Her Story
About Sravani
Sravani Sivakumar serves as Senior Product Manager at Zscaler, a role she has held for close to a year and a half. She entered the cybersecurity field in 2019 after discovering her interest during her undergraduate studies in India, where she worked with a cybersecurity professor and obtained her Security Plus Certification. After earning an engineering degree from India, Sravani pursued her MBA at the University of Washington Foster School of Business, specializing in technology management and product management. During her MBA program, she completed internships at Microsoft and startups while gaining experience on the cloud security team at AWS before joining Zscaler. Her career path reflects a consistent focus on building products in the cybersecurity domain.
Her Interview
Ten minutes with Sravani
01What do you attribute your success to?
I just kept pursuing it. I just did not stop. I honestly didn't know there was another option. I knew I wanted to do an MBA, so I just did the MBA. After MBA, I knew I wanted to be in product management, so I just kept looking for those opportunities, and doing the internships that will add up to my career to get into the product management. So finally landed that full-time interview. I had enough work experience that would convince the team that yeah, would be a good fit for the role.
02What’s the best career advice you’ve ever received?
Just keep doing great work, and things will eventually fall into place.
03What advice would you give to young women entering your industry?
I just want them to learn more basics. Understand what they want to, have clear goals, so they know what they're trying to achieve. Pretty much that.
04What are the biggest challenges or opportunities in your field right now?
I think cybersecurity is pretty male-dominated. So there's pretty, there's literally so less women you can find. But it's just a tricky, dynamic workplace, I would say.
05What values are most important to you in your work and personal life?
Integrity and keeping up to the commitments that I've made. So, for example, when I say to my team members that I want this, or I will be delivering this. I want to ensure, do my 100% I can to actually stick to the timeline and deliver it, or keep everybody communicated that if there is any changes with the progress, that is something I very strictly do, especially with product management, where there's a lot of work across, cross-functionally, collaborative work. Not in that. We over-communicate and let everybody know, all the stakeholders know what's happening.
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