The stories we carry with us don’t stay separate from the work we do. They shape how we think, how we connect, and how we show up for the people around us.
At SentinelOne, building and securing technology is a shared effort — one that’s strengthened by the different perspectives, backgrounds, and experiences people bring. When we take the time to listen and learn from one another, it changes how we collaborate and what we’re able to build together.
As we recognize Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month, we’re taking a moment to highlight some of those perspectives. Across our teams, the AAPI community reflects a wide range of cultures, histories, and lived experiences — all of which play a role in how we grow as individuals and as a company.
In this blog, three Sentinels share their stories. While each journey is different, they reflect a common idea: identity isn’t something you leave behind. It shows up in how you lead, how you learn, and how you build community every day.
John Wong, SVP, Business Finance, United States
Every January 1st, John eats noodles.
“It’s a Chinese custom meant to support health, long life, and prosperity,” he said. “On our birthdays or on January 1st, mom or dad would always put a bowl of noodles on the table. Even now, running my own life, I can’t move away from it. I can still hear my mom saying, ‘Just boil a ramen and eat one noodle, that counts.’”
Born in Hawaii, John is a fifth-generation Chinese American, with a little Korean heritage in the mix as well. Within his family, it gets even more layered. His wife is part Chinese and part Japanese, so their children carry three lineages: Chinese, Korean, and Japanese.
Passing that on takes intention. “It’s genuinely hard to balance all three, so we’ve leaned into a few things intentionally. The kids do three weeks of Japanese summer school. We celebrate Chinese New Year and try to explain the traditions. It’s more holiday-driven than daily, but those moments are where we bring it back and remind ourselves why it matters.”
Knowing the history and understanding how his family came to America and adapted to local culture is important to John. He can no longer speak Mandarin, but he still carries a distinctly Asian life philosophy.
“In Asian culture, there’s a real emphasis on being a good partner, a good person to collaborate with, and seeing the best in the people around you. I have a mantra that stems from that upbringing: assume the best, expect the best, bring out the best,” John explained.
He applies this mindset both at home and at work as he leads his team. “Assume people come with good intentions and no ill will. Expect them to be in the right mindset. Then bring out the best in them,” he said. “When you operate from that place, it changes the whole dynamic of working with someone.”
At SentinelOne, John runs financial planning and analysis. Hiring, budgets, earnings calls, and top-line guidance all flow through his team, shaping the company’s financial trajectory. He originally joined on a recommendation from a colleague he had worked with before and stayed for the culture.
“It’s hard to work somewhere where people operate with the wrong intentions. Here, when we have real disagreements, they come from asking what’s right for the company and what makes sense long term. Everyone is trying to make SentinelOne better, not for ego or personal gain. I genuinely like the people I work with day to day,” John said.
John believes sharing stories like his matters beyond the individual. They offer a deeper way to understand what a company really stands for. “When someone is evaluating a company, beyond the financials and the product, they want to know what it’s actually like. What the culture looks like, the community. When you read something like this, when we discuss our heritage and are invited to be who we are, you see how we support each other. You see a collaborative, community-driven culture. That’s reassuring. It becomes a signal: this is a good place to be.”
Tanmaya Mishra, Staff Software Engineer, India
Tanmaya Mishra grew up in Bhagalpur, a small town in Bihar in eastern India, in a joint family where cousins were practically siblings, every festival meant a full house, and the rhythm of life was shaped by something larger than any one person.
“I wouldn’t call myself deeply religious, but I’m very spiritual,” she said. “I believe in yoga, in being calm, in a higher power. It doesn’t matter where you pray or who you pray to. What matters is how much peace it brings you. That’s the strategy of my life — be calm through anything that comes.”
Tanmaya traces this philosophy back to her childhood, watching people around her put their trust in something greater than themselves. “Whoever I have become, from my childhood to now, has been a result of that belief system,” she said. Traveling through India, which she greatly enjoys, has only deepened it. “Wherever you go, there are temples, churches, mosques. You just get that feeling of peace being around such serenity.”
Even as Tanmaya lives in Bangalore today, one of the country’s fastest-moving cities, and for the first time on her own, she brings her roots with her. Her family still meets almost every weekend. Her parents are on video calls every other day. Every festival lands at someone’s house — Holi, Diwali, and the rest of the calendar that marks the Indian year.
At the Bangalore office, the same spirit carries over. Festivals are celebrated, and Tanmaya shows up every week, even when she doesn’t have to. “Half my team isn’t there because they work remotely,” she said, “but the pull of having fun and talking to people is what brings me in anyway.”
That warmth, that readiness to show up and connect, is what carried her through her first months at SentinelOne, where she arrived with no cybersecurity background and a steep learning curve ahead. “The kind of learning you have to do here just to keep up, I don’t see that in many places,” she said.
Whenever she didn’t know what to do, she leaned on another thing her upbringing had given her: the belief that asking for help is never a weakness. “No question is stupid. I just ask a lot of questions, to a lot of people, and it always works out.”
“Thinking from the perspective of a small-town person, you feel like city people might be very harsh, fast-moving, not caring enough, but I always ended up finding people who helped me, who were kind to me,” she said.
The same applied at SentinelOne. “The way we come together, the way we help each other grow, that’s not common. It’s something other companies could learn from,” Tanmaya said. “The community we’ve built is genuinely inspiring. Everyone comes together like they’ve known each other their whole lives. That’s rare and worth sharing.”
Rachel Park, AVP, Product Marketing
Growing up in Toronto as the daughter of Korean and Cantonese immigrants, Rachel Park experienced the new year in two distinct ways.
On one side, her Korean family gathered every New Year morning — cousins together, bowing to elders, and sharing the soup her grandmother made each year. Later in the month, her Chinese family came together for Lunar New Year — a celebration that brought together more than a hundred relatives across 4 generations, all dressed in red around a traditional feast.
“You get to experience the richness of both,” Rachel said. “Different traditions, different flavors, but the same core: family and community.”
Now living in Brooklyn with her husband and newborn son, those traditions feel different. Her family is preparing for his 100-day celebration, a milestone observed in both Korean and Chinese cultures — one of many traditions she’s now carrying forward in her own way.
“It makes you really intentional about what you pass on,” she said. “You start to realize how much of who you are comes from those moments.”
That awareness has always been part of Rachel’s story. As the child of immigrants and the granddaughter of a refugee, she grew up watching her parents build their lives from the ground up. Her father immigrated as a teenager and helped run a family convenience store before beginning a successful business, while her mother moved to Canada as a student and built her own career in finance.
“There’s this belief that you’re capable of doing hard things,” she said. “You are capable of overcoming barriers. There’s a resilience that’s very valued in my family.”
Rachel also grew up understanding what it means to be different.
“I grew up watching my parents and grandparents navigate life as first-generation immigrants, and they are familiar with the experience of being ‘othered,’” she said. “It makes you more empathetic and curious about the experiences of others. And you realize how diversity and equity make the collective more powerful.”
At SentinelOne, where Rachel leads core product marketing, that perspective shapes how she approaches her work and her team.
“I’ve never been just one thing,” she said. “And when people bring their heritage, their relationships, their layered identities — that’s where possibilities open up. The best ideas don’t come from everyone thinking the same way. Innovation only happens when you bring in different perspectives and engage in healthy discourse to build something better together.”
That belief extends beyond the work itself and into how she thinks about community. At a stage of life where both her career and family are evolving, Rachel has experienced firsthand how different forms of support show up.
“There’s a shared understanding in my community that when you see someone who needs help, you step in,” she said. “You celebrate wins and support each other through hard moments.”
It’s something Rachel values deeply, and something she actively builds — across her teams, her family, and her broader community. As her own life becomes more layered, she’s learned to embrace that complexity.
“You can be multiple things at once,” she said. “And there’s beauty in that.”
For Rachel, sharing stories like hers is about making that possibility visible to others.
“If there’s an example in front of you—it unlocks the door,” she said. “You’d be surprised how your background, your culture, your heritage—things that may have felt daunting or complex growing up—can be what sets you apart and helps you build stronger connections with others.”
And sometimes, she added, they’re exactly what moves things forward.
“Progress doesn’t come from repeating what exists. It comes from the courage to see what hasn’t been seen, to invite voices not yet heard, and to boldly reshape the mold.”
What We Carry Forward
A bowl of soup on New Year’s morning. A family call every other day. A 100-day celebration for a new baby boy. The traditions that shape us rarely announce themselves as anything important. They just persist, quietly, carried from one life into the next.
At SentinelOne, we believe the strongest teams are built on a wide range of voices, perspectives, and lived experiences. This AAPI Heritage Month, we’re proud to celebrate the Sentinels who bring their whole selves to work every day — because that’s not just who we are. It’s what makes us better.
If you’d like to be part of a team where your story matters, explore our open roles.