At Cloudflare, we have strived to build a workplace where our entire team feels safe and excited to bring their whole selves to work, so they can do their best work. That’s why we are proud to share that Cloudflare has been named one of the Top 100 Most Loved Workplaces in 2022 by Newsweek and Best Practice Institute (BPI). Most Loved Workplaces recognizes companies where their workers love, and feel in sync with, the company they work for.

With this, and as we’re approaching the end-of 2022, we thought this was a good time to reflect on some of the things that go into being one of these Most Loved Workplaces and just some of what makes up our workplace and culture.

Something that really grounds our entire team is Cloudflare’s mission: to help build a better Internet. When you are solving some of the toughest challenges facing the Internet — helping make the Internet secure, fast, private, and reliable globally — you need a range of talented individuals to do this. The people at Cloudflare are exactly that, and are essential to our impact on the Internet.

The Internet wasn’t built for what it’s being used for today. In order for the Internet to work the way it does today, from powering critical infrastructure, to making it so that a busy working parent can order a healthy dinner right to their home, requires constant innovation on our part to make sure these online services can withstand the demand online, load quick, and not face cyber attacks and breaches. Cloudflare has a significantly large responsibility online, with about 20% of the web running through our network today — and every single team member here is contributing to this.

In addition to the results from Newsweek and BPI, Cloudflare additionally conducted an internal survey of its global team. This presented results of 94% of surveyed employees stating that they are inspired by Cloudflare’s mission to help build a better Internet. At Cloudflare, 92% of employees say their manager treats them with respect and 92% state that their work is important to the company.

“I've worked for so many Fortune 500, top companies in tech, and never have I felt more valued and grown so much than at Cloudflare. I love going to work, love working with my manager and team, we learn so much from each other and are motivated to smash sales goals and grow our presence in the world. ”

“...I love this company, management, and most of all my team. I am proud to be building a better Internet, and will continue to do so for years to come.”

“Honestly it is the best I've ever worked; it is a lot of work, and sometimes it can be stressful, but I'm sure I can count on my manager for support, and they take their time to explain again and again without making me feel bad for asking.”

“Having had the privilege to work at Cloudflare for the past five years, I can genuinely attest that our people are clearly our biggest asset. I personally feel empowered, respected, and yet intellectually challenged daily. It is impressive for any single company to assemble such a diverse and thoughtful group of co-workers. And it all starts with our leadership.”

Cloudflare offers a comprehensive total rewards and benefits package, and invests in supporting team members through a variety of initiatives and programs.

Examples of benefits range — from our commuter benefits program, for employees working in an office or a hybrid role, we help support the transportation costs associated with commuting — to health and family benefits programs including fertility, caregiving, childcare, and family forming/planning, as well as emotional and mental health benefits — and, we encourage everyone to find a comfortable work-life balance by offering a take-what-you-need vacation policy.

One example of programs is Cloudflare’s Employee Resource Groups (ERGs), employee-led and company-supported groups of underrepresented and/or marginalized employees. These groups are focused on key Corporate Social Responsibility initiatives with leaders, executives, and members for each group, who join together in the workplace based on shared characteristics, life experiences, or interests. ERGs are generally based on creating a community of support and belonging, enhancing career development of their members, and contributing to the development of a more inclusive culture at Cloudflare. Today we have 16 ERGs at Cloudflare ranging from Proudflare, Womenflare, and Afroflare to Cloudflarents and Mindflare (you get the theme!).

What’s been at the center of how we’ve approached supporting our team these past couple years is flexibility and experimentation. Cloudflare’s workplace shifted from completely in-office since the company’s launch and leading up to March 2020, to then an entirely new remote environment that we hadn’t had before. This has been a big experiment for us, and it’s an honor to be recognized among the top workplaces uplifting its people. We recognize that every team’s needs are different and that most of us want some level of flexibility in how and where we work. At Cloudflare, we support a variety of work environments that give teams the opportunity to establish their own optimal working arrangements. Whether that be hybrid, remote, or in-office that fit with their objectives and enable collaboration — each employee has flexibility.

Cloudflare has grown its global team by 93% over the past two years and has overall prioritized the recruitment, retention, as well as success of employees. To give a sense of this, in 2021 we received more than 200,000 competitive applications, extending 1,455 offers — while seeing a 92% acceptance rate across the board, and alongside continuously low attrition rates.

Now approaching the end-of 2022, we have over 3,100 team members globally. As our co-founder, President & COO Michelle Zatlyn says, “Companies are collections of people. One of the best parts of my job is the people I get to work with.” And we are continuing to hire worldwide with hundreds of open positions across the organization ranging from Sales to Engineering. To learn more about the Cloudflare career opportunities, please check out Cloudflare Careers! And an enormous high-five to the entire Cloudflare team for your continuous effort and hand in helping build a better Internet.

At Cloudflare, we have our eyes set on an ambitious goal: to help build a better Internet. Today the company runs one of the world’s largest networks that powers approximately 25 million Internet properties. This is made possible by our 1,900 team members around the world. We believe the key to achieving our potential is to build diverse teams and create an environment where everyone can do their best work.

That is why we place a lot of value on the importance of diversity, equity and inclusion. Diversity, equity, and inclusion lead to better outcomes through improved decision-making, more innovative teams, stronger financial returns and simply a better place to work for everyone.

To become more diverse, equitable, and inclusive, we believe it’s important to focus on communities within and around our company.

At Cloudflare, like most workplaces, there are built-in communities: your direct team, your cross-functional partners and (because we take onboarding very seriously) your new hire class. These communities, especially the first two, are important to help you get your job done. But we want more than that for our team at Cloudflare. We believe that community builds connection and fosters a sense of belonging.

Because of that, we have supported the growth of over 16 Employee Resource Groups (ERG’s). We use the term ERG broadly at Cloudflare. We have many ERG’s focused on traditionally under-represented groups in tech: Afroflare (Black, African diaspora), Latinflare, and Womenflare; groups that have been historically marginalized: Proudflare (LGBTQIA+), Cloudflarents (parents and caregivers); as well as interest and affinity groups like Mindflare and Soberflare. To read more about all of our ERGs, visit our diversity, equity, and inclusion webpage or read about them on our blog. In addition to creating a community of support and belonging, our ERGs also work to enhance career development of their members and contribute to the development of a more inclusive culture at Cloudflare.

We define an inclusive culture as one where everyone feels safe, welcome and respected with a sense of belonging. We do not leave this to chance. We make investments in training and programs to develop and deepen the skills needed to nurture and preserve inclusive communities at Cloudflare.

One of our earliest offerings was Ally Skills training. The aim of this workshop is to help build awareness of the types of behavior and language which can be harmful to inclusivity at Cloudflare, and teach simple, everyday ways to support people who are targets of systemic oppression. During the workshop, team members share strategies on how to act as allies and how to create a long-lasting, inclusive culture at Cloudflare. As the program was being rolled out, the management team did the workshop together and quickly realized these were not skills reserved for ‘allies’ but it was our expectation that this was how all of our team members treated each other. These were necessary skills to be successful at Cloudflare. As a result, we reworked some pieces of the workshop and renamed it: How We Work Together.

We have also partnered with Paradigm IQ and Included to create a three-part Unconscious Bias Education Program. These workshops are a mix of eLearning and facilitated workshops where we learn about how to help mitigate unconscious bias and make our company a more welcoming and inclusive place for everyone. tEQuitable is an additional comprehensive resource which helps us create a safe, inclusive, and equitable workplace. They provide an independent sounding board where our employees may confidentially raise a concern, access a just-in-time learning platform, and get advice from professional Ombuds. They also help us identify systemic workplace issues and provide us with actionable recommendations for how to improve our workplace culture. What we especially love about tEQuitable is that it’s all about empowering our employees with tools and resources to address issues that may be impacting them, or they may witness impacting others, so we all play an active role in maintaining and nurturing our culture.

One other program worth highlighting is our Week On: Learning and Inclusion. This program came as a response to the murder of George Floyd in the US at the end of May 2020. Our Afroflare global leaders suggested we use Juneteenth as a full-day of deep learning from external experts on topics ranging from the history of race and racism to the psychological impact of racism on people of color. In 2021, we expanded it from a one-day program to a week full of programming with topics ranging from antiracism keynotes, inclusive people management workshops and inclusive recruiting practices.

Increasing awareness and skill-building is valuable, but it is not enough. We also have to hold ourselves accountable by analyzing data, setting goals and measuring progress objectively. Each year we set company-wide goals around our diversity, and for the last few years we’ve added individual goals for managers — one focused on building a more diverse team, and one focused on building an inclusive team culture.

We also place a high value on behaviors at Cloudflare. This is imperative because we believe that culture is defined by the behaviors we reward. So in order to have a healthy and inclusive culture, we must reward the behaviors that promote and preserve that. We have defined these behaviors as our Cloudflare Capabilities.

We screen for these Capabilities during our interview process, and they are used in performance and promotion conversations. We hold ourselves accountable by using a very simple formula: Performance = results + behaviors. Equally weighted.

Speaking of interviewing, hiring is an important part of our diversity story. We believe that diverse teams win, and we put in a lot of effort to build diverse teams across the company. We have many team members who took unconventional paths into tech, and we believe that makes us stronger as a company. In fact, many of our job descriptions read: We realize people do not fit into neat boxes. We are looking for curious and empathetic individuals who are committed to developing themselves and learning new skills, and we are ready to help you do that. We cannot complete our mission without building a diverse and inclusive team.

In addition to an inclusive and expansive mindset around hiring, we also have interviews dedicated specifically to fit against our Capabilities, as well as leveraging technology and tools to help identify great talent who help to increase the diversity of our teams.

We have also made investments in events and partnerships that help support our diversity recruiting efforts. In August 2016, Cloudflare was one of the first companies to partner with Path Forward when it first launched its program in California. [Fun fact: that’s how I learned about Cloudflare and became interested in working here]. In Singapore, we have a similar partnership with Mums@Work.

We also engage with organizations and participate in events that help us reach talent from underrepresented groups. We have sponsored and spoke on stage at events like Lesbians Who Tech and Grace Hopper, where our co-founder, President and COO, Michelle Zatlyn, delivered the keynote in 2020. We regularly attend events and conferences hosted by AfroTech, Women Who Code, Girls Who Code, TAPIA, NSN, and more.

Our ethos is to support and connect with external communities as well. Prior to the pandemic, when our offices were fully open and social and professional events were a thing, we regularly hosted external organizations to host events in our communal spaces. One example of such an organization is Wu Yee Children’s Services, a San Francisco Chinatown-based nonprofit that connects parents and caregivers to affordable childcare options, offers payment assistance to low-income families, and other family and community services. We were honored to host their orientation session. Another organization we hosted was Women Who Code SF. We regularly hosted their “ algorithm and interview prep” workshops, which helped women coders gain the skills they need to land good jobs in the tech industry. Unlike many of our tech company peers, we did not offer free lunch five days a week. It was important to us that our team members got out of the office and supported local businesses and restaurants. It is important that we do not isolate ourselves, but rather are part of a larger community.

We also believe in giving back to our local communities. Prior to COVID, Cloudflare dedicated one week every year to volunteer efforts. Coordinated across many of our large office locations, we would dedicate each day for a full week volunteering at employee-nominated, local non-profit organizations. Our participation pivoted to virtual during COVID, but we are anxious to return to in-person giving when we can.

While we are proud of these efforts, it is in using Cloudflare products and services for good that is truly special. Cloudflare’s mission to help build a better Internet means we are in a unique position to help vulnerable websites, applications and services be safer, faster and more reliable online.

A few to highlight:

Organizations working in the arts, human rights, civil society, journalism, or democracy, may apply for Project Galileo to get Cloudflare’s cybersecurity protection, for free. Since 2014, we’ve been leveraging our services to support vulnerable public interest web properties including, but are not limited to: minority rights organizations, human rights organizations, independent media outlets, arts groups, and democracy and voter protection programs.

Our support of one of these organizations has blossomed over the years. We are proud to announce our partnership with The Trevor Project. Founded in 1998 by the creators of the Academy Award®-winning short film TREVOR, The Trevor Project is the leading national organization providing crisis intervention and suicide prevention services to lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer & questioning (LGBTQ) young people under 25. We support the organization through monetary donations, a partnership with our LGBTQIA+ Employee Resource Group, Proudflare, and free Cloudflare services through our Project Galileo Program.

Since 2017, we have donated about $8 million in cybersecurity tools under Project Galileo.

Cloudflare launched the Athenian Project in 2017 to provide our highest level of cybersecurity services for free to state and local governments in the United States that run elections. The project is designed to protect these websites tied to elections including information related to voting and polling places, voter registration and sites that publish election results. And voter data from cyberattack, and keep them online. During the 2020 U.S. election, we worked closely with civil society and government agencies to share threat information that we saw targeted against these participants and protected more than 292 websites in 30 states, including the Missouri Secretary of State, Solano County in California and The Colorado Department of State.

In recognition that election security is a global issue, we recently announced our partnerships with the International Foundation for Electoral Systems, National Democratic Institute and International Republican Institute to extend our cybersecurity protections to election management bodies around the world, as well as organizations that support free and fair elections. We look forward to continuing our work to protect resources in the voting process and help build trust in democratic institutions around the world.

Around the world, governments, hospitals, and pharmacies are struggling to distribute the COVID-19 vaccine. Technical limitations are causing vaccine registration sites to crash under the load of registrations. At Cloudflare, we want to help. Cloudflare's Waiting Room feature allows organizations with more demand for a resource — be it concert tickets, new edition sneakers, or vaccines — to allow individuals to queue and then allocate access. Waiting Rooms can be deployed in front of any existing registration website without requiring code changes. As we watched the world struggle to fairly and efficiently distribute the COVID-19 vaccine we wanted to lend our technologies and expertise to help. Under Project Fair Shot, Cloudflare is providing Waiting Room to any government agency, hospital, pharmacy, or other organization facilitating the distribution of the COVID-19 vaccine for free until anyone who wants to be vaccinated can be, until at least 31-December 2021.

We all need to work together to get past this incredibly difficult time worldwide and are humbled to have helped so many different organizations around the world such as the County of San Luis Obispo, Verto Health, and the Ministry of Health for the Republic of Latvia, and more!

At Cloudflare, we believe in being principled, curious and transparent. Publishing our diversity report is aligned with these values.

We are Principled: One of the Cloudflare Capabilities is “Do the Right Thing” — that includes long-term thinking about how we build an innovative and sustainable workforce. We have a fundamental belief that fairness is the right thing. We believe that equity is the right thing.

We are Curious: Creating a more diverse and sustainable workforce is hard work. We want to draw lessons from the things we try, and we want to learn from what others are trying. Sustainable communities is not a zero-sum game, and we believe we can all benefit as an active part of the broader community.

We believe in Transparency: For many years, we have been transparent with our team about our diversity data and our goals, and we have measured our progress regularly. Now we are taking the step to share publicly because we believe in accountability and accept the responsibility to build a diverse and sustainable workforce.

You can check out our Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion webpage with our diversity report here.

While there is always more work to be done, we are grateful for the empathetic and curious team that makes Cloudflare what it is today. Together, we are optimistic we can build a better — and more inclusive — Internet.

Our Business Continuity Team is monitoring the situation closely and all company personnel are kept up to date via multiple internal communication channels including a live chat room. Customers and the public are encouraged to visit this blog post for the latest information.

You can check the status of our network at www.cloudflarestatus.com. For COVID-19-related questions that aren’t answered below, please contact our Customer Support Team.

Yes, Cloudflare’s Business Continuity Team is a cross-functional, geographically diverse group dedicated to navigating through a health crisis like COVID-19 as well as a variety of other scenarios that may impact employee safety and business continuity.

In addition to Cloudflare’s existing Disaster Recovery Plan we have implemented the following strategies:

• Daily Business Continuity Team meetings to determine if updates, changes, or communication need to be provided to customers, partners, and employees.

• Global monitoring of COVID-19 related events and impact.

• Tailored business continuity plans per office and function, including work from home policies and regional resources.

Fortunately the nature of Cloudflare business is digital and rarely requires in-person activity. At this time we do not anticipate significant impact to products or services. Some teams are adjusting to teleworking but at this time we have not identified a service-level impact.

Troubleshooting and maintenance of the platform is performed by Cloudflare employees in globally dispersed locations. On-prem support is not required for the vast majority of our products and services.

Products can be used without the need for manual interaction from Cloudflare employees.

Cloudflare does not have call centers. Our support personnel will continue to provide assistance 24 hours a day to customers no matter their location as usual.

Yes, Cloudflare has implemented travel restrictions to countries as recommended by government agencies. Employees are encouraged to postpone all non-essential business travel at this time including inter-office travel. We are monitoring regional guidance from health authorities and updating our requirements as needed.

Cloudflare has taken an extra step to work with critical business partners and suppliers to ensure that there will be minimal to no impact to the business or our customers.

Cloudflare offices in the US, EMEA, Sydney, and Singapore are physically closed and we have moved to a full teleworking model.

In Beijing, employees have been split into two groups. Each group will be alternating between working from home and working in the office.

Cloudflare’s business continuity team has worked with organization leaders to prepare for the challenges of COVID-19 and many other scenarios. We are confident in our ability to limit impact to services because of our preparation.

At this time we do not anticipate any service disruptions due to COVID-19. We are monitoring the situation closely and will update as information becomes available.

Due to the nature of the Anycast network, we have over 200 Points of Presence (PoPs) that manage failover traffic. Traffic would simply be rerouted to other locations. Learn about the Anycast network here: https://www.cloudflare.com/network/.

The Infrastructure and Engineering teams are working proactively to ensure that enough capacity is available at our most critical PoPs. We feel confident in our ability to service our most critical facilities with our approved partner.

Our Customer Support Team is fully operational and will reach out as they would with any other outage or incident. Methods vary based on contract.

You can check the status of our services at www.cloudflarestatus.com. Additionally, our Customer Support Team is fully operational and will reach out as they would with any other outage or incident. Methods vary based on contract.

For questions not answered above, customers can reach out to our Customer Support Team via normal means.

For the last seven years, Cloudflare has taken the entire company off site for a few days at the end of the year for a company retreat. Back in 2010, this meant five people from the San Francisco office. This November, we had 453 employees from our San Francisco, Singapore, London, Champaign (Illinois), New York City, Washington (DC), and Austin (Texas) offices spend time together in Monterey, California.

Knowing that so many teammates would be coming in from all over the world, we used the days leading up to the retreat to hold global team meetings, conduct a session of our home-grown Making Great Managers workshop, and brought in Valerie Aurora from Frame Shift Consulting to lead Ally Skills workshops for the entire company.

On Thursday, buses departed from Cloudflare headquarters and took us all down to Monterey. Our CEO, Matthew Prince, delivered opening remarks over lunch. During his talk, we learned about the imminent acquisition of Neumob, his thoughts about growing pains and how to successfully scale, and were reminded that we are at our best when we are inclusive of everyone. We reflected on how far we’ve come and got an inspiring glimpse of where we are headed. I think we were all amazed to see how big the company had become when we are all gathered together in one place.

We spent the next few hours focused on our professional development with a few Harvard Business School professors. (Our founders, Matthew Prince and Michelle Zatlyn, met at HBS and actually started Cloudflare as a class project!). Four professors from Harvard Business School led the group through case studies around negotiation skills, using jazz as a metaphor for creative and innovative organizations, and successful business models.

Michelle brought the HBS professors on stage at dinner, and we heard some unique tidbits on the company’s history and early days. We learned that Matthew had a ton of business ideas in school but it wasn’t until he pitched Cloudflare to Michelle that she felt it was “a business she’d be proud to work on.” We also learned Professor Tom Eisenmann became their advisor while on a class trip to Silicon Valley in January 2009. Matthew and Michelle cornered him at the bar in the Sheraton in Palo Alto and wrote the business plan on the back of a napkin. Tom already had a full roster of students to advised but agreed to help them on one condition: they had to enter HBS’ business plan competition. Well, they did, and as Tom predicted, they won!

While we ate, Shawn Vanderhoven from The Wiseman Group led us in a discussion around leaders who amplify their teams to ultimate performance. Festivities continued late into the night with groups huddling around fire pits, enjoying a cool evening on terraces and conversing at the hotel bar.

After breakfast the next morning, the group was given four options for activities: biking, hiking, kayaking or visiting the Monterey Bay Aquarium. It was such a treat to be outside doing something active and interesting with coworkers - many from other teams and other offices.

Three weeks later, I'm still buzzing. The retreat fed the mind, but also the soul. The insights learned were super valuable, and the tools we were given will absolutely help us operate at a higher level. But I also really appreciate that we prioritized connecting with each other. That's often undervalued (if not completely overlooked), especially in companies at a similar size and stage.

It's easy to see why this is case. Many companies at our scale might view the activities as frivolous; that they're just too big to make something like this happen; that they can't keep operations running smoothly to have the entire company away at the same time or for that long. And while I hear these concerns, I'm grateful we were able to figure it out. Because you can't put a price on strengthening the ties that bind an organization.

That isn't to say that there wasn't a fair amount of pre-planning involved. Our SRE and Customer Support teams all took shifts to ensure our network operations were running smoothly and that our customers received the same high level of support they are used to. It took coordination, planning, and great work ethics but we proved this type of event is quite achievable.

When Matthew talks about what he looks for when hiring people, he looks for curiosity and empathy. The company retreat captured that—we were able to get away from our ‘regular’ jobs and learn a few new things. And by having these shared experiences with our coworkers, we now know each other better and are more empathic. This retreat was a great way to realize those values.

The goal wasn't really to "disconnect”; the train still needs to keep moving after all. But the change in scenery (and its beauty) and putting emphasis on shared values, where we came from and where we're headed made it possible to connect in meaningful ways.

We are already planning for next year, and have a few ideas on how to make it even better. Since we are an engineering-driven company, we’ll be sure to have some thought leadership activity around how to solve the biggest problems facing the Internet. We are thinking we’ll have everyone answer at least one support ticket before they leave :) We loved the beautiful setting in Monterey - and may even make it longer! I simply cannot wait!!

If this sounds like somewhere you’d want to want to work, check out our jobs page. We are hiring in all of our offices around the world.

Photo by Cloudflare Staff

Over the course of my career, I’ve been to many conferences, interacted with thousands of candidates, and attended countless keynotes, roundtables, and sessions. I can say without a doubt, that the Grace Hopper Celebration, stood out from the rest. And I think my team would agree.

During the three day event, we screened more than 50 candidates, conducted 24 onsite interviews, and had more than 600 people visit our booth. Not bad for a booth near the back competing with an AirBnB booth that had a literal house on top of it.

Before the conference, we were expecting about 200 visitors to our booth, so the turnout clearly exceeded our expectations. More importantly, we couldn’t have predicted the breadth of talent we would interact with at the conference. That’s not to say that I was surprised; Grace Hopper attracts women from all over the world, including students, seasoned professionals, hackers, engineers, and business leaders. This year was the biggest yet, with more than 12,000 attendees from across all tech sectors, backgrounds, and interests. So I certainly wasn’t surprised to meet all of these women, but I was definitely inspired.

Photo by Cloudflare Staff

My team of thirteen came in with high expectations, but even we couldn’t have been prepared for the scale and reach of Grace Hopper. Here’s what we learned:

There were a million talks. I’m not kidding. Everything from AI and machine learning to social engineering was covered and talks were presented by speakers across all levels and from all backgrounds. One of our own, Dani Grant, a product manager at Cloudflare, even gave a talk around IoT security. It sounds cliché, but I was truly blown away by the spectrum of talks that were featured at the event. For anyone attending next year, try to fit in as many as possible.

Apart from the talks, it was amazing to see so many talented, smart women in tech all in one place. A lot has been said about the lack of women in tech, so to attend a conference that was so decidedly female was inspiring. Women came from all over the world to attend Grace Hopper, and to have everyone in the same room eager to learn and talk and share, was a sight to behold. Someone from my team remarked that being at the event made tackling the problem of female representation in the workforce seem so much more achievable.

I knew that we’d talk with great candidates at Grace Hopper, but I wasn’t expecting to talk to candidates for every role. Not only were candidates interested in different roles, but they were also coming from a breadth of universities and backgrounds. More importantly, their interests were varied and the level of curiosity was palpable. As the Head of People at Cloudflare, it was encouraging for me to see some of best talent in the world excited to learn about our company and become interested in tackling the hardest challenges of the Internet.

Photo by Cloudflare Staff

At Cloudflare, we’re focused on helping to build a better Internet, and we won’t be able to do that without the best and the brightest on our team. After hearing all the talks, speaking with awesome candidates, and experiencing the sheer scale and caliber of attendees, I’m confident that we’re heading in the right direction.

If you or anyone you know is interested in a role at Cloudflare, please check out our careers page.

Cloudflare started partnering with Path Forward this past year as a way to expand our talent pool to include the best and the brightest, regardless of any gaps in their career journeys. We truly believe in a diverse group of employees, and that includes those who can bring different perspectives from their time away from the workforce.

We’ve been lucky to have three amazing candidates go through the Path Forward program this time around across our People & Places, Solutions Engineering, and Marketing teams.

Christine Winston (director of partnerships, Path Forward), Me, and Tami Forman (executive director, Path Forward)

Gigi Chiu did a returnship with the Solutions Engineering team here at Cloudflare after taking some time off to raise her children. Before taking time off, she worked at Motorola and previously worked for a telco in Canada that was helping to build out the Internet as we know it. While she initially thought about pursuing roles in other departments and explored other companies, she and I ultimately felt that her technical skills and expertise would be best utilized in an SE role at Cloudflare. And we were right. The SE team has found a great employee in Gigi and her background has been invaluable to the team. “I felt welcomed and supported from the moment I came to Cloudflare,” she says. “I’ve also noticed that there are more women on technical teams than there were just a few years ago, and that signals that the industry is moving in the right direction. ”

Vidya Ramakrishnan works on my team (People & Places) as a People Operations Analyst. She took off a few years to raise her kids and admits that it was a struggle to get back into the workforce. Although she has previous experience in software development and business analysis, she says that when she discussed the gap in her resume with recruiters, they often wouldn’t call back. That’s what I love about the Path Forward program; it ignores the stigma around resume gaps due to caregiving. At Cloudflare, she has found a role in which she works across teams and is thriving. “No one here has ever made me feel like an intern,” she says. “This role has given me the confidence I was missing and it has been so fulfilling to be back in the workforce and on a team again.”

Like Gigi and Vidya, Stephanie Won took some time away from employment to care for her children. As a member of the Marketing team, and specifically the Branding team, she is helping expand the reach of the Cloudflare brand. In her experience, getting back into the tech industry was pretty brutal. She learned about the Path Forward program at a conference for women returning to the workforce and completed a returnship at another company. After that ended, she reached out to me and we found a fit for her here at Cloudflare. Stephanie is an outspoken advocate for caregivers and she has advice for others in similar points in their careers: “Don’t doubt yourself. People always associate confidence with competence, and when you’re not feeling competent, you lose your confidence.” She adds, “It’s important to always stay connected with the people in your network, even if it’s just an occasional coffee chat. It’s crucial to keep a pulse on your industry and happenings if you’re eager to get back into the mix.”

We’re so happy to have Gigi, Vidya, and Stephanie at Cloudflare and know that their stories are just like so many others in the industry. Caregivers often have a tough time reintegrating into the workforce after years away, especially as protocols, business operations, and technologies evolve. But you don’t have to start at square one. There are so many companies (like Cloudflare) looking for smart, creative, and seasoned workers who can bring a diverse set of skills and life experience into the mix.

On August 9th, we hosted the Path Forward graduation at our headquarters in San Francisco and celebrated the work of the all the participants in the program. Guests enjoyed networking, hors d’oeuvres, and a keynote from Tami Forman, the program’s executive director.

To date, we have offered all of our Path Forward participants ongoing employment at the end of their returnships.

We offer returnships across many teams, including Engineering, Marketing, Sales, Operations, People & Places, and more.

If you or someone you know is interested, then please visit our careers page on our website to view our open positions and apply!

From left to right, Gloria Mancu, Janet Van Huysse, and Wanda Chiu

In the fall of 2016, I was just beginning my job search. I’d been lucky to lead HR at a number of great cutting-edge technology start-ups, and I was looking for my next adventure. I wanted to find a company that wasn’t just a great business--I wanted one that was also making a positive impact on the world, and one that had a mission I felt passionately about.

During my two decades running HR/People organizations, I’ve spent a lot of time working with--and talking to--parents in the workplace. I’ve been motivated to do so for a few reasons. According to the US census, mothers are the fastest-growing segment of the US workforce. Companies struggle to retain talented workers after they’ve become parents, especially mothers. It’s been reported that 43 percent of highly qualified women with children leave their careers. Millennials (who make up the majority of the US workforce) are reporting that they want to be more engaged parents and are placing a high value on companies that allow them to parent and still get promoted. Ultimately, I’ve come to believe that the skills you acquire while parenting are extremely relevant and valuable to the workforce.

So when Path Forward announced its launch partners in 2016, I read about the participating companies with great interest. And that is where I discovered Cloudflare! It immediately went to the top of my short list as I knew a company that valued a partnership with Path Forward was aligned with my values.

Path Forward is a nonprofit organization that aims to empower women and men to return to the paid workforce after taking two or more years away from their career to focus on caregiving. This could mean taking two years off to care for a child, or taking multiple years off to care for an elderly family member. Everyone in this program has put their careers on hold to care for the ones they love.

Candidates apply for various roles, undergo a series of interviews, and if selected, participate in an 18-week returnship. The goal, for both candidates and participating companies, is to ultimately hire the candidates for full-time employment.

At Cloudflare, we’re focused on helping to build a better Internet, and do to that, we need the best and brightest. Sometimes that means hiring people who have tenure and skills in a very specific field, and other times, that means bringing in people who can adapt quickly and think critically, contributing to both our culture and our company mission.

Gloria Mancu re-entered the workforce as a tech support engineer at Cloudflare after taking 10 years off to care for her son. She had initially applied to Cloudflare after seeing a job opening online, and was later integrated into the Path Forward program because of its emphasis on returnships. “Being an intern is a tremendous opportunity, because you get a feeling for the group, the company, and the culture, firsthand. On the other hand, the employer gets to know you, so it goes both ways.”

The Path Forward program is indeed a two-way street. Yes, it helps people return to the workforce, but participants also bring a ton of value to their respective companies. Men and women who’ve taken time off to care for their families bring the kind of maturity and professionalism that only come with life experience.

Wanda Chiu, a software engineer on our Edge team, took time off initially to care for her ailing mother. She later decided to start a family and wanted to be there to watch her kids grow up. Fifteen years later, she says that Path Forward has helped her comfortably transition back into the workforce. “I wasn’t sure I was qualified to apply for software engineering positions, because the industry has adapted so much in the last 15 years and there are so many new tools,” she says. “Cloudflare was willing to give me the time to pick up the new skills I needed to succeed in this software engineering role and contribute to the team.”

It’s so crucial to note that a lot of people returning to the workforce think they have to start at square one. They’ll apply for entry-level positions, only to be bumped up to the next level based on their experience and age, and then finally rejected due to their employment gap. At Cloudflare, we really wanted to give people the opportunity to pick up where they left off and bring with them all of the life experience they’ve gained.

On Monday night, we hosted the Path Forward graduation at our headquarters in San Francisco and celebrated the work of the 10 participants from Demandbase, Coursera, and Zendesk, in addition to Cloudflare. Graduates snacked on hors d’oeuvres and discussed their returnship experiences, following a keynote from Tami Forman, the program’s executive director.

We’ve extended full-time offers to both Wanda and Gloria and look forward to continuing with the Path Forward program. We’re currently interviewing and plan to welcome a new group of Path Forward participants in April. We have five open returnship positions across our Marketing, Engineering, and People teams in San Francisco, so if you or someone you know is interested, please reach out to Ed Burns at ed@cloudflare.com.