Sharlene Eaton - Cybersecurity Strategist | Regional Account Manager

About Sharlene

Sharlene Eaton serves as a field representative for Fortinet, specializing in cybersecurity solutions that address challenges such as AI and AI governance. In this role, she targets new white space accounts within her Southern California territory, meets with clients and partners, and expands existing accounts. She brings 15 to 20 years of experience in tech and cybersecurity, having begun at SAP in 2002 where she advanced to sales manager handling renewals. After a period in real estate and a seven-year parenting break, she returned to cybersecurity around 2009 at Sophos and has since worked with three additional companies in the space. Eaton has held management positions at two organizations, where she focused on mentoring younger professionals and supporting their career growth. As a single mother, she currently operates as an individual contributor to maintain schedule flexibility while continuing to build internal and external relationships through collaboration and networking. Outside of her professional work, she advocates for animal adoption and supports efforts to address homelessness.

Ten minutes with Sharlene

01What advice would you give to young women entering your industry?

I would absolutely highly recommend it, because I do think that It is a fantastic career, and sort of my success has been really with collaboration and networking, and a big part of our business is working within our partner channel program that resells our product, and it's really relationship building. So, for me, I've been very successful at every company based on internal relationships that I've built and external relationships that I've built. And I think, really, you can't you can teach, sort of, very easily a lot of the tactical parts of a job, but you can't teach someone motivation, etc, and sort of that long-term growth, and there's lots of different facets of the business you can go into within tech. So I think if you're hungry and you're professional, I think it's a fantastic career. And I would absolutely You know, be open to mentoring again, any young woman that ever came to me, and just giving advice along the way, depending on what stage they're at in their career.