Education

Early life and education

Zatlyn was raised in Prince Albert, Saskatchewan in Canada.

After high school, Zatlyn earned a bachelor’s degree from McGill University in 2001, majoring in chemistry and minoring in business. Though her initial intention was to go to medical school, she instead became fascinated by business. She took a job as a research analyst and consultant at Investor Analytics. She then spent time at I Love Rewards and Toshiba before enrolling in Harvard Business School in 2007 to pursue her Master of Business Administration.

Zatlyn explained the value of her time in business school, saying, “The program taught me how to have a point of view and make a decision—something you need to do many times a day as a founder. It also taught me how to listen to a diverse group of viewpoints. This is something that I value every day.”

While working on her MBA, Zatlyn interned at Google. Though she expected an offer to stay on at Google after she graduated with her MBA in 2009, due to the economic recession, Google did not extend an offer. Instead, she connected with her MBA classmate Matthew Prince to work on a business plan that would become Cloudflare.

While Zatlyn is best known for her career at CloudFlare, she has also served on the board of directors for Australian software company Atlassian since 2021. Additionally, she is a regular speaker at C100’s early-stage mentorship event, 48 Hours in the Valley.