» RESILIENCE PAYS OFF

Kaitlyn Elizabeth Riddle, Global Social Media Marketing Manager, Infoblox says that she is representative of women who are earning their way to senior positions through hard work, resilience and higher levels of education

What made you choose this career path? How would you summarize your professional journey so far in terms of meeting expectations, both yours and the organizations?

My professional journey has been nothing short of a wild adventure filled with struggle, hard work, risk, opportunity and hardearned success. I worked as a public school teacher for six years prior to changing to a new career path in B2B digital marketing.

In 2014, after considering multiple potential new career options, I began working for a world class company in Silicon Valley called Intertrust Technologies. Intertrust gave me a strong foundation for learning and growing as a digital marketer in the technology, streaming media, and cybersecurity spaces. From there, I fell in love with the cybersecurity industry and with social media marketing.

I’ve been a proud Infoblox for the past five years and counting, and this is where I belong. Infoblox has far exceeded my expectations as an organization that helps enterprises worldwide enhance their cybersecurity posture, address core networking challenges while enhancing their work from anywhere experiences. Infoblox has also far exceeded my expectations as a company that goes above and beyond to take exceptional care of its employees. Infoblox is where I have felt I belonged before, during and after my ongoing breast cancer and treatment.

Our entire company has supported me throughout my ongoing journey as a breast cancer patient. Our CEO Jesper Andersen personally delivered a wagon full or beautiful, organic groceries and flowers to my home during chemotherapy treatment. Have you ever heard of a CEO doing something like that before? Me neither. What’s more, Infoblox provides me with ample opportunities to learn and grow in my role as Global Social Media Marketing Manager. My many mentors at Infoblox are also helping me to build strong relationships and leadership skills I need as I begin to climb the corporate ladder.

From your experience, is gender a differentiator in Marketing at all or are men and women similar in these roles in terms of the strengths they bring to these roles in conceptualizing and executing? Are women sufficiently recognized for their

contributions? Tabish Asifi The cybersecurity industry tends to portray the representation of Group IT Governance Lead women in cybersecurity as a dilemma rather than as an opportu-Majid Al Futtaim nity or cause for celebration. This trend seems to apply across We women in cybersecurity and in B2B digital marketing are empowered by our incredibly hard work, resilience and higher levels of education, and we are earning our way to leadership positions in higher numbers. For example, according to research from ISC2, 24% of cybersecurity professionals identify as female. This imbalance is what seems to make headlines. However, research also shows that prior to 2013, only 11% of the cybersecurity industry were women. That’s a 118% increase of women in cybersecurity from 2013 to today. These remarkable accomplishments are more than worth celebrating! As for Marketing, female representation remains stronger compared to the cybersecurity industry alone. Not only are most Marketing roles held by women, recent research from LinkedIn also shows that the majority of Marketing leaders are women, too. The highest representation of women is social media related

roles such as mine, as 73% of social media related roles are held by women. There remains a great deal of work to be done though. Women of color continue to be underrepresented in Marketing, and the gender pay gap remains a concern.

Furthermore, Infoblox takes great pride in building a corporate culture that is safe, inclusive, fun, customer-centric, promotes learning, and is genuinely supportive of all employees. At Infoblox, I am very well recognized and rewarded for my hard work and accomplishments. Showing appreciation and recognition for outstanding performance and everyday excellence is an important part of our corporate culture.

How has Hybrid work and accelerated digitalization challenged, changed and enabled your role in Marketing?

Since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, the social media landscape has evolved quite dramatically. I’ve never had so many opportunities to enhance social engagement and help build the Infobox community with creativity. Now, more than ever, community must be at the heart of everything we do on social media.

Social media engagement has increased by about 61% during the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic alone. Trust in business leadership began to decline across all global sectors, led by entertainment and technology. In 2020 alone, the number of social media users grew by 300 million. Social media users are engaging on social media at earlier times of the day, more often, and are doing so on their mobile devices more than ever before.

I’m also seeing a significant global shift in culture across social media sites, focusing more than ever before on the human element and human experience. It’s a wonderful thing to see, and it’s giving me and our social media team daily opportunities to engage with our audiences and build trust with our employees, customers and partners online in a very refreshing way.

Briefly highlight some of the standout milestones from your current role and over the past?

Since joining Infoblox in 2017, I have many standout milestones to celebrate. Leading our global corporate social media marketing strategy is my primary focus at Infoblox. I am incredibly proud of the success that we have achieved with our growing social media presence, engagement, social listening and understanding of our target audiences and their needs.

Spearheading and leading Infoblox’s first ever Employee Advocacy/Social Selling program has also been a significant milestone in my current role. Empowering Infoblox employees to build their personal brands, trust and credibility with their audiences on social media has also greatly contributed to positioning Infoblox as a cybersecurity leader and employer of choice.

Lastly, perhaps my greatest accomplishment of all is that I recently returned to working full time after taking several months of medical leave to complete chemotherapy for my ongoing breast cancer treatment.

What would be some of the goals that you have set for yourself in the years ahead in your professional journey?

I’m at a very exciting point in my career as I prepare to climb the corporate ladder and strive to learn and grow as a Social Media Marketing leader. I am always looking to continue to learn and grow as a social media marketing expert on all our current social media channels and trends, and as an expert on personal and professional branding. I also strive to better understand our target audiences and their personas on social media to gain deeper knowledge of their values, interests, and cybersecurity and networking pain points.

Kaitlyn Elizabeth Riddle

Global Social Media Marketing Manager, Infoblox