Stephanie Barnett takes helm as Okta’s VP of pre-sales in APJ

Okta has appointed former Cloudflare Asia Pacific and Japan (APJ) and China VP Stephanie Barnett as its vice president of pre-sales for APJ.

Barnett will lead the identity vendor’s team of solution engineers, system architects and technical specialists, while also assisting the sales team in expanding and supporting the customer base.

Based in Singapore, she will oversee Okta’s pre-sales operations and drive its go-to-market initiatives.

“Organisations today need to ensure their security postures and digital identity deployments are able to meet the challenges posed by an ever-evolving cyber landscape while offering end-users a secure, frictionless user experience,” said Barnett.

“I am proud to be able to lead Okta’s efforts in helping customers harness advanced identity technologies to meet their whole-of-business needs.”

During her time at Cloudflare, she developed go-to-market strategies to drive new market expansion and supported sales growth as well as key customer relationships.

She has over 15 years of experience in the tech industry across various leadership roles in sales, solutions engineering and business development at top organisations like IBM and Salesforce.

Ben Goodman, Okta’s SVP and general manager for APJ, said her expertise with customer experience, data analytics, insights and security are “key areas that bring depth to the Okta APJ leadership”.

“This is in addition to her experience in leading solutions engineering and consulting teams, all of which put her in good stead to help organisations across the region heighten their security postures through an integrated digital identity approach, while meeting the evolving needs of customers and employees in the hyper-competitive digital economy of tomorrow,” he said.

Goodman is also relatively new to the role, having joined Okta in July 2022 to spearhead the vendor’s ambitious growth plans. In a chat with Channel Asia early this year, he shared how Okta hopes to expand its channel network and capitalise on the region’s continued demand for digital services.