Career Notes

Chief intelligence officer at Intel 471, Michael shares his story where he started as an actor and quickly changed over to intelligence and what the transition was like for him. Michael grew up wanting to be an actor and even was able to land some acting jobs, after going into the Marine Corps he decided to leave acting behind and start a new path in his journey. He says looking for a purpose real...

Don Pezet, CTO of ACI Learning, sits down to share his over 25 years of experience in the industry. Don previously spent time as a field engineer in the financial and insurance industries supporting networks around the world. He co-founded ITProTV in 2012 to help create the IT training that he wished he had when he got started in his IT career. He also shares insights for anyone else wishing to pu...

Jameeka Aaron, Chief Information Security Officer at Auth0, a product unit of Okta, sits down to share her story following two different paths that led her to where she is today. Jameeka has 20 years of IT and cybersecurity experience and has mitigated security risks at Nike, the U.S. Navy, and now Auth0. She joined the Navy not knowing what she wanted to do after high school and ended up becoming...

Rohit Dhamankar from Fortra’s Alert Logic sits down with Dave Bittner to share his experiences as he navigates the industry. Rohit has over 15 years of security industry experience across product strategy, threat research, product management and development, and customer solutions. Before Alert Logic he served in Product roles for Live Oak Venture Capital at Infocyte and Razberi Technologies. He h...

Laura Whitt-Winyard, CISO from Malwarebytes, sits down to share her story, beginning with a desire to be a pediatric oncologist that she later discovered was not the path for her. Laura was bouncing around from job to job until she bought her first computer, and a light bulb went off in her head. She set out to make it her goal to learn about this new, interesting field and grow within it. Now as...

Omer Singer, Lead Cybersecurity Strategist from Snowflake, sits down to share his experience getting into the cybersecurity field. Growing up, he knew he wanted to work with computers, but he just didn't know what he wanted to do within the field. His college gave him great hands-on experience to then transition into the workforce. He's played both on the offense and defense of cybersecurity, and ...

Lauren Campanara, a SOC Analyst from ThreatX shares her story as she made the decision to break into cybersecurity after spending twelve years in the cosmetology field. She worked her way through college in a job she did not enjoy and felt trapped in while competing her online degree. She found ThreatX and fell in love with the work she is doing now. Lauren hopes to inspire others, especially wome...

Gary Brickhouse, CISO from GuidePoint Security, sits down to share his story, looking back over the last 25 years of his career working for Fortune 100 companies, including Disney. He shares that every role he has had, he’s had to grow into and how each one was a pivotal point in his technical career. Gary ended up transitioning to a different organization and says how it was really compliance tha...

Jenny Brinkley, Director of AWS Security at Amazon Web Services (AWS), sits down to share her empowering story working through the ranks, and even co-founding her own company. While she did not have a typical upbringing in the industry, she credits her parents for ending up where she is now, as they told her that she could do anything and she decided as she was growing up that she could. She had t...

Megan Doherty, a Technical Specialist from Microsoft Canada sits down to share her story of overcoming barriers in the workforce to get to where she is today in her career. Megan started out being a mechanical engineer before making the switch to do something with more creativity and problem solving. She shares about her passion of working with a group Microsoft created called "DigiGirlz." As well...

Amanda Adams, VP, Americas Alliances at CrowdStrike, sits down to share her story as she pivoted into the tech field. She started her career wanting to be involved with sports, and after getting her master's degree Amanda was faced with a difficult choice, between working for The Golden State Warriors and Cisco. She ultimately chose Cisco as her path to move forward and has been working in technol...

Payal Chakravarty, Head of Product for Security and Risk from Coalition, sits down to share her story of working at several different organizations, including interning for IBM and Microsoft. After obtaining her master's degree, she worked with IBM a bit more closely and fell in love with one of the projects she was working on. Payal had a very interesting career path going from physical to virtua...

Kayla Williams, CISO of Devo, sits down to share her story, from graduating with a finance degree to rising to where she is now. She quickly learned that finance was not for her and changed paths, working towards gaining an information security certificate. From there she was able to excel and was offered the opportunity to move to England which changed her life. Working in her new role, she reall...

Adam Marrè, CISO from Arctic Wolf, sits down to share his story of rising through the ranks. After 9/11 he decided he wanted to make a difference in the world, and so he chose to go into the FBI. There he learned the skills that got him to where he is today. In his time at the FBI, he was able to do what he loved, which was working with computers while gaining more knowledge on cybersecurity, and...

Jaya Baloo, a Chief Information Security Officer from Avast sits down to share her story, sharing how she got into the technology field at a younger age with being introduced to computers and games on her PS 24. She started off going to college for political science and after not knowing what to do after that, she got her first start in cybersecurity. After falling in love with cybersecurity she k...

Mark Logan, CEO of One Identity, sits down to share his story, explaining how he fit into different roles growing up in different companies. Mark has nearly two decades of C-Suite experience at an array of different organizations, finally landing on his current position as the CEO at One Identity. Sharing his different roles, he also gives a quote from Steve Jobs, saying "it's not what I say yes t...

Anjali Hansen, a Senior Privacy Counselor from Noname Security shares her story as she climbed through the ranks to get to where she is today. When Anjali started, she wanted to do international law. She started working for the International Trade Commission after law school, where she was able to gain most of her experience and real world abilities. Working with online fraud and abuse, she shares...

David Nosibor, Product Lead for SafeCyber at UL Solutions, started his career in a unique way by not letting himself be pigeonholed. Within his company, David was able to grow to the position he is in now and says that his position feels like a lot of roles tied into one. He says that on any given day he is tackling all sorts of elements, such as marketing, operations, working with the engineering...

Roya Gordon, a Security Research Evangelist at ICS cybersecurity firm Nozomi Networks, started her career as an intelligence specialist in the U.S. Navy. After her time serving, Roya spent time as a Control Systems Cybersecurity Analyst at the Idaho National Laboratory and then took the role of Cyber Threat Intelligence Manager at Accenture. She shares her story after the NSA accepted her and then...

Christian Lees, CTO at Resecurity, shares his story and insight on coming into the cybersecurity world. He considers himself a late bloomer because he did not go to college until he was 23. He wasn’t sure of what he wanted to do, and a family friend gave him a computer and the rest was history, he says. He fell in love with computers and started working at different companies trying to get ahead....

Anna Belak, Director of Thought Leadership at Sysdig, shares her story from physics to cyber. Anna explains how she went into college with the thinking of getting a physics degree and then for her PhD decided to switch to material science and engineering. Both were not something she enjoyed and ultimately decided to go into cyber. She shares some advice on how you should never limit yourself to yo...

Larry Cashdollar, Principal Security Intelligence Response Engineer at Akamai Technologies, sits down with Dave Bittner to discuss his life leading up to working at Akamai. He shares his story from his beginnings to now, describing what college life was like as a young computer enthusiast. He says "If you look at my 1986 yearbook, I think it was my sixth grade class, it says computer scientist for...

Mary Writz, Vice President of Product Strategy at ForgeRock, shares how each career path she has taken has led her to where she is now. Mary describes how she has been a woman working in a male dominated field for most of her career and how she had to take charge, and she had to get the men to take charge with her. She says "I was often leading people, mostly men older than me, potentially smarter...

Mike Arrowsmith, Chief Trust Officer at NinjaOne, leads the organization’s IT, security, and support infrastructure to ensure they meet customers’ security and data privacy demands as it scales. Mike discusses how his career path has led him to the position he currently holds and how exciting the world of cybersecurity can be. He mentioned how he mentored students in college thinking of going into...

Simone Petrella, CEO of cybersecurity training workforce firm CyberVista, spent her career in the Department of Defense as a threat intelligence analyst before founding CyberVista. She says that running a company has a new set of challenges each day thrown at you. She explains that the way she finds the most success is by letting her team contribute to each matter, and having a say in the decision...