Michelle Zatlyn rings the bell to open trading at the New York Stock Exchange Sept. 13 (Michelle Zatlyn/Twitter)

By Michael Joel-Hansen

From P.A. to Wall Street

P.A. woman enjoys big business success stateside

Oct 1, 2019 | 5:07 PM

A former Prince Albert resident recently enjoyed a big day at the New York Stock Exchange.

Michelle Zatlyn, and the company she co-founded, Cloudflare, recently launched an initial public stock offering (IPO) worth over $500 million. The company offers a variety of services, but focuses on helping organizations of various sizes protect their websites from online attacks.

Besides the financial success, Zatlyn also made history by being the first founder of a tech company from Saskatchewan to ring the bell at the New York Stock Exchange.

The co-founder and chief operating officer for Cloudflare said it was quite a feeling going through the IPO and all that came with it.

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“It was truly extraordinary and a really amazing experience to have gone through and I think that our whole team is incredibly proud,” she said.

The company’s head offices are in San Francisco, California and they also have offices in Europe and Asia. Currently the company employs over 1,000 people.

From science to big business

Growing up Zatlyn was interested in science and explained that during the summer months she spent quite a bit of time feeding her curiosity on the subject.

“I loved science. I had some really terrific science teachers while I was in Prince Albert,” she said.

Zatlyn’s journey from P.A. to Silicon Valley saw her make stops in Montreal, Toronto and Boston. After graduating from Carlton Comprehensive High School, Zatlyn left P.A. and enrolled at McGill University, where she completed an undergraduate degree majoring in chemistry and minoring in business.

After graduating she made her way to Toronto, where she lived and worked for six years. At this time Zatlyn considered going back to school to further her education.

“I was going to work for a couple years and go to med school,” she said.

During her time in Toronto Zatlyn found work with an early stage start-up, where she ended up finding she really enjoyed entrepreneurship. She traces her interest back to her P.A. roots when she was involved in junior achievement where she and fellow peers worked on group projects.

“I actually think that was my first introduction to entrepreneurship, so it’s pretty neat that programs like that can help introduce kids,” she said.

Eventually Zatlyn decided to shift gears and focus on a career in business. This led to her deciding to pursue a master’s in business administration (MBA), as she was looking to round out her skills while helping to build a network in the business world.

“I had spent a lot of hours in labs, so I lacked a lot of some of the foundational business skills, because I just hadn’t been exposed to that,” she said.

Zatlyn applied to a number of institutions before being accepted into Harvard Business School, where she studied for two years to get her MBA. This ended up paying off in a big way, as while studying she met her future business partner. The two eventually set out to San Francisco and set up Cloudflare.

Seeking market growth

Looking five years into the future Zatlyn hopes to see awareness about the company grow. In particular, she would like to see a variety of organizations make use of the company’s products, which besides protecting businesses online platforms can also help those platforms run better overall.

“I think a lot of people in Prince Albert probably have no idea what Cloudflare is and I hope five years from now a lot more people have more of an idea what Cloudflare is and are using it,” she said.

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MichaelJoel.Hansen@jpbg.ca

On Twitter: @mjhskcdn