Connecting with Okta’s Very First Nonprofit Customer

There’s a lot to love about Oktane, our annual customer appreciation conference, but my favorite part is getting to meet our customers in person. At Oktane19, I had a chance to talk with Okta’s first-ever nonprofit customer, Pesticide Action Network of North America (PANNA), and learn about their journey.

The Pesticide Action Network was founded in 1982 “in response to the fundamentally international nature of the pesticide problem.” Their mission is to replace dangerous pesticides around the world with more ecologically and socially sound alternatives. Over the years, the organization has helped to ban harmful pesticides in hundreds of countries and continues to organize a diverse array of stakeholders to promote healthier food systems.

In 2011, PANNA’s IT Manager, Clint Boerner, was tasked with leading PANNA’s move to the cloud. Clint explained to me that PANNA, like many organizations, needed to modernize their IT infrastructure in order to be more flexible, secure, and cost-efficient. Clint knew that adopting new cloud-based technologies had the potential to introduce complexity and risk, so he decided to implement Okta first.

Clint was an unlikely champion for Okta. With decades of experience managing technology for a variety of organizations, Clint was understandably skeptical of potential fads. “I had to be dragged kicking and screaming to the cloud,” he said. However, after deploying several cloud-based, core business systems like GSuite, Slack, Salesforce, and Smartsheet, Clint can’t imagine managing PANNA’s IT infrastructure without Okta.

“We have people working in our main office as well as remotely around the world, so we had to have a cloud-based approach so that everyone could have access.” Like many organizations, PANNA uses Okta Single Sign-on and Adaptive Multi-factor Authentication to seamlessly and securely deploy applications to their distributed workforce. Today, PANNA uses Okta to securely access more than 30 different technologies used by their global team.

Okta is proud to support mission-driven organizations like the Pesticide Action Network and nonprofit technology professionals like Clint. To learn more, visit okta.com/okta-for-good.