Inside Tanium: Elevating Customer Value is Her Mission and Everyone Gains

As a Director of Customer Engagement, Paige Galles leverages data and insights to help customers understand Tanium’s value to their organization. Sometimes that means learning a new vocabulary and translating metrics and goals into words that resonate with each individual company. Shining a light on the power of Tanium often means arriving at a shared language, and this is where Paige excels.

With a fascinating array of roles leading up to her position with Tanium, you can see how her experiences contributed to an impressive toolkit of skills. Throughout her career she has been attracted to solving sticky problems for customers and colleagues.

We sat down with Paige to learn more about her early roles and how they helped shape her career, along with how Tanium’s culture supports her passion for helping people successfully invest in great technology solving real problems.

Paige Galles (far left) at Tanium’s Kickoff Event in Nashville, 2019

Can you tell us about your background and the journey that’s led you to Tanium?

Paige Galles: While completing my MBA, I landed a position with a contact lens manufacturing company. We were implementing Oracle’s manufacturing applications at the time and partnering with Sandia National Labs to conduct a series of Oracle training sessions. Shortly after the training sessions Sandia hired me as a primary technical analyst leading their Oracle manufacturing applications. Within two years, I completed my MBA program and also earned a Master of Technology through Oracle.

After 10 years with Sandia, I went on to work at a nonprofit called Mind Research Network as a senior program manager. I was responsible for $18M in NIH grants funded to research a means to recidivate psychopathic criminals. The research team of 30 team members conducted psychological evaluations, collected DNA and ran fMRI imaging on inmates across three states. After MRN, I worked at the University of New Mexico for five years in several positions, with the last being a Director of Institutional Analytics.

After that, I worked at a company called Rural Sourcing Inc (RSI). We provided professional services for onshore IT outsourcing. While managing the RSI software development center in Albuquerque I directed the work of 120 developers who supported a wide range of organizations, many of the same clients that we have here at Tanium. After a couple of years with RSI, I was recruited to lead the Customer Success and Technical Support team for a vulnerability management software startup called RiskSense. After two years there, LinkedIn alerted me to a job at Tanium that matched my skills, and I threw my hat in the ring! Zoom forward to 2022 and I am looking forward to celebrating three years with Tanium this July!

Did you know early on that you wanted a job in IT, or was it mostly happenstance?

Paige Galles: While I was studying for my GMAT to get into grad school, I worked with the New Mexico Department of Health as an intern assisting with the manual Medicare and Medicaid payment processing migration from 4.5-inch floppy discs to an automated system. I conducted joint application design sessions whiteboarding data flows and integration points. This internship kicked off my interest in IT. Two months later I began my MBA program and took a database class. From there I was hooked. I completed my MBA with a concentration in Management Information Systems and now have over 20 years of professional experience in IT.

Can you walk us through a day in the life of a Director of Customer Engagement at Tanium?

Paige Galles: Sure! I work closely with my account teams, which are made up of people in many types of customer-focused roles, each focused on ensuring the customer receives the most value possible. If we need to pull in a Product Manager to review the roadmap, escalate a JIRA, or schedule time with a subject matter expert (SME) to do a deep dive into how a module may be used based on customer use cases, I’ll bring in those resources. I aim to make sure we understand the specific business value a customer is seeking to gain from Tanium so our team can help customers unlock the power of Tanium. On any given day, I attend meetings with my account team and/or customers to help strategize how to best meet customers’ needs. Some daily examples include developing value plans, customer leadership presentations, escalating opportunities for product improvement, identifying account risk …proposing mitigation solutions, to name a few CE daily objectives. In sum, I am a member of an account team, and our overall goal is to ensure our customers are super thrilled to be working with Tanium!

Is there anyone at Tanium who deserves a shout-out because of their positive impact on your career?

Paige Galles: I will say this: every person at Tanium has served as a mentor in some form. The culture here, the focus on people and the way we adhere to our values — the result is that everyone is supportive and responsive. My leadership team includes Amelia Forrest Kaye, AVP of Customer Engagement, and Matthew Price, West RVP of Customer Engagement. Both are always available to bounce an idea or brainstorm a better path forward. I am equally fortunate to work with exceptional customer engagement colleagues such as Bruce Hill, Erik Krieg, Ariel Reid and Jay Wells. Our teams are deeply committed to our customers; it’s been the most refreshing and rewarding professional experience. In this last year I conducted 25 interviews resulting in 7 new folks on the CE team! It is fantastic to be a part of our hiring process and contribute to maintaining the fabric of our organization, finding stellar people who adhere to our values. Our People and Culture are the environments where we can all excel and thrive.

How is working at Tanium different from other companies?

Paige Galles: I’ve never been happier in my career than I have been while working at Tanium. It’s the people and the culture. It is the excitement of our tech. Most important, it is the joy I see in our customers when they leverage Tanium appropriately, and when they really allow the visibility and control to… So sorry to be giving our marketing spiel, but to give The Power of Certainty. It’s just such magic. Truly our magic is in our people.

What advice would you offer to someone new to Tanium?

Paige Galles: I would say don’t be shy. Reach out to individuals across the organization, ask for time with them. I recommend you start with 20 minutes for quick introductions because we have the most interesting group of individuals I’ve ever met. So many people have a fascinating background which is worth your time to engage with them and learn. So don’t miss out: ask questions, lean on others, find out what makes Tanium special for them and how they plan to move forward professionally. This will help you determine strategies you could employ to grow your career and excel at Tanium!!

“Inside Tanium” is part of a series that highlights the people and culture of Tanium. To learn more about Tanium and explore our range of career opportunities, visit our Tanium Careers page.