Jana O'Connor - ROI, MDF, and the Modern Partner Marketing Mandate

Episode notes

In this episode of Partnerships Unraveled, we sit down with Jana O'Connor, AVP of Global Strategic Partner Marketing at SentinelOne, to dissect the evolving role of partner marketing and what it takes to drive measurable impact in today’s landscape. With nearly three decades of experience at industry giants like Palo Alto Networks and Symantec, Jana brings a wealth of insight into what partnership success looks like in an age of increased accountability, complexity, and ecosystem collaboration. We explore the shift from activity-based enablement to outcome-driven strategy, how MDF is being scrutinized like never before, and the importance of aligning go-to-market efforts across sales, marketing, and channel teams. Jana also shares what makes hyperscaler partnerships like SentinelOne’s with AWS scale effectively, and why operationalizing transparency is the glue that holds high-performing partner strategies together. For those building or transforming partner marketing programs, this conversation offers a playbook of hard-won lessons and strategic frameworks. Tune in to learn what the modern partner marketing mandate looks like and how to deliver real ROI.

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