Christi Olson — Okta
Okta  |  Director of Paid Media

You asked for a candidate with depth in analytics, web, ABX and global paid media.I've built at the intersection of all four.

At Microsoft, I led $500M+ in global acquisition investment across 30+ businesses and 100+ markets.

At Azul, I connected paid media, ABM, audience intelligence and digital experience to 63% YoY enterprise pipeline growth and 9x marketing ROI.

Now I'm interested in what that experience could unlock for Okta + Auth0.

Why I'm interested in the role.

Global Media
$500M+ investment
Scale
100+ markets
B2B SaaS
63% YoY pipeline growth
Performance
76% lower CPA  |  308% higher LTV
The Match

Four core qualifications. Four direct matches.

A job description can say a lot. The more interesting signal is what the hiring team chooses to emphasize. These are the four areas that caught my attention — and why the role immediately felt familiar.

01 Global Paid Media

$500M+ annual acquisition investment. 30+ businesses. 100+ markets.

At Microsoft, I led global acquisition strategy, investment governance, experimentation and performance across businesses including Xbox, Game Pass, Microsoft Store, Windows, Azure and subscription products. The challenge wasn't simply buying media globally. It was creating enough consistency to operate at scale while preserving the flexibility individual businesses and markets needed to perform.

8 direct reports  ·  40+ agency, platform & regional partners

02 Analytics

The measurement system exists to improve the investment decision.

I've built measurement and experimentation frameworks connecting conversion signals, attribution, customer value, product economics and forecasts to media allocation. At Microsoft, value-based optimization and privacy-safe conversion signals helped drive the results below.

76%
Lower CPA
308%
Higher LTV
50%
Conversion growth

Adobe Analytics  ·  GA4  ·  Looker  ·  Tableau  ·  Bizible  ·  Salesforce

03 ABX

Account-based marketing gets interesting when it changes where the next dollar goes.

At Azul, I rebuilt audience architecture around 6sense intent, CRM, behavioral engagement and campaign-performance signals — moving from broad 1:many acquisition toward coordinated 1:few and 1:1 account engagement. The objective wasn't personalization for its own sake. It was better account selection, stronger progression and more efficient pipeline creation.

6sense  ·  Bombora  ·  Demandbase  ·  RollWorks  ·  Salesforce  ·  Marketo

04 Web Experience

Media performance doesn't end at the click.

I've spent much of my career connecting audience → ad → experience → lifecycle → Sales. At Azul, that meant combining segmentation, landing-page and offer testing, lead scoring, lifecycle optimization and Sales/RevOps follow-up to improve downstream performance.

+25%
MQL→SQL conversion
+23%
YoY form completions

Optimizely  ·  Mutiny  ·  Qualified  ·  Drift  ·  Vercel

How I Think About Paid Media

The channel isn't the strategy.

Search, Social, Programmatic and ABX are investment mechanisms competing for the same marginal dollar.

The question I want a paid-media organization answering isn't simply:

"Which channel performed best?"

It's:

"Where should the next dollar go to create the greatest incremental business value?"

That requires a system connecting audience intelligence, media economics, creative, digital experience, attribution, pipeline progression and customer value — not six channel dashboards optimized independently.

AI shouldn't just help us make more ads.

Audience intelligence
Find meaningful signals faster.
Media buying
Improve bidding, allocation and optimization.
Creative iteration
Increase learning velocity, not simply asset volume.
Analysis
Surface patterns humans may miss.
Workflow automation
Remove repetitive work so specialists spend more time on judgment.

I've already used AI across bidding, audience strategy, reporting, CRM and workflow automation. The opportunity now is to build AI into the operating system of paid media, not bolt another tool onto the stack.

First 90 Days

The questions I'd want to answer in the first 90 days

Days 1–30
Understand the system
  • Where is paid media creating incremental demand versus capturing existing intent?
  • Which audiences and account segments actually progress?
  • How do Okta and Auth0 differ in audience, economics, buying motion and measurement?
  • Where are tracking, attribution or CRM signals limiting optimization?
  • What does the team wish leadership understood that dashboards currently hide?
Days 31–60
Find the leverage
  • Identify the biggest opportunities across bidding, audience architecture, channel allocation, creative, landing experience and ABX.
  • Establish where AI can improve analysis, workflow velocity and decision-making.
  • Separate global standards that create leverage from regional decisions that should remain local.
Days 61–90
Build the operating rhythm
  • Begin reallocating investment toward the highest-value opportunities.
  • Establish experimentation and creative-learning frameworks.
  • Align agency and platform accountability.
  • Build an executive scorecard connecting media investment to account progression, pipeline, revenue and customer value.

The objective isn't a 90-day transformation. It's a 90-day understanding of where transformation will create the most value.

Leadership

I haven't forgotten what it's like to be the person in the account.

I've managed hundreds of millions in media. I've also been the person staring at a search query report wondering why the platform matched that query.

I believe strong media leadership provides enough structure to scale without burying specialists in process. My job isn't to be the smartest Search, Social or Programmatic practitioner in every room. It's to make sure the smartest practitioners have the data, tools, clarity, air cover and decision framework they need to win.

Strategy doesn't replace craft.
Specialist expertise matters.
Measurement should improve decisions.
A dashboard is not an outcome.
Global doesn't mean identical.
Standardize where scale creates leverage. Localize where context creates advantage.
People should understand why investment moves.
Teams perform better when decisions aren't mysterious.
Why Okta

I don't need to learn how to lead global paid media.I want to help redefine what it looks like in the age of AI.

Okta's challenge is compelling because it sits at an unusual intersection: enterprise scale, technical audiences, complex buying journeys, two powerful brands, rapidly changing AI behavior and a category where trust matters. That's exactly the kind of problem I like working on.

Christi Olson
Global Paid Media & Growth Leader  ·  Duvall, Washington