Women in Cybersecurity: Katy Lietzau

Katy Lietzau, Director of Channel for the Central Region at CRITICALSTART, believes in the power of a good conversation within the partner community. It’s through these conversations that Katy believes that value is added, and that many companies may be missing out on the strength of lasting relationships that all can be traced back to a simple conversation.

“I recently had a partner come to me and they realized the value of our approach to MDR, but they needed to figure out how to get some of their customers away from competitive cybersecurity products that were underperforming,” Katy related. “I set this person up with one of our sales engineers to talk more in-depth about our MDR offering around SIEM to provide this partner with the tools they needed to make a pitch to their customers. They’re bringing us in to try to help win that business based on what CRTICALSTART does holistically. We’ve built credibility with this partner, by building out the relationship. We’ve shown them how we can help them close deals and expand their pipeline exponentially. We’ve shown them how to build a go-to-market plan around our integrations. And all of that came back to having the right conversations at the right time.”

About Katy

Katy helped launch the channel program at Critical Start, recruiting and onboarding channel partners and guiding sales reps in account planning to build, sustain and grow a multi-million dollar pipeline. Katy started her career in the Channel at Forcepoint as one of their National Channel Managers, where she learned to utilize her relationships to build trust, credibility and drive opportunities for revenue. The relationships she built at Forcepoint led her to Digital Guardian where she was able to help build the channel program at that organization from the ground up.

At Texas A&M University, Katy was a 4-year letterman on the Women’s Swim Team. She used to think her biggest accomplishments were in the pool until the birth of her first child, Brady.

“It all comes back to the people. In my previous position, I had familiarity with CRITICALSTART, as they were one of the partners I covered as part of my job. I knew the sales team, the culture, and the types of people that were there. It’s always great when you can come to a company that feels like you’re working for family and CRITICALSTART is that kind of company.

Katy’s thoughts on CRITICALSTART