In honor of Women’s History Month and International Women’s Day on March 8, we’re recognizing influential and powerful women at Zscaler who have made a significant impact within their careers, teams, and on the Zscaler family as a whole.
Pooja Deshmukh is a Principal Product Manager at Zscaler who feels proud of the impact she’s been able to make in her time with the company as it continues to grow.
“When I look at my career at Zscaler, it's been an amazing ride,” she said. “I definitely feel proud of the tangible contributions I could make to Zscaler's business, including introducing a new product line, seeing our top deals, raising the top line, and building teams from scratch. It has always been fun to work with some of the most talented minds in the industry.”
She said if she could give her younger self any professional advice, it would be to be more assertive to make sure your voice is heard and to get a mentor early on in your career. As far as advice for women wanting to get into technology, she recommends to always continue learning.
“I would really like to quote my mentor, "the best way to learn swimming is to just jump in the pool." So just jump right in. Get a start. Ask questions. Be at it. Focus on building the building blocks,” she said. “It may be the basics of algorithms, it may be the basics of mathematics, or Have your basics right and build on it.”
“The technology field is a rapidly changing field. You need to embrace the change. Know that you have to keep up with the pace, and never shy away from learning opportunities.”
Outside of work, Pooja enjoys staying active and has picked up a new active hobby during quarantine.
“I like to really stay active, maybe a simple walk, a jog, or a bicycle ride,” she said. “But I was never into weight training. Quarantine life gave me an opportunity to focus more on isolated activities. So I picked up doing weight training in the last year.”
Dorothy Meshack is a Value Creation Analyst located in Bangalore, India. She is proud of never missing an opportunity to learn and recommends that any woman wanting to get into tech should take the plunge.
“I'm extremely proud of having the ability to take up challenges and also balance that out with a mindset to learn,” she said. “I think it's extremely important for everyone to have a learning mindset because learning is a continuous process. And the minute we stop learning, we pretty much drag ourselves down.”
“The advice that I have for women wanting to get into things into technology is don't think twice. Just go for it,” she said. “We need to have more women in technology, where we do not continue to have gender disparity. We are in 2021. We really need to beat that. And for us to beat that, we need to have more and more women joining technology, more and more women in powerful positions.”
Dorothy cites her mother as her greatest inspiration when she was growing up.
“Despite being a homemaker and not having hardly any exposure to the corporate world, she's always taught me to make the right choices and to always stand up for myself. She's given me the power to be independent. And that's extremely important.”
Outside of work, Dorothy enjoys cooking, spending time with family, and gardening.
"I really enjoy cooking and spending a lot of time with my nieces and nephews who are all 3, 4, or 5 years old. And I love gardening. That's actually another hobby that I picked up during quarantine. It gives me such a sense of calm to be out there."
