From Fashion Design to Cybersecurity Sales: Building Your Career Brand with Cynthia Hara | Ep021

Episode Information Show Notes In this episode of Career Downloads, host Manuel Martinez sits down with Cynthia Hara, a successful cybersecurity sales executive, who shares her fascinating journey from aspiring fashion designer to thriving tech sales leader. Growing up in Silicon Valley with an engineer father, Cynthia initially planned a career in fashion design. A pivotal moment at a career fair changed her trajectory, leading her to discover opportunities in technology and sales. She openly shares how she turned what could have been seen as a disadvantage – being one of few women in her information systems classes – into a strategic career advantage. Cynthia provides practical insights on: Starting in tech sales with no prior experience Making the transition from cold calling to enterprise sales Building and maintaining professional relationships Negotiating salaries and benefits effectively Creating valuable business networks Establishing yourself as a trusted advisor Starting a non-profit to support women in tech A particularly valuable segment covers her approach to mentorship and coaching, explaining the crucial differences between the two and how to leverage both for career growth. Cynthia also discusses how she built her professional brand and shares strategies for standing out in a competitive field. This episode is essential listening for anyone interested in tech sales, career transitions, or professional development. Whether you’re just starting your career or looking to advance to the next level, Cynthia’s experiences and advice provide actionable insights you can implement today. Follow Career Downloads: Website: https://careerdownloads.com YouTube https://www.youtube.com/@careerdownloads X/Twitter https://twitter.com/@careerdownloads TikTok https://www.tiktok.com/@careerdownloads LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/company/career-downloads Instagram https://www.instagram.com/careerdownloads FaceBook https://www.facebook.com/people/Career-Downloads/61561144531249 Connect with our host: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/manuelmartinez-it/ Connect with our guest: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/cynthiahara/ #CareerDownloads #TechSales #CareerAdvice #WomenInTech #ProfessionalDevelopment Transcript Manuel: Welcome everyone, my name is Manuel Martinez and this is another episode of Career Downloads, where each episode I basically hit the refresh button, bring on a different guest to learn more about their background, their experience, and just the different ways that they’ve managed their career, to really be able to pull out those actionable items for you that you can go ahead and implement as you’re managing your own career. So for today’s episode, I have with me Cynthia Hara and we met a few years ago. She is on the technology sales side and she’s done a lot of interesting side projects. There’s a lot of speaking that she’s done, so I think she brings a wealth of experience. Not everybody wants to do the hands-on keyboard, but she still is involved in technology, understands a lot of that and some of the business problems, so I think there’s a lot of good information that she’s going to provide to everybody. So with that, go ahead and plug in and download the knowledge and I will introduce Cynthia. Cynthia: Awesome, thank you so much for having me. Manuel: I appreciate you coming on. It’s definitely something that I think is of interest, so I’ve, you know, I think around the time that we met, I was also on the sales side, but I was on the sales engineer and, you know, you’re more on the account manager side, but definitely I think that you’re going to provide a lot of good information just in the conversations we’ve had, you know, indirectly and on our own. Cynthia: Awesome, well thank you. Manuel: So just to kind of, what I’ve been doing with everybody is if you just briefly tell me kind of what your current role is and some of the responsibilities and then, you know, from there we’ll kind of, we’ll start at the beginning and just kind of work up to that. Cynthia: All right, yeah, so when I know when you and I met a few years ago, I was working as an account executive for a global cybersecurity company. And then since then, I now work at another cybersecurity company. So I moved about three years ago. So I just finished my three years at Rubrik. And so I’m still doing account executive. What that means is I’m customer facing. So working with customers to essentially identify, you know, what are their cybersecurity initiatives? How can we help them from a ransomware recovery perspective? And then, you know, having more executive level conversations around how do we continue to improve, especially because as you know, you know, security attacks keep on going up. And the cost of that always goes up as well. So just trying to help them manage their risk. And so I’ve been loving it. Yeah, so that’s, it’s basically the summary. I mean, a quick summary of my job. Manuel: Cool. And now, if you don’t mind giving me a, and again, you can, doesn’t have to be in full detail, but just give me an idea of kind of a little bit of your background, kind of where you grew up, and then eventually what got you interested in technology. And then I guess kind of eventually, you know, into that realm. Cynthia: Yeah, I grew up in the Bay Area. So really the heart of technology. But when I was growing up, I never really considered technology for myself. My dad was an engineer, though. But I just, I thought I was going to go into fashion. So I used to Google, you know, free fashion internships.com to try and find something nothing they’d never pay in the fashion industry. So you had to work for free. But I went to a career fair for an art school thinking I was going to go into an art program, be a fashion designer, get on Project Runway, move to New York City. And I vividly remember I was standing in line behind this, this young woman, and she had a pizza box and just opens up this pizza box that all these types of her artwork, textiles, you know, sketching. And in my head, I was like, Oh, God, I am not creative enough for this. So I quickly pivoted, I said I would go into business school. And so I ended up going to Cal Poly SLO, go Mustangs, and studied business there. And it was in the business program that you could pick concentrations. So you had to take at least one class from each concentration. And one thing I noticed when I took my information systems one was, I was one of maybe a couple of women in the class. And I thought, you know, this could maybe be to my advanced advantage in the future. So I decided to concentrate in information systems. And that’s pretty much why I’m here today. Manuel: And what was it that really made you think that that was going to be an advantage? Because a lot of times, just in my own experience and talking to other people, sometimes they feel that that might be almost a disadvantage, right? Like there’s so many other people that, you know, in that case, so many other males, I’m the lone female, or, you know, one of probably a handful. So what made you think that that’s an advantage versus a disadvantage? Cynthia: Yeah, that’s a great question. I guess I’ve never really been asked that before. I guess I just look at things differently. I never looked at that as that’s going to be a disadvantage to me. I think that, you know, in this day and age to everything’s so competitive, that you want to stand out. So if I can immediately stand out just by being the only woman, then I was like, that that already will, you know, set me apart. And then from there, I also need to make sure that I know my stuff and can be, you know, seen as appear for maybe some of the male colleagues that I would have. So I didn’t really look at it as like, Oh, this is going to be scary. I’m the only girl. It was kind of like, Okay, this I can stand out and then take it from there. Yeah, yeah. Manuel: And then having your dad as an engineer, I mean, was there any kind of exposure? Did he I mean, I know you mentioned that you were in a fashion, but was there any kind of like, hey, engineering or were you exposed to it even just seeing him do it at home? Cynthia: Not really. Actually, he was pretty, pretty hands off in terms of, you know, what I wanted to do, you know, they were my parents are both very supportive if I were to pick fashion. And of course, after realizing that I maybe want to stick to something a little bit more technical than creativity, they were still supportive of that as well. I wish I could say more like, Oh, yeah, you know, I was learning technology as a young kid in the in the Silicon Valley, but it really wasn’t like that. I just wanted to do something that, you know, I could still have I was thinking I would have like a day job, you know, work at a desk, but look cute, that was going to be my way of channeling my fashion, my pre fashion notions into just my everyday outfit. But I just I kind of stumbled into cybersecurity, if I’m being completely honest, I was taking an information systems class, which was about networking, actually. So I was just learning about firewalls and the OSI model. And I had a sorority sister post in our ...