Mike Werner
Co-Founder and Chief Ecosystem Officer
Mike Werner is co-founder and Chief Ecosystem Officer at Partner Dynamix. In this role, Mike uses his deep industry experience to assist companies who seek exponential product, platform or revenue growth through partner-centric strategies.
Throughout his career, Mike has led the vision, modeling and execution to create some of the most compelling ecosystems in the technology industry. Mike's ability to stitch together technology, platform and developer capabilities with brand, go-to-market and customer engagement has positioned him as thought leader in the creation of new ecosystems during the major industry inflection points of the last 30 years.
Prior to founding Partner Dynamix, Mike was at Red Hat (acquired by IBM) for over 11 years where he created Red Hat Partner Connect - the world's largest commercial open source ecosystem.
Under Mike's leadership, Red Hat evolved from a direct-selling model centered around its flagship product, Red Hat Enterprise Linux, into a dynamic, globally integrated ecosystem of technology, service, and sales partners. He established Red Hat's commercial product certification engine, leading to the certification of thousands of applications, devices, and services for end customers. Additionally, Mike implemented cross-functional go-to-market strategies and developed customer-facing catalogs and marketplaces for open-source and cloud-based solutions, including RHEL, OpenStack, Kubernetes, and Containers.
Mike dedicated over 20 years to Microsoft Corporation, serving in a range of leadership roles that centered on bridging technology platforms with ecosystem, community and influencer strategies to drive impactful results.
Mike established Microsoft's Emerging Business Team, strategically focusing on the intersection of innovation, platforms, and commercial investment. He also envisioned and built the Microsoft Technology Centers, creating a global hub for evangelism, sales, and services. Additionally, Mike launched the first Microsoft Partner Program and successfully scaled it across Microsoft Windows and .NET. As a founding member of the Microsoft Developer Network, the world’s largest professional developer program, he played a pivotal role in shaping the developer community. His experience includes serving as a product manager for key Microsoft tools, such as Visual Basic, and platforms like Internet Explorer and Windows. Mike began his career in Microsoft’s Public Relations group, where he crafted messaging and community engagement strategies, and served as a media assistant to then-CEO Bill Gates and the Office of the President.
Mike believes we are at a pivotal inflection point with the rise of AI, which is set to revolutionize the application, developer, and go-to-market ecosystems as we know them, unlocking extraordinary opportunities for decades to come.
