How did you know you didn’t want to stay in tech sales and transfer to marketing instead? 

So I get into Okta and I joined and I thought that I would love sales because I love talking to people and I'm super outgoing. 

But I soon realized that it wasn't my favorite thing.

So I thought back to the two women that I worked for. They often talked to people who asked them for informational interviews. I would listen to them do these coffee chats all the time.

So learning from that I knew I needed to start talking to people outside of sales. I started joining the ERGs (Employee Resource Group) as one way to do that. I got involved with the Pride ERG, the women at Okta ERG, throwing myself into helping them run events.

And I realized I was way happier doing those things: running fireside chats with the diversity council. Those things made me so happy and excited to log on. 

As this was happening, I had the opportunity to go to the Girls in Tech conference in Nashville, where our ex-CIO Alvina Antar spoke. And there were a bunch of people from the Okta team. At the conference, I had a conversation with a woman on the marketing team and I broke down to her.

We had this heart to heart and I told her, “I really think I'm interested in marketing, but there's no way for someone like me to get into the department because I would have to get promoted from inbound BDR to outbound SDR first. But I know I don't want to be an SDR.” 

I told her that everybody kept telling me that I had to go that route – that was my only option to get promoted. 

And she was like, “Why? Is there a law at Okta that you can't do that?”

I started talking to her more, and she was just like, “What do you like about your job?” And so I started telling her about the events and the Fireside Chats. And she said, “That sounds like a lot of what our marketing team does.” She was on the enterprise regional marketing team. 

And so on the flight back home I saw that there was an open position for the customer marketing team. And so I immediately reached out to Allison Johnson, who's the head of global customer marketing. Obviously I knew I could not apply for the role, but I just wanted to ask her about her team because I saw her team was hiring and she was so nice. She told me, “yeah I don't really have anything for you, but if you want to join us at Oktane, come help us run the customer rewards dinner, you can meet the team and see how we do things.”

I did that in October during Oktane, Okta’s customer conference. It was such a cool, grand event. And Allison giving me an opportunity to be in that space cemented my excitement in running events. So ever since October I just kept keeping my eye on our internal job board hoping there would be an opening. 

How did you make the transition to marketing happen?

The process took me well over six months.

Months after the conference, this position for a commercial regional marketing specialist popped up.

And I had also known that maybe six or seven other people that were competing for the role just internally and that they were Sr. SDRs that have been here longer than me who all had higher stature as an outbound SDR than because I was an inbound BDR. 

And so I'm thinking like, there's no way I can get this, the competition's too hard, but I'm going to keep trying. 

I asked myself, “what Amy and Keeks from Linkedin would do?” 

They would meet with everyone on the team. They would interview the people that are going to interview them because I'm joining a new team. I have to make sure it's the right fit. 

So before I even interviewed, I reached out to every single person on the team and a couple of people on the sister team and just said, “Hey, I'd love to have 15 minutes and just learn about your role and you.” 

I don't want to say that's why I got the position, but I think that it definitely helped prepare me for the interview.

And then when it came around to my panel interview, they really didn't give me any instructions of what to expect. And so knowing it was marketing and knowing I had all these events under my belt, I thought I should make a slide deck and share pictures to show them why I'm a little bit different and what they can expect from me as a teammate. 

After I created the deck, I went to my mentors at Okta to get their advice. I asked them “Can you pinpoint something I’m missing or something I could add?”

A Sr. Manager at Okta gave me such great advice. She advised me to “Show them yourself. Don't just show them all the stuff you've done, but you're a person. I know you as the person who loves to go to coffee shops in Oakland. Showing who you are outside of work makes working with you easier.”

The feedback I got from the marketing team after the interview was that it was very clear I wanted to be on this team and that I had all of these extracurriculars that were so tailored to the regional marketing team. And I think that was critical – knowing that this was exactly what I wanted to do. 

What was the biggest challenge for you going through this process? 

The biggest challenge at first was believing that I could do it – self-doubt and imposter syndrome. Typically as an inbound BDR, you would need to get promoted into SDR before you get promoted outside of the Sales Development Org. But deep down I knew that I would not be happy being an SDR. But I just kept hearing, “No, you have to be an SDR to get transferred anywhere else at Okta, it's not going to happen.”

So I think getting over the initial shock of “I want this so bad, but can I actually achieve it?” Was the hardest thing.

What helped you overcome self-doubt and impostor syndrome? 

I’m really grateful Okta has the ERGs and for the people here that let me join in. So many people at Okta were so supportive and I don’t know if I would have figured out that this was what I wanted had I joined a different company.

The Girls in Tech conference was just filled with super badass, powerful women. So many successful women (including Alvina, Okta’s CIO) were saying: “I started here. And then I used these skills to go to the next level. And then I was told I couldn't do this. So then I went and did it anyways and went this other way.” They kept using the term zigzagging in their career. And I think that's what also pushed me to think that careers don’t have to be linear. 

This goes without saying but Rachele Zamani, who led the BDA program has been not only like a mentor to me, but a really close friend as I got promoted out of her team. She just kept reiterating that same thought that the regional marketing manager said to me: “Why not you? Reread the job description. That's not rocket science. It's not impossible for you to do. Those are things you can learn.” 

Having someone else that you look up to believe in you is so powerful. It helped me develop this delusional confidence and tell myself, “I really want this, I can go for it. If I don't go for it, I won't have it.” 

Also interestingly enough, my lack of degree and experience before Okta really helped me have the confidence to say “I came to Okta with zero tech experience and learned to excel by learning everything on the job.” 

I felt I could showcase my coachability in that way. 

Finally,  I think it really helped me to know that this is exactly what I wanted to pursue. I think – and I could be speaking for just a small sum of people – but I think sometimes when people are unhappy in sales, there is a big range of positions you can go to after sales, but just wanting to get out of sales isn't enough to pick a lane. I think that you have to know what you want to do, or at least have liked that idea because, at the end of the day, it's going to be your job.

And if you just hate sales and you jump into something else, you could just hate it just as much.

How did you approach your informational interviews with the team before the interview? 

I said, “I'll put a hold for 20 minutes and we don't need to take up all your time, especially since your team is so busy.”

And when we got on the call I just started each call by saying, “Hey, candidly, I'm applying to be on your team. I'm really excited about it. And I want to know more about you and your role. And I just want to learn about what you guys do, because I want to make sure that this is what I think it is. And would love to hear if you have any advice for someone like me that is new to marketing dreaming of joining this team.” 

And everyone shared different helpful things. 

There's one person who showed me her workflow and it all seemed Greek to me. I would ask her what different tech is like Asana. Another person would encourage me to ask questions and refer me to different people that did different things on the team.  

What other resources did you use to prepare for your interview? 

What's funny is, so being on the sales team, we get the commercial marketing update every Monday. When I first started talking to the regional marketing manager, I actually started reading it closely. 

And as soon as I started reading it, I was like, wow. I had all these questions about marketing – it's all right there. I used all the links in the marketing updates to learn about the org.

But to be honest, beyond that, I am the worst at using external resources to upskill. 

When I'm off work, I love Bravo, I love reading Brene Brown. I've been really bad at studying outside of Okta. 

I learned mostly by paying attention to the marketing team, learning on org wiki, looking at all the departments and figuring out who’s on what team and who I can talk to.