Sarah Scharf joined Vanta as the first product marketer and one of its earliest employees. In the six years since, she’s moved up, down and sideways, and along the way she’s built the brand, defined a category and written the copy for their viral billboard (”Compliance that doesn’t SOC 2 much”). Today, she becomes Vanta’s new CMO.

She almost didn’t take the job. With an offer from her dream company, Apple, in hand, she took the Vanta interview to see if she could get a counter-offer to negotiate. But she fell for the team, the ambition, and the opportunity to help build what could become the next Apple, instead of making Apple’s marketing 0.1% better.

In the latest installment of our as-told-by essay series, “Firsthand,” Scharf takes us inside Vanta’s culture of trust and learning that’s made her many lives within the company possible.

Stepping into the CMO role is her biggest reinvention yet. “While it felt like a big leap, this reinvention only exists because of all the smaller ones. Each time I'd remade myself and it worked, I'd banked a little more of the company's trust, and that trust is what bought me the next, larger reinvention,” she writes. “Trust compounds, but only if you stay put long enough to let it.”