Okta names Stephanie Barnett as VP of Presales for Asia Pacific & Japan

Okta has appointed tech industry executive Stephanie Barnett as its Vice President of Presales for the Asia-Pacific & Japan (APJ) region. 

Barnett will lead Okta's team of solution engineers, system architects and technical specialists across the APJ region, assisting the sales team in acquiring and supporting customers and generating growth. Barnett will also oversee pre-sales operations and drive Okta's scaled strategic, enterprise-wide go-to-market initiatives. 

Barnett brings with her nearly 15 years of experience in the tech industry, having served across various leadership roles in sales, solution engineering and business development at IBM, Salesforce and Cloudflare. Barnett was most recently Vice President and Chief of Staff for Asia Pacific, Japan & China at Cloudflare, where she developed go-to-market strategies to drive new market expansion, supported sales growth, and nurtured key customer relationships. 

Prior to that, Barnett rose through the ranks during her nine-year tenure at Salesforce to be appointed as Director, Emerging Solution Engineering APAC. In this role, it was imperative that Barnett developed deep working relationships with customers across various industries, understood unique customer requirements and their pain points, anticipated their needs and thereafter developed industry-leading innovative solutions with her team of technology experts. 

Ben Goodman, Okta's Senior Vice President and General Manager for Asia Pacific & Japan, said, "We are excited to welcome Barnett to the Okta family. Her deep expertise in 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 organizations across the region heighten their security postures through an integrated digital identity approach, while meeting the evolving needs of customers and employees in the hypercompetitive digital economy of tomorrow." 

"Organizations 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." 

Based in Singapore, Barnett holds a Bachelor of Commerce in Accounting and Bachelor of Arts in Marketing, Spanish and German from the University of Sydney, as well as a Masters of Innovation and Technology Management, Strategic Management of Risk from the University of New South Wales.