Community Based Career Development - Kathleen Smith & Cindy Jones

please okay good morning thank you thank you for those of you who were in my first session was it a good session thumbs up okay okay cool it's good to start with a good presentation and go from there so what's interesting is I have met so many fabulous people in this community that have devoted their lives to making sure that conferences like this exist and the gentleman who just walked out of here Stephen is one of the people the main person putting on this conference but Cindy here is the person that originated beside San Antonio okay no heckling Wow Wow so what can't wait what I have seen within the community is that so many

people go above and beyond their work and their lives and their family lives and then get on nine o'clock phone calls every six weeks to do an all-hands meeting to put on besides Las Vegas or put on all of these conferences late at night but what I'm understood is also that people are learning very basic technical skills and non technical skills that are actually helping them in their day job it is actually helping them throughout their career so Cindy and I and a few others put together those presentations sort of going over what we have learned and what we wish we had not learned volunteering within the community and sort of giving you a roadmap for that I've also developed a

survey that I'm going to be putting out later this afternoon asking people to sort of fill out why they volunteer in the community and what they have learned from that so look for that later so who we have Cindy and myself Cindy wants all everyone a little bit about you other than that you're part of Def Con and yeah I've got a I do a lot of stuff um my name is Cindy Jones I'm currently working with rapid7 as a principal security consultant and basically what that means that I go out to organizations and evaluate security programs or perform program development to help them improve the maturity of their security programs I've been in IT forever

I have a six-digit Microsoft certification number it starts with a 3 I just confirmed that last night that was kind of scary but I originally was a psych major and a lot of what I do and how I what I bring to the table is the want to help people that's still kind of the core of my being and we'll talk a little bit more about that in a bit but yeah this is me I live in San Antonio for 10 years now Kathleen Ari mentioned I kicked this sucker off after being harassed incessant ly by that man over there so to do it but it's worked out pretty good and I'm really really proud of what

Stephen has done with this thing this is I gave it up three years ago and it's still growing and I think it's awesome but thank you guys for supporting it and coming out and making see that meets I'd said Antonio as awesome as it is okay thanks to you all as well that's me so those of us you were my earlier presentation my name is Kathleen Smith I'm the chief marketing officer for two companies one Claire jobs net which is a job board and job fair company in the security clear community and cybersex jobs USA also a job board and job fair company within the cyber security community if you have any of the wristbands they think I saw Cindy was

wearing one we provide all of the wristbands to all of the cons out there to start the conversations because we realized that career conversations happen face to face rather than just online I've been volunteering in the community this community for about eight years now someone told me it was ten but I don't want to go there and I've been doing overall volunteering within various different communities the recruiting community the military community for the last 17 18 years so I might do something know a little bit about volunteering so Cindy why volunteer so one of the things I already talked about a little bit was the my want to help people make things better for whatever the case may be um I started

off attending Def Con I think it was 13 was my first one it was still at elections part I got a lot out of it I mean I got a lot out of him I was also very like I say antisocial but I was very timid which if you know me now is they're totally not me but that's a whole different story we'll talk about that I have a 3:00 p.m. talk by the way do I hear about that start anyway so I went and I got a lot out of it b-sides started I got a lot out of that it was kind of amazing realize that I wanted to give back a little bit and start things just start

contributing and giving back and doing what I my base my core of my being says that I'm good at and that's helping other people and getting things moving forward and bringing some satisfaction of myself and doing positive things so that's why I started volunteering some of the reasons why I started volunteering is that at the core of my job is Business Development and I would get out into the community in the security killer community there's the Armed Forces communications and electronics Association alcea or there are other organizations out there and I had to do it to network and get business development opportunities I soon realized that I really hated doing that that was not something that was me

and when you're a blonde woman in the government contracting field you're one of ten women that are in the Washington DC area and it's just a very uncomfortable feeling it's also I'm much better at marketing and event management and I learned that when I was at many of these groups I just sort of said I'm not good at this stuff I cannot put together a sales contract for the life of me I just don't want to do it so that was what was really great for me as far as volunteering is I went into it with one aspect but then I learned something else but what we want to go into a little bit more further is what volunteering

opportunities do you evaluate them how do you figure out okay put it this way how did you originally evaluate it and how do you evaluate it now so originally I thought it was b-sides right it was besides Austin actually I had been at these besides Las Vegas the second one I'm sorry the first one no it was the second one apologies and it was really cool I mean the vibe was cool it was laid-back it was interactive people could talk to each other it wasn't like there were speakers being hustled down the hallways in the back of the hotel or anything like that any people are actually approachable and you could you can have conversations and dig further into the

topics in hand so that to me was amazing I found out about besides Austin which was also the second one it was at the fire marshal one of the first five yeah yeah the fire marshal is what we had the fire marshal building so that was my room yeah so that was South by Southwest time up in Austin and I walked in there I got there early and I'm like can I help and that's how it started there wasn't a lot of thought into how I was going to make the determination

we'll get into it into that so that's the point heard about that that's awesome you were excited about that that's really neat so how you evaluate an opportunity now and and how do you evaluate opportunities now versus how you sow your day in the beginning in the beginning in the beginning I didn't evaluate I say oh you wait you need help I'll help oh you want me to help oh yeah please you know you just asked me to help I'm there for you I think there was no evaluation it was like okay yes I'll do this and I just worked myself to work myself to work myself now I try to pick and choose what I work

on I was very pleased to be able to successfully hand off this this event Stephen had like I said before super proud of what he's done he's ran with it every year there's something something new and something different and something more which is awesome we all we all I mean it's it's a timid still occurs yeah it's yeah it's a stressful scenario to put one of these things on but yeah so now I try to be a little bit more circumspect in my decision-making most recently the last thing I was asked to be involved with was DEFCON China which was kind of Awesome I got to go to China for DEFCON China this is amazing right

we had our first Def Con in China mind-blowing and it was absolutely not your daddy's DEFCON it was completely different but that's a whole different scenario but it was still an amazing experience and I was asked to go there so yes that absolutely was good to happen it I'm very fortunate and the fact that I have support from various arenas in my world that allow me to do this on a routine basis so it really is a matter of determining what I'm able to contribute to an organization so these are my criteria what can I contribute by volunteering what can I get out of it because I have come to the realization that I can't do something for nothing

all the time there's got to be something coming back and and that's that's a big part of the evaluation so when I started volunteering about 1718 years ago if anyone asked me I said yes they're like oh you know you seem to be really good at structuring a con you seem to be really good at getting the marketing out there and I had a very patient boss and a very patient family at that time when they realized that I was gone 90% of the time because I was either working or I was volunteering in the afternoon and I wasn't looking at what I was getting back for me and I wasn't looking at what I was

getting back for my overall company because I sort of run into this I'm in marketing but I'm also in volunteering what am I going to get back and is it something that is worth the investment of the company so a lot of us are in that stage where we say oh I want to be part of this and I want to be part of this and I want to be part of this and before you know it you're not saying no to anybody and you're stressed out and you're not doing good work across the board so now when I evaluate something like I actually have a conference call this afternoon at the airport to talk

about someone talk with someone who's starting up a new nonprofit or a new con and I have some criteria what kind of work have you already done what kind of references do you have what is what is your thinking process of doing this conference I can't tell you how many times someone will email me or reach out to me on social media hey I want to put on a conference for kids in cybersecurity in October like yeah you and everybody else you know have you ever put on an event before well no I think it's a really good idea there's a big difference between someone who has a really big idea and someone who knows

how to put on a bat so really when you're starting to look at these volunteer opportunities really look at how they're going to use your skills how are you going to be able to make an impact there are many times when I have done an impact and I realized that I carried 90% of the event but somebody else was taking the credit for that and I'm sick and tired of that so now people know that if there is a conference being put on I'm doing it so what's interesting and we're going to get into this you know this is the whole reason why we have this is what are some of the skills so let's talk about spreading

ourselves then what career skill has you learned between saying no and saying yes to some of the conference's so taking the Wayback Machine again running beside San Antonio the first year I had a lot of support from other besides specifically Austin Michael is a huge help calling up closely dude what do I do for this what do I do for this when I ready for this he made recommendations across the board and nine times out of ten and went with them then I found some new things as I continue to grow but I took it all on myself I am a horrible delegator I have come to realize this and that in itself I think is a skill I realize this is a

fault of mine and I have to work around this right attempted it for three years I did this pretty much on my own not the way to do it I see Stephen working with groups and people and I got pictures of them stuffing bags together and it was all me for so long and I didn't know how to delegate out things so I realized that was a skill I really needed to learn so I started teaching myself that something else I started doing was losing some of that talk about being timid and not going out and doing anything learning how I just ten years ago standing in front of it you group even this size no way there's no way I

would speak to a group like this now I'm standing in front of boards I'm standing in front of I presented in front of Air Force you know Chiefs of Staff for the past I have no problem speaking to people and speaking my mind and being confident in doing so this is something else that I've gained out of the out of doing the volunteer working and knowing that I put on a pretty good show I could do okay here this is good I'm good here I'm not necessarily subject-matter expert but these are some of the things that I've learned it's got I've gained some confidence and knowing that eventually like the skills that I don't have I can learn and I move forward with

them so delegation is a really big thing that you learn when you're volunteering and delegating is something that you definitely want to learn as you're becoming more of a manager in your career or even you're managing a team understanding what delegating means it doesn't mean here's this thing that I used to do go do it it means you have to give specific outlines of this is the goal of that activity these are the things you're going to want to think back these are the details that you want to follow and realize that you know and this is what success looks like and then also understanding that they're not going to do it the exact same way that you've

done and you have to be ok with that you have to be ok with because you're gonna drive your co volunteers and your employees nuts if you're fine always looking over their shoulder I have a staff of 17 now and what's really interesting is they really dread it whenever I walk into the room because they know I'm gonna say well I would have done it this way and I would have done that way this is something that I've learned to keep my mouth shut in volunteering when you delegate you have to let people do it their way and you have to let them fail those are the things you have to get comfortable with rather than going oh my god they failed

and and then you blast them all over social media and then you have a beer and then you've ruined a relationship we all learn differently so we're going to go a little bit more into other career skills but let's talk a little bit more about conference management and some of the things that you have learned you know you've talked a little bit about how you you know grown from besides Austin helping you beside San Antonio DEFCON but also looking at some of the different skills like financial management going after sponsorship and then also let's talk about how you've engaged your employer because conference management really isn't you know about leaving your day job it's about doing it

and as a job so yeah what are your smut are the other skills and conference management you've learned if someone here is considering going into conference management and how did you engage your employer so I have covered the gamut as far as employers go initially when I was doing the first year I did beside San Antonio I was working on an Air Force contract you get I think you've got ten days a year pto period they don't care anything above and beyond that they're not gonna care you go in the red you hope that your contract carries over so your last paycheck doesn't get cut in half and that's just how it works there was no desire for these companies

they were out of the DC area they didn't know anything about first of all my intention attend they were in information security so they didn't know anything about a b-sides event it's certainly working a sponsor I did try when it never happened and so I would go in the red I would lose patient I'm and that's not just in organizing the conference's so that's attending conferences as well and I mean it's a lot of you guys know me I met a lot of cons I enjoy going to conferences and learning and talking to people and absorbing as much as I can so for gonna player standpoint in the beginning it was rough it was very rough

flip back completely on its ear I work for a pin 7 now rapid7 is very prominent in the information security industry we sponsor I don't know why we're not sponsoring here but talk about that but we sponsors is being recorded okay I don't know yeah so I mean we sponsors so many different conferences and they encouraged us to go to these things they want us to be seen as representatives not only of the organization but as you know they want us to be the leaders in the community they want a community presence one of the things that's great about rapid7 is Metasploit right in the Metasploit project and the framework it's available to the world right this is available to

the world so by all means yes we are community leaders let's keep driving forward on this excuse me gentlemen you're blocking that yeah so so like I said I flipped and because of this they give me and a lot of our employees pretty free rein to go ahead and join in on conferences speak at conferences they support us in the organization aspect of its that we actually have building codes so they can track our time and see how much time we're putting into it during during the work week I mean it's more it's then there's no repercussions if we're spending more time doing this and something else as long as our day jobs getting done right but it is above and

beyond our day job I still have 40 hours a week I have to bill whether it's to internal projects or the client work so there's that to think of 80-hour workweeks freaking exhausting let's face it nobody wants to do this but sometimes it's necessary to get the job done if your job is to go ahead and organize this conference so how talking to your employer you know before you you have to make that decision if you're going to get involved with a con if you're going to tell your employer or not and if you're not going to tell your employer how are you gonna still get your day job done your wash done the groceries done

and everything that you've promised to the con that you're going to get done at some point if you really enjoy doing all of the conference management you might want to start talking to your employer about what you're doing one of the ways to do that is to explain to them the different career skills that you're learning one of the career skills that you're learning that we talked about earlier is delegation if you're learning how to delegate oh great this happens every single time it is in a presentation with you unless I have my BitDefender come awesome explaining to your employer that you're learning other skills this is not playtime that these are other skills that you're learning

delegation is really one learning new projects manager yeah time management I mean all of us I mean there's a whole industry out there to teach us how to manage our time if you're able to do your job get the groceries and the laundry done and still support the con you're really becoming what better of a time manager and most of your supervisors are going to love that because half the time they're running after you making sure that you're trying to do the different projects on time the other thing is in a con management you also have to think about sponsorships you have to get out and sell something getting out and making that case well

that kind of communication and presentation skills you're going to want to have in your career as you go and talk to other clients as you talk to customers as Cindy said she's you know goes and talks to the chief of staff and Air Force Colonels being able to get out there and talk about something that you're passionate about we're not all passionate about pentesting but if you're passionate about putting on a b-sides you can learn those presentation skills and also finance management it's interesting when we're at work oh I'm just gonna order a hundred pencils and you know the company's gonna pay for it they don't manage when you're running a con and you say okay are we going to get

enough bags are we going to get enough t-shirts if we use this vendor versus that vendor if we put three logos on versus two logos then all of a sudden managing all of that you know yeah maybe we know how to balance our checkbook but managing something that is for the community that other people are relying about you're all of a sudden gaining this fiduciary responsibility a really big word fiduciary responsibility understanding that you are responsible for the finances of another organization and these are things that you need to be talking about with your employer even if it's at the end of the con you go back and they say how was it you know hey it

was a great con no I'm an heir you should know you should say I managed a team of ten I brought in sponsorship I'm I come manage several projects at the same time and I still got my work done so being able to remind yourselves that you need to keep journals of the volunteering what you learned what kind of skills and say you know I really enjoyed the finance aspect of this maybe we might want to consider this in my career within this company then I look at different parts of the company maybe finance it was really funny though because when every time I would have you know you you're for besides event typically your budget the the nominal

fee that gets charged is just to make sure you guys show up whom the the event doesn't lose money on t-shirts that's literally all that money is for it doesn't pay for anything okay the money the bulk of the money for besides of that comes in from sponsorships for whatever reason apparently I'm really good at the budgeting aspect and I had no idea that I was I was coming in like within two to three hundred dollars every year and it just it just fell into place I can spend this is and I am NOT a project spent person I don't do project plans very well it's all in here so the fact that I was able to do that

year after year and know that okay I can go ahead and order these speaker gifts because I can afford him this year was awesome and it was like wow I have a skill I didn't even know I had that was another thing that I realized it was like hey I can do budget you know so this is something that you talk about you may not necessarily want to put it on your resume as something that says you know you know manage budgets but you might want to bring it in as something that you talked about during the interview so you know not only do I do really you know a really great stock analyst but I also have some financial

wherewithal I I understand some delegation and what's interesting is people also want to see it in your social media profiles definitely be you know tagging whatever con that you're working at on your LinkedIn profile being sure that you're listing on the LinkedIn profile was conference manager for three years running and right what you did right that you were a manager right that you secured sponsorships it shows that you're more of a well-rounded individual it also says that you're out in the community or you have initiative program managing all of these other additional skills that employers are going to be looking for and they they are really starting to look for them now so let's sort of oh no competitions

that's me that's me okay so those of you who were in our earlier presentation I'm sorry this is a repeat but when you go and are interviewing for a job a lot of times those of us will say the employer will come back and say do you have the experience you say well now I have the education and I have a certificate but I don't necessarily have the experience I find it very interesting that people compete in competitions and they don't realize that that is very similar to work experience so you're given a challenge you're given a short amount of time you're working with new people and you have a deadline and it's all in a

stressful environment if isn't work experience I don't know what is but a lot of people sit there and say well I've competed in 20 or 30 different competitions but I don't have any work experience you should be listing your competitions on your resume you should be listing them on your LinkedIn profile on our job board you actually can list it and you profile all the various different competitions that you've been part of but also do yourself the favor that when you come back from doing the competition write out what you did in the competition what was the challenge what was the flag what were the steps that you had to go through what did you fail

in what lessons did you learn now that you've gone through the tactical what are the non-technical things did you become the leader or did you end up following someone else did you learn that you have certain communication challenges did you learn that you know you were trying to solve a problem and somebody else like Waymon we're just we're just speaking words here we're not communicating that you learned something about your non-technical skills I always say to people that even if they're not part of the competition hanging around and and observing and learning by osmosis is really great but also going to competitions that are outside of your technical skill set there's cyber policy competitions there's hacking car hacking village

there's Wi-Fi villages being sure that you're constantly learning by exposing yourself to the various different competitions and guess what what happened what what are the other entities that are at competitions other people who are in this community it is a way to expand your network and when you know that the number one way an employer finds their new employees is through employee referral the more people you have in your network the more people that you've connected with and you have sort of vetted them and they have said yeah you know I really liked working with this person at a competition when we weren't paid and I could do what I wanted I might actually like working with them

you know date in and day out and that's how you start building your network outside of the people that you hang out with they're the people that you go to school with or something like that competitions are really great for that and definitely as I said talk to your employer you know I just did this competition or when you're going through your review when they talk about you know where you want to go you can say I was in this competition I learned this I would like to start building my career more in that direction so really use the competitions as a way to gain experience but also gain experience that you can talk about

in an interview or on your resume

[Music] articulating that I love to do these attack competitions does not get translated to interviews or your resume or summary that's something to say I learned how to attack Linux that means I tell you how to defend or detection of logging would light up me like a Christmas tree people struggle with the fact that you that they don't understand that it has to translate right to real and on the flip side of that I mean I know for example we're our pentest team is hiring people who have been in competitions that's what they're looking at they're looking for I'm gonna say something that please don't take the wrong fresh meat that are that that are just really

passionate that are competing in these competitions and they're doing well they might be failing but they're learning in the process right and we actually have a job role that's specifically geared towards that kind of a person brand new out of school just you know getting out there doing competitions you know and then we talk about things like CCDC right you know and there's so much focus in important yeah guaranteed you win oh my gosh you're you're evil you're in the finalists you're gonna have interviews right you know so so in competitions don't have to be at cons there are tons of competitions that are online so you can definitely be building your skill set with that as I said in my earlier

presentations you also want to make sure that you have your own home lab that you can talk about during your interviews what are the open source projects that you're working on but a lot of times you'll learn about these by going to different conferences so now presentations that's that's underestimated what he just said there I kept working on site projects and the blended conferences are planning anything else to show me blue team I write some detection response in here you've got some project I'll give up something you coded something you wrote I think you look at the question explain some problem you try to solve it how you did everybody okay if you can do

something that shows you're not an eight to fiber even though this could be but something above is special outside the concept that is totally true yeah and and i think that that's we focus yes education and yes certifications are important in this industry especially if you're going into government contracting and you do yeah the ninety seventy in the year 140 but realize that york desire to continuously learn your desire to go out and be part of competitions those are things that you want to you know be putting on your resume but as Michael said being able to also explain it to non-technical people it's a challenge that a lot of people don't understand so sitter sitting around with the people

you competed with after you've high-fived and had a beer or something like that you know do a debrief do a hot wash how would we explain this to our bosses at home help each other explain that rather than just going home and being assigned so presentations a lot of people think that presentations are easy to do slide decks are really great and easy to do that employers love when you go out to conferences and that it's again so easy to stand up in front of a group of strangers so tell us a little bit about presenting what you've went through and so the hardest part of any presentation for me standing up and telling you my name I

don't know what it is I've been talking public speaking sorry talking publicly well speaking publicly for a long time now it started off the first time so you put a microphone in my hand I think it was at a besides Austin event and I was calling numbers I'm like wait I have a power this is amazing yeah it's crazy it's it's weird it's weird how it happens it's just the thing I don't know it I think it only happens a certain personality types but like I said before very timid never would have gotten up in front of people never would have had had the gumption to think that I could have anything and worse to say to anyone like

this you know just let me be in my little cave here I hacked my brain I did a really good job I have no problem standing in front of people now I still get nervous it's still stresses me out but I I hacked my brain to the point where I can not only be you know approachable but also approach it via approach approaching I don't say that to individuals I don't want on one basis but I can also do it in front of a group of people how is this help my career it is my career that's my job now I walk into organizations and I talk to groups of people and I drill them on their

security programs like okay what do you have for this and I'm not a deterrent them to tell me things so that's another side I was a psych major so I'm really good at getting people to tell me things even probably more things that I want to know but I can get them you know getting people to speak to me and so I have that capability within myself and I've always had that they're building that out taking that information and then taking what they've told me translating it and then presenting to a group of c-suite and giving a presentation there that's more stressful for me than standing in the room like this right now and telling

my story right sitting there unless I'm like I level and the peer-to-peer thing really stressful for me but it has it helped my career it's made my career so we all have technical abilities but being able to explain them to non tech I hope people is really an amazing skill and it's one that you have to work on over and over and over again I mean I've been presenting for close to 25 years and it's only within the last 10 years that I've actually gotten comfortable and being able to stand up most and be able to speak from you know whatever aspect but also being able to understand what I'm saying my words may not be what

you hear so going to a presentation and actually putting the material in a format so that the audience can understand is a skill that you need to work on but it is something that as Cindy said trying to explain technical to non-technical people is a very desirable skill especially in this industry and one of the best ways to do that is by presenting at the conferences because you have people in the audience that say you explained how to do this attack vector I know what you were saying because I've worked with you but I don't think anyone else in the room helped you so getting that feedback from the come from the community and being

willing to accept it people are not criticizing 99% of the people that I know in this community when they give you feedback they are trying to help you but doing a presentation at a conference is not as I said earlier is not because you have 20,000 Drive Twitter followers and then you know how to wear cool t-shirts it is the fact that you have to think about the thought you have to come up with an outline you then have to for most of the conference's you have to submit at the call for proposals now for most of the conference's the call for the proposals is six to eight months before the conference is put on so time management

knowing when okay I want to speak a piece like San Antonio or besides Austin or Seaside San Francisco next year or something like that you have to have the detail management to go to that conference website on a regular basis and start to see when their call for proposals is open and then you have you know how to fill out the survey that is the call for proposals there is not one generic form I sure wish there was the great it would be great but there isn't so it can be everything from a Google survey which is very easy to fill out or if you send in a submission to the Grace Hopper conference which is a

great conference but it is an eight section proposal process to go through and they will ding you if you do not dot your i's and cross your T's you may have the best presentation out there but if you do not follow their format you're out of there but it is a really great exercise on filling it through most of the conference's if they reject you they will at least tell you why they rejected you my grace hopper proposal was because they said I didn't fill everything out and I wanted to appeal that but don't wait or we also know diversity we were not diverse enough only that we were only insecurity no different different topic anyway because we said we had

diverse thought we weren't diverse anyway it's also then time management being able to go and say that you know I'm I filled out the proposal I followed the timeline I put together a presentation anywhere from 15 minutes all the way up to two hours but then you have this other hurdle to go over which is do you say if you're representing your company or not now this is something that you aren't you well I let me finish okay you started too so you have to understand you know if you work like it rapid7 they're gonna love and support the fact that you are out there presenting absolutely and they will may or may not help you with

putting together your presentation or not don't provide support they'll provide support they will work with your management as far as having the time off to go do it and to come back there are some employers who are not going to be so forgiving so you'll notice that most of the b-sides are on Saturdays so you can still come in and you know go under another avatar or under name and and not say that you're representing your company there are some companies who will say you need to go through our own internal approval process to be able to present at a conference realize that internal process is another six months on top of the whole thing

so first of all you have to know that you want to present at RSA next April you'll have to know that the deadline for the CFP is sometime in December you'll have to then know that you were taking you know it will take six months to get the approval process throughout your company to be able to get it done and once it's approved some companies I'm working with one for higher ground there are only approved images that the company will allow you to use so you have to understand I'm really having fun with this financial institution that doesn't have an approved the image of a hacker in any way I think after all these years there's not an approved

image today it's another way of giving back if con management is not something for you or competitions is not something for you but you do have a widget that you built or a solution that you put together and you really want to share that with the community really consider putting together a proposal you might find out like the first time I set up to present and it unfortunately was in front of 3,000 people and I had 15 minutes to prepare I realized that I liked to present I was actually good at it being the eldest of five girls does help that bull or you might like I'm about ready to throw up and I'm never

gonna do this again but it's those are the things that we learn about each other and ourselves wait keep doing that so in our final eight minutes you've heard us say we've said yes a lot we've had a lot of frustration we've had a lot of burnout yes volunteering is extremely draining it is also extremely rewarding do you want to talk a little bit more about that yeah so Allah this is career development right career development and career growth through volunteerism the job I have now was because I was involved in the community involvement that I have they pay for me to do a lot of these conferences they send me to you know Derby they sent me to DEFCON they

send me to you know besides where I'm an organizer in Vegas they support me whether I'm presenting organizing volunteering sometimes just attending who do you can attend the conference so they're very supportive in that regard it's kind of a dream scenario for me in this in that regard I've also interviewed for multiple other jobs didn't work out for one reason or another but that was all through contacts excuse me that I made networking and doing this volunteer work I never I'm horrible with names so if I don't remember if I've met you before and I don't remember your name so Thursday I'm horrible with names but it's always dude because I remember faces and I remember conversations that

we've had so I've managed to go ahead and build my network out on the dude level across you know nationally which is really awesome and one of the advantages of being a female in InfoSec it's not a lot of us so most of us are pretty memorable they tend to remember our names thank goodness like I said that's a problem I have to work on but I don't know if it's ever gonna happen but because of that I've interviewed at other companies I interviewed for SpaceX with SpaceX got all the way up to Elon Musk's desk you know at which point it didn't happen which was soul-crushing to me but that happened through my networking never would have known these

people without doing the volunteer work that I do you know this is it's just the way it is a huge entry into very various aspects of the industry and but realize that you also have you have a job you have a family you as I said you have groceries and you have laundry to do my husband hates it when August rolls around because he knows that I will be stressed out for the six months head of it and then I will be sleeping for the two weeks afterwards because I will be in Vegas for eight days doing a two-day conference producing presenting and I'm presenting three other times as well but I love it I've been in you know various different

communities I'm a military spouse I actually associate the military tight the military community tightness that they'll watch your back with the hacker community I know they'll watch my back but me being an introvert and being you know from marketing never thought that the InfoSec tech community would accept me but I think they have at this point I love me but how do you explain this to your employer so what's interesting or in your career search so what's interesting is you know I think if Cindy went interviewed to someone and said I do Derby Colin I do DEFCON I do this what the recruiter or the employer is going to hear is that this person is

going to be out of the office all the time you have to be careful how you manage that with a recruiter or your employer because they're like well why why am i having you here to do a job now if you can explain the job similar time to wake up you have to be sort of careful about how you explain this to a recruiter that you know you're not going to be out of the office all the time yeah you need to build the trust and your reputation with your employer is saying okay these are the things I'm going to do now if they're all my own time or they're on the weekend hey that's your own time but

if it's going to take some of your work time you need to start building that you know trust and relationship with your supervisor and also be a little careful when you do list on your resume or on your LinkedIn profile that you're not listing like every single thing you do you might want to just you know if it's special if you're an overachiever like me yeah I mean you know I'm up in conversation trust me I mean I'm on nine planning committees nine besides planning committees in including VC Las Vegas I'm also on three other committees for women and cybersecurity conferences and my own nonprofit recruit DC if I went to another employer they would say am I

ever going to get any work out of you my employer knows that this is part of my work and I always make sure that there is some kind of return on investment for my employer there's a return on the investment for rapid7 with Cindy because she is a walking commercial for how great it is to work there so you have to learn how to negotiate that I can't tell you how many times I've talked to people who don't let anyone know in the in their work environment or a recruiter know how much they do in the community but as I said in my earlier presentation if you start building relationships with recruiters who are in the community and keep in

touch with them when you need to find a job they've seen you being in the community they know you're technically available a talented they know that you're connected in the network they know that you can manage many different things anyone who I've seen in the in the con community that has started and moved their way up this is mirrored their career yeah all of the skills that they learn in the nonprofit excuse me in the volunteering world translate in one way or another within their career one thing that I really learned is that I take something that I'm going to experiment with in my professional work I work on it in the volunteering and community

efforts so for instance I run a chef program for farmers markets in Washington DC and anytime that I wanted to you know anytime I wanted to play with a new marketing program or a new graphic program or a new social media program played with it over there because it was my time and my money or it was mostly free and I got to learn on my own time and I learned I was able to compare various different programs so then when my employer came along and said you know we need a new social media management company I actually was able to say I evaluated these five different programs and these are the two that I think

worked the well worked the best and I think that this one given what I know that we need to do for our work this one is going to work out best I've already done all the research I've done self education but my employer is like wow you just say this you know six months of evaluating and going through an RFP so you have sort of this playground that realize you're playing with much more valuable resources in the volunteer Kahn community than you are with your player but it is a really great way to go back and forth if there's something great that you work on within your employer and you know that you can deploy it

within the community that happens all the time besides Las Vegas is that hey we all work with this that or the other and we think it would be really we've got a Cisco aruba we've got a Reuben Networks now coming into besides Las Vegas they said they gave us all this gear which is amazing well we now have a guy who's on staff who's an Aruba genius because that's what he does for a living that's awesome so we've got this going I mean there are so many opportunities out there for volunteerism and for to become involved to then expand your network and expand your potential as far as from an employment perspective it's mind-boggling it really is it surprised

the heck out of me honestly but I first got into it I was like I was just doing this for me but it worked out pretty well pretty good pretty happy the way it worked out we have one minute for questions anyone has any questions no you've talked too much yes I was a psych major yeah that was kind of a if that's kind of a I was taking an abnormal psych class I was doing a paper on violent criminals and empathy and I was profiling for violent criminals and it scared the daylights out of me left that said you know maybe I need to rethink where I want to go with my career ended up getting a temp job fell

into IT no rhyme no reason I ended up in a temp job taking due to data entry and I fell into IT because of that they found a position for me because I was bored to tears and I teach the security thing just evolved the psychology training that I did have has proven priceless I mean it's been so I've been I'm so grateful I have it because it doesn't help me with communication skills getting what I was talking about getting that you know getting information out of my clients that there was never a there was no moment it just kind of evolved that way and I'm forever grateful that it did because computers make a lot more sense

than human mind yeah I ended up getting the company that I was working for you turn up going under and I had a choice of doing a Novell this is like dating me well and I'll be talking about this a little bit more in my talk later but I had to try some no bail or Microsoft cert class they were doing retraining because there were so many people laid off at once I took Microsoft and ran with that and then it was just kind of an evolution that started doing support desktop Engineering network engineering systems administration work and that's kind of evolved into security from there so it was it was a long haul security

was never the focus initially but it's kind of exactly where I belong over the nation that just fit perfectly once I finally now none of us a lot of the elders of senior people there was no IT classes yeah security was it yeah you guys yeah industry exists so I'm getting I'm getting the hook I have to kick you guys out so you can go find your other sessions my third and final session for the morning is we have three recruiters who are going to come up here and we're going to ask them a variety of questions that they recommend as far as career search let's thank suni for being my panelists thank you guys