Developing Women’s Leadership Potential
Palo Alto Networks has been running a project called “Women in Cyber,” and I’ve had the privilege to expand this initiative with my team in Taiwan, China, and South Korea for the past year. I’ve been fortunate to have great dialogue with the women in the industry from our various sessions. And one of the most memorable moments was when, after a speech I gave in Seoul, a young Korean Ph.D. student approached me and asked me a question I loved: “What motivates you, Wenting?”
I was always motivated to achieve academically and to accelerate my path to a career. I started to seek out sources of motivation on my journey, and I learned quickly that I am most motivated by the achievements of others — seeing them be inspired, influenced, and empowered sets a great example for me. In the meantime, I continue to discover new sides of myself, and I hope to continue improving and inspiring others in order to give back to society.
The Journey to Becoming a Leader
I started my career as an individual contributor and then, over time, developed into a manager and people leader. As much as I enjoyed the autonomy and flexibility of being an individual contributor, I was excited when I saw what I can achieve through others, and this motivated me to shift to a new gear in terms of my own work. The myth I had believed was that as a manager, I would simply be delegating work to others in order to meet the goals set forth within a team and company, not making my own contributions.
As my management journey continued, I saw that both of these scenarios were the case. We all eventually would like to achieve business goals; however, achieving with excellence is difficult, and the business continually needs more talent. I started to realise that, as a leader, I was an enabler, and as such, my singular objective was to identify and amplify the strengths of those with whom I worked. It’s about understanding what motivates your employees and improves their wellbeing, and it’s about making this the best possible workplace for them.
Advice to Women for Developing Leadership Skills
If you’re looking to enter leadership yourself, I would recommend taking these steps for professional development:
Get a mentor. It’s never easy to be self-aware enough to identify and confront your vulnerabilities. One of the ways to do this that I have found effective is to have a work or life mentor. A mentor is just like a mirror showing me who I am and how I can transform those vulnerabilities into strengths. Although it is never comfortable to face our weaknesses or the parts of ourselves that need improvement, you might feel you embrace this new chapter when you find you’re more able to contribute at work and discover that you enjoy the new you that arises from the transformation.
Get out of your comfort zone and learn new things. Resilience can be developed. Getting out of our comfort zones and putting ourselves in situations where we can learn new things can unleash our potential. I was born and raised in Taiwan. When I was in my late twenties, I decided to live in North Africa for a few years and simply challenge the way I had been living. I wrote a series of articles about my journey in Morocco, from the beginning, when it was so hard to immerse myself in the culture, to the end of my time there, when I had eventually come to respect and appreciate all those differences. I would say my time there was one of my best life experiences because it opened my mind to places and people I had never before experienced.
Have a growth mindset. Continuing to learn and having a growth mindset are critical. The very first product for me to sell, more than 20 years ago, was a load balancing, disaster recovery system, which today is built by default on a laptop or a server today. The technology evolves, and we need to continue learning to keep up to speed and reflect the way we can contribute to society. While I am writing this article, the COVID-19 pandemic is impacting everyone’s life and the world economy. In order to tackle this, we must continually adapt to all types of situations, and making the best decision is never easy.
In my conversations with women leaders, for the most part, the views they’ve shared with regard to how they got where they are today and what their biggest challenges have been did not have anything to do with their gender. From my observations, the critical factors to their success have been their characteristics of resilience, adaptability, and a growth mindset — traits we should all develop on our own career journeys.
Everyone wants their voice to be heard, and everyone has a dream. If we can help others to fulfill their dreams and have their voices heard, that is a gift we all benefit from.
Discovering My Path
Neel Kattumadam, Software Engineering Intern
It may sound odd coming from someone who just finished a software engineering internship, but when I graduated high school, I wanted to be a doctor. I was accepted into UT Austin, and once I started college, however, I quickly realized that becoming a doctor was a fantasy, because it wasn’t my love for medicine that made me want to pursue that career. As corny as it may sound, what drew me to medicine was helping people with their problems and finding solutions for them. And that applied to technology as well as to medicine.
I had already been taking computer science courses, so I decided to pursue a career in that field. Once I graduated from UT Austin in May 2019, I started looking into graduate programs, and I was accepted into Carnegie Mellon University’s Master of Science in information systems program, which I began last fall. I went into the program most interested in data science, but the more courses in software engineering that I took, the more I liked it.
So when it came time to start exploring internships for the coming summer, I applied to a host of computer science internships, including the Palo Alto Networks program. Its focus on software engineering was appealing to me, and over the course of this three-month program, I’ve decided that this is the career for me.
In general, my team was working on projects that, in several ways, allow us to customize our products to suit the customers’ needs and their unique work setups. My work in particular involved creating a best practices assessment. I came in after the sale had been made and the customer was learning how to best use the product. I love interacting with customers, helping solve their problems, and optimizing their products to improve the way they work, so this was exactly the kind of thing I set out to do!
It never felt like work to me. I never felt like it was a grind to work three or four hours on a project — instead, it was more like, “Oh cool, now I can learn more about this!” I don’t think I’ve ever experienced that with any other subject.
Going Remote
Of course, when I applied and was accepted for this internship, my expectation was that I would return home to the Bay Area from Austin, TX, and work at Palo Alto Networks’ headquarters. But the coronavirus changed everything, and in March I was told that my internship would be done remotely. I left school and moved home to Saratoga, CA, and I spent the three months of my internship working from home.
Surprisingly, I loved working remotely. I enjoyed being able to structure my own day rather than arriving at a designated time. I’m not exactly a morning person, and if I’d had to go to the office, I would have had to wake up early and then sit in traffic for 30 to 45 minutes just to be there on time. But because I was working remotely, I was able to adjust the schedule so that I was at my best — starting my day a little later in the morning and working a little later into the evening. Not only that but I enjoyed having flexibility in my work environment. Sometimes I worked at my desk, sometimes at the kitchen counter with my mom. Sometimes I worked straight through, and sometimes I took a break and watched the news with my family. I think this flexibility allowed me to stay fresh.
Of course, it wasn’t always easy. I think going to work in an office is definitely the best way to network. I only knew three or four interns in my class, and that may have been my fault, because I immediately started flooding myself with work, and I didn’t hop on as many Zoom events as I could have. The face-to-face connections you make with peers when you’re in a workplace are really valuable, so if there’s one drawback to working remotely, I’d say that was it.
However, even though I’ve been remote the entire time, Palo Alto Networks’ human resources and recruiting services are 100% better than any I’ve seen at any other company. I had done an internship the previous year with a large, established, very well-known company, and during that time I only spoke to the recruiter a couple of times and was invited to a couple of socials at bars, things like that. But even being entirely remote with Palo Alto Networks, this was hands-down a better experience for staying connected.
Almost every day, there were opportunities to socialize and connect with each other, to hear speakers share their ideas and experiences, and to learn about new technologies or ways to improve the work we were doing. We even played interactive games using Kahoot or other apps, and the prizes were incredible — an Apple watch, gift cards to Amazon, and more. Gestures like this demonstrate that the company’s doing well, which is reassuring, but also that interns are worth that level of investment. There are numerous small groups that we were part of as well, and in my group, the Global Customer Support group, there was a team of about 15 interns who met every week to share common interests, compare experiences, or ask advice.
In fact, my internship experience was so positive that my manager was able to get approval to extend my internship, giving me the ability to work for Palo Alto Networks part time while I continue school. I would highly recommend this experience, both for the tremendous learning and professional experience you’ll get as well as for the connections you’ll make along the way.
LEAP Sales Academy Offers Hot Career Prospects
Tara Aspin, Business Development Representative
As most people who are early in their careers know, finding a full-time job in your desired field right out of college is a challenge. As someone who’s interested in sales, what I often see is ads for positions that require one to two years’ experience. That may not seem like a lot, but even if you’ve worked a couple of internships, those are typically only about three months long, so by the time you graduate, you still fall short.
While I was completing my bachelor’s degree in Graphic Communication and Management at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo, I took a summer internship with Cambridge CM, a construction management company in the Bay Area, California. That’s when I discovered Palo Alto Networks — Cambridge managed the building process of its new headquarters in Santa Clara. I grew interested when I saw the building and how well-appointed it was, so I started doing a little research into the company.
I didn’t really know anything about Palo Alto Networks, but I have always been interested in technology, and I knew cybersecurity was a growing field, so I was curious about whether they had any sales positions available. That’s when I discovered Palo Alto Network’s unique offerings for new grads, the LEAP program, and among its various academies was the Sales Academy. During this one-year program, I would get the opportunity to work as a full-time employee while also being given an opportunity to learn and develop my sales skills — all within the safe confines of an early-in-career program where I’m expected to be inexperienced and learning the ropes. Not only that but the company’s trajectory and workplace culture, from what I could see, seemed exciting to me, so I applied to the program.
Over the course of just a month, I interviewed with a recruiter and three different managers within the sales team, and by September 2019, I was part of the Business Development Representative team at Palo Alto Networks!
Inside the Academy
My year has certainly been exciting! Of the 10 of us in the Sales Academy, four of us were at headquarters, and we were able to work together in the office, collaborating and asking questions, so I had a fantastic support system and was never the odd one out. Early on, we would also do Zoom calls with the teams in Plano, Texas, and New York, learning about cybersecurity and all our products and verticals. We got to try our hand at making and delivering presentations, in groups and solo, which was tremendously helpful in building my confidence in working with customers.
Within about two months, we were each given a territory to cover, and I was assigned to our State, Local, and Education (SLED) accounts in the Northwest. I worked with other Business Development Reps and Field Reps to determine the best tactics for developing new business, and I discovered an array of prospecting tools. I got to work side by side with colleagues in an office for a few months before COVID hit and forced us all to work remotely from home. And although working from home brought new challenges, I no longer had to commute in Bay Area traffic (a definite plus!), and I was already very used to working with team members in other parts of the country, so conducting business and collaborating with peers virtually was something we were all used to doing already.
Valuable Lessons
One of the most important things I’ve received from the Sales Academy is confidence in speaking with customers. I’ve learned so much about how to help customer’s pain points with our products, and the work on presentations I’ve done has really prepared me to talk to customers in a professional way and to address their unique needs.
I’ve also learned a whole lot about time management since I had to manage my day-to-day work prospecting accounts while also making time to expand my product knowledge and prepare quality presentations I’d been assigned. That time-management training will serve me well as I grow in my career.
Early on, I was really intimidated about talking to more experienced team members within the company. I quickly realized that everyone was so helpful and really wanted me to succeed. It has been extremely valuable to set up internal calls with my coworkers, to pick their brains and learn about their career journeys in sales.
The company is certainly generous in terms of its perks — the fancy snack bars, donation matching, the stipends to help us cover home office expenses while working from home, and more. But more importantly, the generosity I’ve found in people who offer their time and commitment to my success has made all the difference. I look forward to continuing to grow in this role and learn even more about this industry and this company.