Trotting the Globe: A Day in the Life with Megan Peters

From San Francisco to Sydney, Megan Peters, senior manager, APAC sales development, is bringing her sales expertise all over the world (and writing about her travels, too). Read this edition of the Day in the Life series to learn more about how Megan works tirelessly across time zones to make her people successful.

How did you find out about Okta?

I used to be a Sales Representative at PagerDuty, one of Okta’s ISV partners, so Okta would often come up in my deals. That’s when I first started to follow the company and understand the importance of identity. I was also an Okta user and loved the end-user benefits; Okta made doing my job so much more seamless and productive.

Why did you choose Okta?

I wanted to pivot my career to get management experience and saw an open opportunity at Okta. It was already on my shortlist of companies because it was a mature startup with a strong product, so it would be the perfect place to learn and grow alongside Okta’s people. Everyone I met during the interview process was so smart and passionate—I knew they would always challenge and inspire me.

From a career perspective, Okta presented a clear vision of what my trajectory would look like (shout out to Matt Apple for sharing his story) and provided unique development opportunities. For example, I love to travel (and even have a travel blog), so it was my personal goal to work internationally. I shared that with sales leadership and was then able to build the APAC team after having a similar role in the states.

What does an average day look like?

I run sales development for the APAC region, so I manage both inbound and outbound pipeline generating teams. My mornings are typically packed with cross-functional meetings because that’s when Sydney overlaps with San Francisco.

By midday, I am focused on proactive projects: headcount planning, forecasting pipeline, and analyzing funnel metrics. I also work on long-term projects like planning sales campaigns, creating enablement resources, building reports, and demoing tools.

My afternoons are dedicated to my team. I have ten people who report to me, so I focus on individual coaching and career conversations. My goal is to make my people successful so they can graduate from the Sales Development Representative (SDR) program and do well in their next role.

What is your favorite part about your role?

Mentoring and promoting, by far. I wanted to be in management because of the teaching experience and to see the value I’m adding to people early in their careers. I’ve been able to promote people to sales, management, operations, partners, and several other teams. It feels incredibly rewarding to create a legacy that enables Okta’s future leaders, then see them grow and spread widely throughout the company.

What is the most challenging part about your role?

Doing my own job first. My department sits at the intersection of sales and marketing, so I’m constantly pulled in different directions. I’m helpful by nature so I always want to get involved, but it can be challenging to finish my work before helping others on my cross-functional teams. I sometimes need to take a step back, prioritize my tasks, delegate to team leaders, and enable my team to be self-sufficient.

What is Okta’s culture like?

So vibrant—I love it! I’ve always wanted to work at a company where the people are passionate about their jobs, and that culture comes from us truly feeling like we’re helping organizations. We’re proud of what we do!

We’re also a friendly and collaborative group that feels like a work family. Okta encourages this culture with amazing bonding opportunities, including volunteering together, lunch time sports leagues, yoga classes, and so much more. It creates a cycle where the better I know the people I work with, the harder I want to work for them.

Okta in one word?

Energetic. I can feel the buzz, and it keeps getting louder in terms of employee culture, market validation, and customer advocacy. It’s been especially exciting coming from the Americas market to APAC and watching the region pick up tailwind. People are inspired by the opportunity ahead of us, so we’re moving fast and embracing that energy!

Our APAC team is growing! Check out our Careers page to join Megan and the Okta family.