotal role in driving multiple billions of dollars in Microsoft channel revenue while helping partners build differentiated, market-leading practices.
Before joining the partner organization in 2016, Ross served as Area Technology Unit (ATU) Director for Microsoft's Greater Southeast District, leading enterprise sales and technical teams focused on some of the largest commercial customers across Atlanta, Georgia and Birmingham, Alabama. Earlier, as Strategic Technology Unit (STU) Director, he led Microsoft's Datacenter, Security, and Cloud business throughout the Southeast, overseeing Azure, Windows Server, System Center, and Enterprise Mobility & Security solutions. In these leadership roles, Ross guided enterprise account strategy and large-scale digital transformation initiatives that contributed to business objectives measured in billions of dollars. Throughout his Microsoft career, he partnered with many of the region's largest enterprises on cloud modernization, cybersecurity, and datacenter strategy.
Prior to Microsoft, Ross spent more than a decade in sales and executive leadership positions within the technology industry. He held leadership roles at several high-growth startups and solution providers, including Data Transit International, Access Data, FutureLink, and Softricity, which was later acquired by Microsoft. During this time, he worked closely with leading technology vendors including Citrix, Cisco, Dell, 3Com, and U.S. Robotics, while helping customers across the United States, Canada, and Mexico adopt innovative infrastructure, security, and productivity solutions. His experience spans founding and scaling businesses, sales leadership, marketing strategy, and executive management.
Ross resides in Johns Creek, Georgia, with his wife and their three sons, who are currently in high school, college, and graduate school.
Brittney Saultman joins The Partner Masters with over 14 years’ experience in training & development, organizational behavior and project management. In addition, Brittney spent over 2 years working within Microsoft’s Global Partner Solutions (GPS) Organization, where she worked closely with partners, Microsoft Partner Development Managers and Microsoft Channel Sales Executives. Her time with Microsoft has given her extensive knowledge of Microsoft’s vast ecosystem. Brittney is the gold standard for creating meaningful, impactful, and trusting partnerships with Microsoft and partner stakeholders. During her time at Microsoft, she helped shape the Co-sell program into what it’s become. Now as she jumps into a brand-new adventure with The Partner Masters, she is excited to use that knowledge to help contribute, mentor, lead and trail blaze her partners way to a successful Microsoft partnership.
Brittney considers herself a busy body. When she isn’t driving partners to maximize successful Microsoft partnerships, she is an avid outdoorsmen and sports enthusiast. On the weekends, she enjoys a wide variety of hobbies with her husband and three children.
Craig Van Heerden is a results-driven professional with a strong technology and project management background. In his most recent role at Microsoft, he led a team that enabled Microsoft Partner Development Managers and their Partners to achieve strategic objectives.
As a Partner Profitability Executive, Craig’s role is to guide Microsoft Partners through the wealth of information available, ensuring that
their businesses leverage all benefits, opportunities, and efficiencies while identifying new ways to drive partner pipeline.
On the weekends, you’ll find Craig on the sidelines supporting his kids at sporting events or building something in his shop.
Brendan has over 20 years of Microsoft software consulting services experience working with enterprise, midmarket and even small businesses across a broad range of industries that include manufacturing, healthcare, financial services and public sector organizations. He is particularly passionate about helping customer think through the “why” before investing and implementing the latest technologies.
During his time identifying business transformation opportunities with customers he has also spend much of this time working with partners to navigate the multi-layer engagement model where communication and expectation management is critical to ensuring project success across all players (i.e., customer, partner, vendors, etc.)
Brendan enjoys traveling abroad and ideally in parts of the world that have iconic or new wine regions of the world where he can add to his growing wine collection. When not traveling he likes to play golf, ride his Peloton and start his day with an early morning walk!
Before joining The Partner Masters, Brendan himself was a Partner Masters customer and even helped Justin establish the IAMCP SoCal Chapter (International Association of Microsoft Channel Partners) in 2009.
Kevin joined us after working over 13 years for Microsoft where he brings a wealth of customer consulting and Microsoft partner experience. His first five years were working in Microsoft Consulting Services for large commercial companies as well as various US Federal Government three letter agencies and US military branches. He then joined the Microsoft Global Partner Services (GPS) organization where he worked with hundreds of small to enterprise Microsoft Partners in the System Integrator (SI) and Independent Software Vendor (ISV) space. Kevin worked for several years at the later part of his Microsoft tenure as the director for a team of Modern Work and Security architects across North and South America where they focused on growing Microsoft partner businesses.
While Kevin has a deep understanding of Microsoft, he also brings years of experience working for companies such as Hewlett-Packard and Verizon in various consulting, engineering, and leadership roles. Kevin holds a undergraduate and two Masters degrees in the Communications and Cybersecurity industries, both of which are large passion areas for him.
As a partner in the company and as the Executive Vice President, Kevin is building a new division of The Partner Masters known as the Technology Consulting Team. This division is designed to never compete with our partners, but to rather provide services and capabilities that Microsoft Partners do not offer. This is a unique opportunity for Microsoft Partners to drive additional business growth with little to no investment using a partner with an already established and trusted relationship. Kevin is highly motivated to use his various skillsets and experiences to drive partner profitability and to exceed customer expectations with this new division.
