The Strategy Layer Live

Send us Fan Mail In this episode of The Strategy Layer Live , Steve  sits down with Richard Bird —multi-time CISO, former Chief Customer Information Officer at Ping Identity, author, and current Chief Security Officer at Singulr —for a conversation that pushes beyond conventional cybersecurity narratives. For the first time on the podcast, an AI digital twin takes an active speaking role , opening...

Send us Fan Mail In this episode of The Strategy Layer Live , Steve sits down with Bill Kehoe , Chief Information Officer for Washington State, for a rare, wide-ranging conversation recorded in person. Bill reflects on a career spanning state, county, and local government — and the leadership lessons he learned along the way. From transforming the DMV experience in the early 2000s, to championing...

Send us Fan Mail In this episode of The Strategy Layer Live , we sit down with one of the most respected and candid voices in cybersecurity today — Jimmy Sanders . Jimmy is the CISO of Save Mart overseeing more than 200 stores across the West Coast, the former CISO of Netflix DVD, and the current President of ISSA International — giving him a rare, global vantage point on how the role of CISO is b...

Send us Fan Mail What does it really take to lead as a modern CISO? In this episode of The Strategy Layer , Steve sits down with Andy Ellis — former CSO of Akamai, CISO Hall of Fame inductee, and author of How to CISO 1.1 — for a wide-ranging, no-fluff conversation on the future of cybersecurity leadership. Andy brings clarity, candor, and decades of experience to the table as we explore: The core...

Send us Fan Mail In Episode 2 of The Strategy Layer Live , we dig into one of the most urgent — and least acknowledged — leadership challenges in cybersecurity today. The CISO role isn’t dying. But it is being slowly redefined, compressed, and undermined by structural misalignment, rising board expectations, and misused metrics. What one security executive called the “co-morbid poisoning” of the r...

Send us Fan Mail In the premiere episode of The Identient Podcast , Steve Tout sits down with Mark Settle, a seven-time CIO and author of Truth from the Trenches , to explore the dual-edged power of metrics in IT leadership. Mark shares how metrics, when mismanaged, become "loaded weapons" that create unintended consequences—but when designed thoughtfully, they drive alignment, continuou...