Why I’m helping Cloudflare grow in Asia

I’m excited to announce that I’ve joined Cloudflare as Head of Asia. This is an important time for the company as we continue to grow our presence in the region and build on the successes we’ve already had in our Singapore office. In this new role, I’m eager to grow our brand recognition in Asia and optimize our reach to clients by building up teams and channel partners.

I’m a Californian with more than 20 years of experience growing businesses across Asia. I initially came to Asia with the Boston Consulting Group and since then I’ve helped Google and Twitter start and grow their businesses in Singapore and Asia. In many cases throughout my career, I’ve been one of the very first employees (sometimes the first) on the ground in this part of the world. To me, the Asian market presents an often untapped opportunity for companies looking to expand, and it’s a challenge that has appealed to me throughout my career.

This year's Chinese New Year celebration

I’m driven by opportunities to work with global businesses that drive change and are full of ambitious and passionate people. Cloudflare’s mission is to help build a better Internet and the company is focused on democratizing Internet tools that were once only available to large companies. Making security and speed, which are necessary for any strong business, available to anyone with an Internet property, is truly a noble goal. That’s one of the reasons I’m most excited to work with Cloudflare.

Cloudflare is also serious about culture and diversity, an area that’s very important to me. When I was considering joining Cloudflare, I watched videos from the Internet Summit, an annual event that Cloudflare hosts in its San Francisco office (we will be hosting a London version as well this year). One thing that really stood out for me is that nearly half of the speakers were women and all of the speakers came from different backgrounds. The topics could have been covered by a much more homogeneous group of men, but Cloudflare went the extra mile to make sure more diverse perspectives were represented. I’m extremely passionate about encouraging women to pursue opportunities in business and tech so watching so many women give insightful talks made me realize that this was a company I wanted to work for.

Now for a little about our work in the region. Cloudflare’s Singapore office opened more than two years ago and has more than 40 employees. Employees here hail from 16 countries and I’m proud to say that the Singapore office has the highest percentage of women.

Functions in Asia include, Solutions Engineering, Site Reliability Engineering, Network Operations, Recruiting, Product Development, Operations, Customer Success, and Technical Support. Our team here has made significant contributions in building Cloudflare’s performance and security products, features, and capabilities.

Celebrating Cloudflare's 7th birthday in Singapore

The Singapore team has also had great success serving Cloudflare’s regional customers. We have enterprise customers across all of Asia and across all verticals.

Much of the success in the Singapore office can be attributed to so much effort from all of our pioneering team, especially our first three employees in Singapore: Jimmy, Frankie, and Mark. I’d also like to call out Colin, head of our Sales team in Asia, James, our Solutions Engineering lead in Asia, and Grace Lin, who founded and led our Singapore office for the past two years, commuting back and forth from San Francisco to manage the office. I thank them for all of their hard work in growing Cloudflare’s presence in Asia and I’m excited to work alongside them in this next stage of growth.

I’m truly looking forward to helping Cloudflare grow its reach over the next five years.

If you’re interested in exploring careers at Cloudflare, we are hiring globally! Our team in Singapore is looking to expand across the region for roles in Systems Reliability Engineering, Network Engineering, Technical Support Engineering, Solutions Engineering, Customer Success Engineering, Recruiting, Account Executives, Business Development Representatives, Sales Operations, Business Operations, and more. Check out our careers page to learn more!