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.
Using Data to Improve Our Customers’ Experiences
Working in data science wasn’t a career that I ever aspired to, although technology has always been a part of my life. In fact, when I was growing up, my mother worked for IBM, and I still remember the first computer she brought home.
Before taking this job, I had worked for several companies doing market research, community management, and product management. Just prior to joining Palo Alto Networks, I was co-founder and VP of Product & Marketing for three years for a startup called Shocase, which was winding down its business. I knew someone that worked for Palo Alto Networks, and he reached out to me and said, “I’m looking for a junior version of you to come in and handle market research.”
It was great timing for me to transition away from the startup, so I told him, “I know someone who’s not a junior version of me but is the real version of me! Why don’t I work as a consultant for you on whatever you need until you find someone full time?”
So I did some consulting work for a couple months, as an independent contractor, and eventually I became a full-time employee, and I really love what I do.
What is Data Science?
When I first joined Palo Alto Networks, my team did traditional market research into consumer behavior with regard to cybersecurity. We used the basic tools of that trade — surveys and focus groups, that kind of thing. We still do that, but we’ve taken it a step further. As new members of the Marketing Data Science team, we combine our market research with data science in order to better understand the customer experience.
Like a lot of companies today, Palo Alto Networks utilizes technology to capture data about our customers. Obviously, as a cybersecurity company, the data we’re capturing typically pertains to the type of business they have, how they’re using and storing their sensitive information, and how their internet security is managed. Historically, our marketing data science team has been charged with building a variety of predictive models — lead rank scores, account rank scores, churn models, etc.
But now, under the Marketing Data Science umbrella, we’re all part of one team, so we can work together to ensure that the market research we collect is fed into the models the data science experts are building in order to make them as accurate as possible.
As part of this, we use a customer feedback, measurement, and management system called Medallia. We collect feedback across key touch points that customers have with Palo Alto Networks. These include surveys about onboarding, relationship, customer support, professional services, and customer success — every interaction we have with customers from the beginning — and we use that information in the data science models to determine the impacts of those interactions on customer value.
So what we’re really focused on is taking the customer experience to the next level. Everything we do revolves around helping people make better decisions, and taking better care of our customers. It’s about not only nurturing potential customers, but also ensuring that existing customers are happy, and their environments are better protected.
And that’s what makes me excited to come to work each day — that challenge of doing new and different things. I like to solve problems and take on challenges, so this job is really a perfect fit.
Company Culture
I had always been aware of cybersecurity before joining Palo Alto Networks but I wasn’t really aware of the ins and outs of the industry. I have a personal connection to it because I’ve been a victim of scenarios involving hackers — in situations when I took for granted that my personal data was safe, but it wasn’t. So the fact that we as a business can come in and solve those problems and protect people’s sensitive data and make customers more confident in interacting with others online, that’s extremely important.
I would say the biggest transition for me was moving from a business-to-consumer (B2C) company to a business-to-business (B2B) company. Before I joined Palo Alto Networks, I’d worked for a lot of different companies, but mostly they were B2C — selling products directly to individual consumers — and C2C, which is consumers selling to consumers. It’s a very different process to engage with business customers versus individual consumers. Here, we have a physical product that we’re building, and we have a Sales team that needs to sell these products, but it’s not like it’s something where they can pay and we hand it to them and we’re done. It’s a long lead cycle with a lot of people and processes involved, whereas in the companies where I’ve worked, it was more like, “Here’s my website; please go there to buy my product.”
Overall, I definitely had to get up to speed on what, exactly, the company does and how a B2B company works, and that was a bit of a transition. Fortunately, a lot of very generous people were happy to walk me through the details about how our products are different from those of our competitors. I think that the people here are very dedicated and smart, and they work together well. Even if you’re not working in the same group or department with them, they’re always very collaborative. They always want to help you. If you reach out to somebody with a question, they’ll respond to it. I really appreciate that collaborative nature.
Stay Ready
Laramie Mergerson, Majors Account Manager, Cortex
When I joined Palo Alto Networks, I honestly didn’t expect to stay longer than a year. But the opportunities that have been offered to me and the investments made in me by some of our current and former executives showed me that the people here valued my abilities and wanted me to succeed.
When I first started here, I was an inside sales rep, which was new to me after years selling in the field. I needed to learn about cybersecurity and master our products and market in order to move up. But my commitment to learning and taking on new responsibilities led to my being able to continually move up inside the company. That has inspired loyalty to the brand that has allowed me to see many different parts of the cybersecurity industry that I didn’t expect to encounter.
For example, I was given an opportunity to stretch my abilities and was the first employee to take on a special assignment with our current Vice President of Business Development, which revealed many different aspects of the business to me. After that, I was selected in the first cohort for a new hybrid position working with Palo Alto Networks’ Major and Global Accounts. After a very successful year in that role, I was promoted as the first sales rep covering Major Accounts in Texas for Cortex, our detection and response platform that utilizes collected data to stop cyber attacks. That’s a lot of firsts! These opportunities have not only given me a high level of work satisfaction, but they’ve shown me that there’s still plenty of room for me to grow and learn with this company.
Something else I’m really proud of and personally enjoy is having the opportunity to take some of my black customers to events that are tailored to their interests — many of which received a response and attendance rate of around 90%, which is almost unheard of in sales. To see the smiles and appreciation from my customers and watch our relationships grow over the years has been exciting and fulfilling. I look forward to nurturing these relationships for years to come.
Keys to Success
I ran a marketplace startup for a few years before coming to Palo Alto Networks. I believe it was this experience, more than any other prior role, that prepared me for working here. In fact, I’ve found that wearing different hats in order to achieve results has been a tremendous asset to me throughout my career because it has made me versatile and demonstrated my willingness to take on new responsibilities.
Additionally, I spent time in the military early in my career and played basketball at high levels. I believe both of these experiences have contributed to my success as well because they taught me about working with teams and having a “no excuses” mentality that is all about results, both of which are key to success in sales.
At the end of the day, I feel any experience can be valuable if you are always looking for opportunities to learn and challenge yourself. Some of the best advice I’ve ever received was to be ready when your number is called. You might only get one shot to prove yourself. The black community has a saying, which I fully believe: If you stay ready, you don’t have to get ready. I’ve made it a priority to stay ready, and I believe that has helped me to achieve career success.