In Illumio: Lilia Posada

Inside Illumio is a monthly series that highlights the exceptional individuals behind Illumio's world-class products. Each post will peek behind the scenes to spotlight a member of our team. Come get to know us a little better and learn more about what makes Illumio's culture so unique.

This month, meet Lilia Posada, Senior Director of Financial Planning and Analysis at Illumio. Learn why she’s passionate about building world-class teams, what makes collaboration essential to her role, and why she enjoys building companies from the ground up.  

Tell us about yourself. What do you do at Illumio?

I am the Senior Director of Financial Planning and Analysis (FP&A) at Illumio and have been here a little over four years. I report directly to Anup Singh, our Chief Financial Officer at Illumio.  

In a nutshell, I’m responsible for managing the entire company’s financial model. Everything from top-line projections of NNARR, bookings and revenue, to operating margins, headcount planning, and cash burn, for both short-term projections like our current quarter forecast, as well as our long-term models including our Annual Operating Plan (AOP) and 3-year strategic models.  It’s essential that we have financial forecasts with high predictability in results and sound financial models with sustainable profitable growth.    

What made you interested in working at Illumio?

I really enjoy building a company from the ground up: building processes that scale, hiring and mentoring a great team, and defining key metrics, analysis and strategies that will help lead the company to success. I had the opportunity to do that work in my previous role alongside Anup where we successfully took a company from startup to IPO and then post-IPO to an acquisition. It was a fantastic experience, and I knew I had found my passion.  I remember one day at this company sitting in the lunchroom with Anup and saying, “hey, I would love to do this again.”  

It’s how I landed at Illumio, and it has been an awesome experience to be here.  I’ve gained so much knowledge on the FP&A activities of a SaaS company and I think we are making a huge impact in the Cybersecurity industry as the Zero Trust Segmentation company.  

What does a day in the life of Lilia look like? What are you working on that excites you?

Days are very busy as you can imagine! Every day has something new that we’re trying to tackle.  

Right now, we’re gearing up to kick-off our annual operating plan for our next fiscal year. This is about a 5-month long process where we focus on aligning our operating plan and growth projections with our corporate and functional level goals for the next fiscal year.  My team and I spend a lot of time working with our Executives and functional leaders across the organization to understand goals, objectives, investments, and resource requirements for next year, and it’s our job to build a sound financial plan we can execute to.

That’s really what makes my job so exciting. I get to partner with senior leaders across the company, understand what’s top of mind for them, and translate our roadmap into a financial plan.

What is the most important thing that you’ve learned during your time at Illumio?

Building a world-class team is paramount. It’s all about the people – a great team that is highly collaborative, passionate, energetic, and knows how to get things done.  

That’s why it’s been incredibly important to me to focus on mentoring, developing, and empowering my team to grow as leaders.  I believe the key to success in any organization comes down to the people.

What are you passionate about outside of your career?

My life outside of work is all about my family. I have two boys who are very active in school and sports, so these days I’m usually at a high school Varsity football game on Friday nights, basketball games in the spring, and Uber-mom in-between!  

Which Illumio core value resonates with you and why?

Onwards together. This really resonates with me because I strongly believe that we will achieve success and build a great company at Illumio by working together, and we’ll have a lot of fun on this journey!

What do you think people should know about working at Illumio?

If you like to build, take initiative, truly add value, and see the impact of your work and efforts shape the future of Illumio, then this is the right place for you.    

There’s so much opportunity at Illumio to work with likeminded people who bring the passion, energy and vision to build, collaborate, and think beyond the immediate. It adds to the excitement of being part of a company with huge potential for success.  Illumio is an exciting place to make a real impact on the company, our industry, and your career.    

Interested in joining the team? Check out our career openings.