Director, Third Party Events

Company Description

Our Mission

At Palo Alto Networks® everything starts and ends with our mission:

Being the cybersecurity partner of choice, protecting our digital way of life.

Our vision is a world where each day is safer and more secure than the one before. We are a company built on the foundation of challenging and disrupting the way things are done, and we’re looking for innovators who are as committed to shaping the future of cybersecurity as we are.

Our Approach to Work

We lead with flexibility and choice in all of our people programs. We have disrupted the traditional view that all employees have the same needs and wants. We offer personalization and offer our employees the opportunity to choose what works best for them as often as possible - from your wellbeing support to your growth and development, and beyond!

At Palo Alto Networks, we believe in the power of collaboration and value in-person interactions. This is why our employees generally work from the office three days per week, leaving two days for choice and flexibility to work where you feel most effective. This setup fosters casual conversations, problem-solving, and trusted relationships. While details may evolve, our goal is to create an environment where innovation thrives, with office-based teams coming together three days a week to collaborate and thrive, together!

Job Description

Your Career

We are looking for a confident Global Events leader who is passionate about re-defining events in this ever-changing environment, with a focus on attendee experiences and branded content amplification as guiding principles. In this role, you will be primarily responsible for managing our third party event strategy, design and execution at events such as RSAC, BlackHat, Gartner Security & Risk Management Summit, Mobile World Congress, KubeCon, Google Cloud NEXT, AWS Re:Invent and others.  

This results-focused leader is responsible for working cross-functionally across Palo Alto Networks in a matrixed environment. You will influence senior leadership, product marketing, PR, sales, demand gen, communications and our go to market business units to amplify our company initiatives, campaigns, brand and event pipeline goals.  This position will report directly to the VP of Events and Executive Briefing Program.

Your Impact 

• Develop a portfolio approach to how we support sponsorship of 3rd party events which support corporate and pipeline objectives
• Plan and lead the strategy and execution of our participation at 3rd party events, be they virtual, hybrid or in-person
• Work closely with executives, senior leaders and stakeholders on delivering VIP events surrounding our flagship customer events and 3rd party sponsorships in order to engage with key influencers
• Research and understand personas for each event type to maximize impact and ensure the appropriate PANW messaging and content is delivered accordingly
• Drive all event communications, both internally and externally
• Partner with the Go To Market (GTM) and sales teams to ensure the 3rd party event portfolio supports business unit objectives and contributes to business unit-specific initiatives
• Develop the audience acquisition strategy in partnership with the Demand Generation team to drive high registration of the right target personas 
• Deliver exceptional and unique attendee experiences which drive engagement, attendance, participation and post-event follow-up response
• Work closely with Go To Market (GTM) partners and cross-functional marketing teams to develop repeatable content, tools, systems, processes and guidelines to drive scale and impact
• Act as the key interface between the Global Event & EBP team with the Go To Market (GTM) teams ensuring that our service offerings, and expertise are understood and leveraged for consistency and brand amplification 
• Manage key audiences, accelerate sales pipeline and drive marketing-influenced bookings for all events
• Partner closely with the broader marketing teams to ensure there is consistency of messaging across all aspects of events
• Maintain a budget for large scale events and closely track spend against targets
• Set success criteria, measure and report out the impact of each major event on awareness, engagement and pipeline acceleration metrics
• Validate event investment versus the ROI driven from each major event
• Develop strong cross-functional relationships to ensure involvement and input on event strategy from product, customer success, and sales

Qualifications

Your Experience 

• 10+ years delivering successful event experiences, virtual/hybrid event experience required
• 5+ years managing a team
• People manager