Foad Farrokhnia (Zscaler)
Cyber security vendor Zscaler has promoted its Australian and New Zealand (A/NZ) channel head Foad Farrokhnia to lead the company's channel business across the Asia Pacific and Japan (APJ) region.
In his new role of senior director of channels and alliances for APJ, Farrokhnia will move from Melbourne to Singapore and will be responsible for developing the vendor’s channel approach in the region, as well as cultivating relationships between Zscaler and its partners.
Farrokhnia takes over the role from Andrew Mann, who left the company in June. He takes up the new position after nearly two years as A/NZ channel head, which he started back in April 2020.
During that time, the vendor claimed Farrokhnia was “instrumental” in growing Zscaler’s A/NZ channel, launched a professional services program and appointed Orca Tech as its exclusive distributor, among other wins.
ARN understands Zscaler has already begun searching for a new A/NZ channel lead to fill the absence left by Farrokhnia's promotion.
“Foad has a proven track record of scaling and overseeing successful channel sales and partner organisations,” said Arun Dharmalingam, VP of channels and alliances for Europe, the Middle East and Africa and APJ at Zscaler.
“During the past year, he has expanded Zscaler’s sales capacity to enable our alliance partners to achieve their full potential at a time when end users customers are increasingly deploying a zero trust architecture to defend their businesses against increased cyber threats and to accelerate digital transformation initiatives.
“In addition, Foad has demonstrated consistent leadership capabilities, been relentless in his engagement with partners to foster sales growth in the ANZ market, and was key to the sales teams’ success in the region.
“His well-deserved promotion is part of our long-term strategy to build out a regional leadership team that represents not only the best talent in the cyber security industry but also the team we believe can take the company to the next level,” he added.
