This week, my colleague Claudia Slane and I were honored to be recognized in the CRN Women of the Channel List for 2021. This recognition of female leaders in the channel shines an important light on the unique strengths, vision, and achievements of female leaders in our industry.

It also serves as an important reminder that diversity is critical to the success of cyber security teams and partnerships. Despite the impressive work by female leaders in the channel and beyond, women account for just 24% of cybersecurity workforces. So while we are flattered that two partner leaders at SafeGuard Cyber have been recognized on the Women of the Channel List for 2021, I want to take this opportunity to encourage more women to become part of the channel.

My hope is that ascending women in the industry recognize that we bring innovation, collaboration, creativity and energy that fosters positive teamwork, and there is more room in our industry for more like minded women and men.

In 2020, the partnership team at SafeGuard Cyber started with me. Today we have a team of three that is equally balanced with men and women who have incredible expertise, previous experience, and knowledge of the channel. As a leader, this makes my job easier and better positioned for success. It also provides many opportunities for continued growth and expansion.

I am thrilled that we have new additions like Claudia, who will help lead our channel expansion. Her expertise will empower us to grow from product-led channel engagement into services that our partners can create and use to drive revenue for their organizations.

The SafeGuard Cyber partnership team has implemented great ways to stay connected to our partners. We utilize Slack channels for ultra-fast communication, collaboration, and expedited sales management. We implemented Impartner’s partner portal for deal registration. And we adopted Seismic for sales enablement and marketing content management (and it’s compliant thanks to the SafeGuard Cyber integration). Seismic is our partner, and we are also a super happy customer of theirs.

This past year we brought incredible innovation to the SafeGuard Cyber platform by integrating with great partners like Crowdstrike, Seismic, Microsoft, Zoom, and more coming soon. We’ve developed a marketplace strategy for securing human connections, making our solution easier to access for our customers who use AWS Marketplace, CyberXchange and HMG Marketplace.

Next year, watch for a Channel Chief, more thought leadership, partnership success, and evolution from our team. We are in it for the long haul and will continue to make the channel fun, lucrative, collaborative and successful.

Many goals lie in front of us and our hope is other women are inspired by the channel accomplishments we and others have had in moving the industry forward.

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Podcast: Listen to our podcast on "Vision & Voice:
Removing Barriers for Women in Cybersecurity"

About the SafeGuard Cyber Illuminate Partner Program

Through Illuminate, we enable our channel partners with the technology, training and business enablement resources to provide their customers with SaaS Digital Risk solutions that simplify security sophistication and leave nothing to chance. Find more info about our partner program: partners@safeguardcyber.com