Rashmi Bharathan, an Information Technology Internal Auditor from Wintrust Financial Corporation sits down to share her story as a woman with 10 years in the IT industry and how she got her start. From childhood Rashmi always wanted to be a good leader, helping those around her, now she shares how helping people is a passion of hers and spends a lot of her time volunteering to help those coming into this industry. She says "It's all about, you should know your connections. That is more important. So I would say that networking and volunteering is really going to help you to grow in your career ..read more

Oren Koren, Co-Founder and Chief Product Officer from Veriti sits down to share his amazing story. Before entering the vendor side of the cyber world, Oren served for 14 years in the Israeli 8200 unit where he led a variety of cybersecurity activities and researches that eventually earned him four 8200-unit cyber innovation awards. When he left the Israel Defense Forces, he joined Check Point Software to lead their AI-based innovations and advanced data analytics projects that redefined threat hunting and SIEM applications. This eventually inspired him to start his own company, with fellow co ..read more

Bernard Brantley, CISO from Corelight sits down to share his inspiring career path with others. Bernard started at the very bottom of the tech stack, and shares how he was extremely unclear about what it was that he wanted to do in life and how he was going to get there. Ultimately he reached a point now where he has the self confidence and an incredible level of success that allows him to be authentic and proudly share his story. Bernard overcame dropping out of the military academy and was trying to figure out how he could take these big dreams and aspirations he had as a child and turn them ..read more

This week, we invite our very own Chris Hare, N2K's Project Management Specialist Content Developer, to join and discuss her career. Growing up, Chris shares that she wanted to be a veterinarian, which slowly turned into her becoming a writer for the first part of her career. She shares that she started off writing marketing copy for the technology and E-commerce space, writing for everyone from NASA to adopting the written voice of the comedian, Wayne Brady. She shares that she was able to come up into her career after finding three people that were willing to help her when she needed it. She ..read more

Ian Blumenfeld, a Research Director from Two Six Technologies sits down to share his story with us. Ian begins his story by sharing he wanted to be a scientist, slowly he began to figure out and pinpoint more of what he liked about science, which ended up being math. Ian explains how math began to become a passion for him, and he eventually tried to pursue a career in it by teaching. He discovered teaching was not the thing for him and then started to move into the direction he wanted too, taking on more and more challenging roles until he landed where he is today. Ian says "If you're a smart ..read more

Jeffrey Wheatman, Cyber Risk Evangelist, from Black Kite joins to share his amazing story. As a strategic thought leader with extensive expertise in cybersecurity, Jeffrey Wheatman is regarded foremost as an expert in guiding public sector clients and Fortune 500 companies in connection with their cyber risk management programs. In his current role as Cyber Risk Evangelist at Black Kite, Jeffrey works to get the message out about the business impact of third-party risk and solutions to treat those risks. Jeffrey shared his career, along with is passion for cyber by explaining some of the roles ..read more

Nicole Sundin, a Chief Product Officer from Axio sits down to discuss her career path and what it is like to be a woman in the cybersecurity field. As a UX leader, Nicole has devoted her entire career to building awareness around the benefits of usable security and human-centered security to the broader cybersecurity community. She also shares some of her background as she moved her way up the later to get to where she is today. As a female in a male-dominated industry, Nicole shares her unique insights on embracing the responsibility of serving as a role model to women aspiring to contribute ..read more

This week, we welcome Jennifer Reed, a Principal Solutions Architect at Amazon Web Services (AWS) to sit down and share her amazing story. After Jennifer graduated high school, she immediately went into Marine Corps training, which she shared was a shock to her because she was the only woman when she got out into the fleet and every single place that she went. She eventually moved on from the military after learning some programming tools, and went into the financial services industry doing systems engineering. She got called back to active duty, and then afterwards landed at AWS. She shares t ..read more

Susie Squier, President of the Retail and Hospitality ISAC, or Information Sharing and Analysis Center, sits down to share her incredible story starting to get her into the cyber community. She first started getting into PR through an internship she did in college, then moved around a few times gaining experience everywhere she went. Susie shares some wise advice, discussing not only her managing style, but also how she handles situations, along with how she deals with adversity. She says "I also have realized over time that I'm never in this alone, whether that's your personal life or your wo ..read more

This week, we are joined by Ted Wagner, Chief Information Security Officer at SAP National Security Services, or SAP NS2. Ted sits down to share his story on how he got introduced into the industry and why he chose this as a career path. He went straight into the Armyas a second lieutenant in the artillery field after high school, which after his time was up he decided to move on and started working for a company that allowed him to do a management training program. After that he found himself working on IT projects which got him interested in the field. Ted shares that one thing that has help ..read more