My IT sales career began with ProGrad placing me at Frontrange (now Ivanti) where I was making 150 dials a day from an Excel spreadsheet—no autodialers, intelligence tools, or shortcuts—just persistence. That experience grounded me in the grit and determination that continue to shape my leadership today. Even now, as APAC Vice President for Drata, I am never above cold calling or any task to help my team. Eighteen years on, nearly half as a leader across New Relic, Cohesity, Servicely, and Drata, I still remember my first major milestone. I booked a demo with a Federal Department, including their CIO and Procurement Manager. My Director invited me along, and by the end we walked away with vendor onboarding forms, a request for banking details, and a question from the CIO: “If we process this tomorrow, can you start Monday?” Later, I naively asked my Director, “Do you think we won?” That moment earned me my first promotion. More importantly, peers began seeking my guidance to get ahead. While higher pay was welcome, I realized sharing knowledge, coaching, and embracing responsibility mattered more to me than salary increases. Thus, responsibility and mentorship have become cornerstones of my leadership. At Cohesity, I was tasked with rebuilding an underperforming region. Starting with $500K in business, we grew to $2.5M in year one and $7M the following. This came from shifting hiring profiles toward young, agile SaaS talent and training them to link IT challenges to business outcomes. I introduced Business Value Assessments to tie technical risks to financial impact. These skills and teachings helped us win two of Australia’s major airlines, by showing how preventing flight cancellations and delays created far greater value than simply upgrading legacy tooling. At Servicely, an Australian startup without the brand strength of Cohesity or New Relic, I recruited a sales and marketing team from scratch. Together we scaled from a founder-sourced $600K to $6M in two years. Repeatable sales playbooks were build, I defined a partner-led route to market, and we lifted average customer spend from <$20K to six-figure contracts. It proved that discipline and creativity can turn a local challenger into a fast-scaling category contender. Now, at Drata, building out APAC is more than a role—it’s a passion project. I get to apply lessons from my mentors to scale one of the fastest software companies ever to hit $100M. Today APAC is a $5M business; I’m laying the foundations—talent, process, skills, and support—to grow it to $25M in the next three years and expand into Asia. What makes me proudest, though, are the human impacts: -I’ve helped more than 25 people achieve promotions. -I’ve supported an AE who bought a home for his mother. -Another thanked me as they were finally able to fund IVF treatment. -Another finally renovated their kitchen and invited me as their first guest. From this submission, I hope it conveys that I’ve always valued hard work, resilience, and growth. With a strong balance of EQ and IQ, I have actively sought feedback to improve, and never expected anything to come without effort. Respect and loyalty have guided me throughout my career and life. My leadership “why” stems from my early days as a young, inexperienced sales professional who was fortunate to be mentored by great leaders. Their influence helped shape my career, enabled me to build a life I’m proud of—travelling the world, meeting my wife, starting a family, and providing them with security. I Lead to honour and give thanks to those who invested in me, paying it forward by guiding and developing the next generation of sales talent.