Alison Leonard-Morgan

I've had some really great women leaders and mentors, and also friends that have really inspired me through my career and helped lead me and helped guide me to get to where I am today. Seancee Touhey, VP of Strategic Alliances and Channel at Resolve Tech Solutions, helped me early in my career learning the ropes of working with VARs, and Strategic Alliances. Laura Davis, who is currently the Government, Education and Healthcare Channel VP at Zscaler, was someone I worked for directly and who has been instrumental in supporting and educating me in the federal space. Bryce Grow, Vice President of America's Channel for SentinelOne, is another leader I worked for directly for Commercial Alliances at Zscaler who helped me grow and support our ecosystem partners. Stacy Corcoran, Senior Director of Global Channels at JumpCloud, was my mentor at Zscaler and helped me learn the business and focus on the key areas that helped us grow and scale many of the early partnerships at Zscaler. These women have been fantastic supporters throughout my career, and I'm grateful for their guidance and leadership. I attribute my success to these women who have helped me learn and grow throughout my roles and career.

I think when someone tells you no, the most important thing is to keep going. You're going to have challenges throughout your career. I was in an industry that there were not a lot of women in initially. That has now changed and it’s great to see women in so many roles and even young women learning coding and other technologies early on. Educate yourself and learn new things. If someone says no, keep moving forward and trying, and find your tribe of women and your tribe of supporters. The closed doors you experience are a stepping stone to learning and growing. Learn that new skill set, find your people, and continue to move forward in your career, because there's always going to be challenges and people that don't support you. Be your own advocate and know your self worth.

I think being able to share stories is really important way for women to hear and see how other women have evolved their careers in a specific industry. There may be somebody young in their career that's just getting going, and they think, I don't know, maybe it's not for me. I hope younger women can look at me and see what I've done, see what I've accomplished and the places I have worked throughout my career and I hope that will motivate them. Being able to work at top Cybersecurity and Cloud leaders such as Zscaler and Google alongside some really brilliant people has been an honor. It won’t always be perfect but if you can keep educating yourself along the way and learning you

Initially, when I started in the technology field, it was a very male-dominated environment. It still is in a lot of ways. Some of the companies I worked at, I was one of the only females in my group or organization for early on, for a long period of time. There wasn't a lot of females in my role or in technology. I think today it's really great that that's changed a lot in the technology space. There are a lot more women today, and it's just great to have other women supporting you, because I think it was a tough environment initially starting out in it, not having a lot of women in the type of roles I was in. That was definitely a challenge for me, but having the support of the great leaders I mentioned and my mentor Stacy when I was at Zscaler really enabled me to be able to excel in those positions.

I think integrity and honesty are super important, and building great relationships. In my career, I've managed partnerships, so partners really need to trust you, and they need to trust the companies that you work for. Building relationships is super important in my role, and being able to have good relationships with those partners, but also have integrity and trust, I think are super important values.