Discussion – Hacking Diversity: building A culture of Diversity and Inclusion

[Applause] thank you are these live oh they are they are they are good morning and afternoon are you guys having fun did you have fun the last few days so thank you to James and the team for putting this together super awesome a few of us have been here a few times so it's really cool to come back my name is Mary Galloway I am the CEO and a founding board member for the women's Society of cyber Jitsu we do Hands-On training for women and girls in cyber security all around the U.S and some International stuff so hopefully we can do something here soon um I'm also a sales engineer for a major cyber security vendor based out of San

Francisco and I will let these ladies introduce themselves or so hi everybody I'm Marcel Lee you might have seen me yesterday in the CTF for beginners Workshop um thanks for people who came up for that so I am um the lead for cyber threat research and operations for a global data center company that I guarantee your traffic touches all the time and uh I'm also on the board of directors for the women's Society of cyber Jitsu and uh yeah this is my second time at b-sides Cayman Islands and we came back because we love this it's a great great group and and surprisingly diverse like very refreshing so hi I'm Carlota Sage I'm a virtual CSO I

have my own company that I just started called pocket CSO I was on the board of directors of the Diana initiative I've stepped back from that I'm also an instructor with gracie.org grcie governance risk and compliance for the intelligence ecosystem um and I am a small I've been an entrepreneur now I didn't mean to be I have a large background in Enterprise I.T but I fell into fractional or virtual CSI work a few years ago and I've really been loving that I gave the workshop on Wednesday on so you want to be a CSO so if you think you might want to be a CSO give me a chance to talk you out of that and um if you still want to

be a CSO I will give you all of the tools that I can thank you my name is Alexandra Rochelle I'm a director at risk advisory practice here in Deloitte on the Cayman Islands I've been here for 14 years 13 of them is Deloitte and um I have my background as the software engineer originally and then I um got my PhD in cyber security my research focus is normally on the financial services adopting the cyber security Frameworks and the cyber security policy and regulations and um also I am really passionate about cybering in general and really like speaking about cyber and I um lead our cyber security practice for cyber um and cyber um women for the Caribbean region for

Deloitte and um as as part of America as uh to talk about diversity we have very diverse practice so we cannot just focus on one thing we do like incident response and subscription policy and everything so I can talk a lot about it so morning everybody hope you join the conference my name is Pamela green and I work for the Cayman Islands government and my title is Chief information security officers of CSO and I've been in this role about four years now and prior to that the very beginning of my career I started in software development and my my how things have changed when they talk about things like chat GPT and that being able to generate code well I

must say I'm delighted that I left software development all those years ago and I've I've done most of the jobs along the system development life cycle everything from business analysis systems analysis right through to sort of program director and auditing in cyber security but and now in this role our work for telecoms companies and across a number of other fields uh global system integrators and like the rest of the panel members I'm delighted to be here and passionate about inclusion and diversity and I'm really looking forward to this discussion thank you awesome so real quick if you have questions just raise your hand there will be time for those questions we will be done by 11 so the next speaker can

come on and uh do their thing um so let's just jump right in so um Carlota what steps can companies take to attract a diverse pool of candidates uh I think they really need to believe in it and uh I think what we saw in the U.S in the the wake of the black lives matter movement is you saw a lot of companies jump on board and create diversity diversity and inclusion inclusion initiatives and positions and that sort of thing but I think what was kind of buried underneath because BLM was such a and George Floyd were such big headlines at the time at that same time Forbes had come out with a bunch of

uh um several Business magazines came out with a bunch of research saying that uh companies that had diverse leadership and diverse boards performed significantly better than companies that did not and I think that those two things kind of hit at the same time um and for a large Enterprise it's very easy I think to to create those spaces it's much harder for those small organizations for those those mom and pop stores those sub 100 person companies which is the majority of the companies that maybe aren't hiring security people necessarily right now but will be in in time so um somebody has to believe in it it if it's a small organization the top has to

believe in it if it's a large organization you can do a much more Grassroots movement how does that look here in the Cayman Islands what do you guys what are you guys seeing yeah I think you know we're very fortunate here in the Cayman Islands that you know our diversity and inclusion is really baked into the way that uh you know we we recruit so that's not to say that more couldn't be done but but I do think we're very fortunate here and and to Echo what's said earlier um you know it's important for business and and there are many studies that demonstrate that you know I'm talking about jurisdictions outside of the Cayman where diversity and inclusion is

uh something that's valued and driven through the organization the organization performs better they're positive and tangible outcomes But ultimately it's about getting the the best person for the job and so I look forward to a day when we don't have to talk about it in these terms and like I said certainly for the Cayman Islands I see a lot of diversity I see a lot of inclusion more still to be done I believe especially in cyber security yeah and I'd I'd like to kind of oh sorry okay no you you agree with Spam I think we uh when we look at the workforce we see the diversity both uh on gender level and on the cultural

level you know that we're very Multicultural Society and uh as he was saying the diversity definitely brings different perspectives to the table and that helps organizations to be more resilient in the end I think what um one area that we um could do batting is the education and educating for instance young women that cyber security is the profession that they could be looking at and not just going into the kind of standard path of going to law or going to accounting but also considering and also considering different paths that can lead to cyber security okay for instance we did the status part of women and cyber initiatives and we have people from very different educational backgrounds we

have lower enforcement we have business we have even anthropologists as part of our women in the Cyber board and all those options are valid okay as you drink so I I just wanted to touch on a couple of things that I've observed in in my career and and I am a career changer I did not do cyber security before so I came into this kind of totally from another field altogether nothing to do with tech so I've had the opportunity to kind of really look at this from the outside in as well as be now inside it and one of the main issues that I see with um hiring for really lots of different companies is the job postings that we

put out there um it's been studied over and over again that women are much less likely to apply for a job if there's this long list of qualifications that are required and they don't meet all of them and I think we all know most job postings like it's a wish list right you hope you might find that purple squirrel that has all those things but they really probably don't actually exist but that's a big deterrent for women they they will just pass that job right by so um I have observed a trend which companies changing how they write their their job postings um and that's a really good thing but that would be the first thing I would

tell companies to look at is what are your job postings look like that absolutely works we um we came across that side and we did the experiment two years ago when we start we adjusted our job ads specifically for cyber Professionals in the Caribbean region to have um to revert that in the way that there is mandatory requirements to the less and then there are something that is good but the way it's rewarded you can apply it as an extra and we have seen a huge uptake in the obligations from women really good professionals out of it I like that so now that we've attracted these people how can companies and organizations um and from the individual as well how

can we create a culture that supports this diversity and inclusion and make everyone that's in the organization feel a part of the conversation so I have a quick word on that one and it kind of goes back to the job posting thing but so a lot of companies like in the tech cyberspace will advertise or talk about their um culture as being like foosball and Nerf guns and all that kind of stuff when I read something like that or I hear that's what a company's like or they say you know on their career page oh we have all these things I'm like I do not want to work there because it's not that's not my thing I'm

sorry I really don't like Nerf guns all that much I'm likely to be hit by the things and uh but yeah so the culture is a huge thing and I get a little tripped up when people talk about you know we want to hire somebody that matches the culture of our you know our group or whatever but if your group is all like the same basic people right then your culture is very specific to them then you're you're not going to be letting in you know these diverse groups that you want so I mean my take on it is that it all starts with education for instance when people saw around terms like diversity inclusion unconscious bias we've all got

our own ideas about what those words actually mean but we need to be on the same page with what they actually mean and what's the breadth of it and what's the scope and you know like I say with all cultural changes it starts with education then awareness then you know promoting it Champion it leading by example as an organization and showing that you know as I said it's part and parcel of how we operate and how we get the best out of people once we attract them which is a difficult thing in cyber security but then how do we keep them and how do we continue to evolve our culture so that it stays fresh and Alive

because some cultures are there and values that an organization have but over time it needs to change one word in your question is that I wanted her life as equity and Equity versus equality I was right here in this room exactly two weeks ago when um honorable Andrew Banks was given his speech in support of the international women's day international women's months and the discussion was around the difference between those two concepts and when it comes to diversity it's very important to understand that although we can create opportunities that would be equal for uh different um groups and different people that may not be enough what we we need to do is to support Equity by propane those that

had different start because sometimes we just we have different starting point so to get to the same place we need more help how does that look from smaller businesses uh it's a lot of self-advocacy right I I've done a lot of startups I think the largest company I worked for was Netflix and uh that was a miserable experience um I I really like the sub 300 person companies but at that point uh like the first startup I ever worked for I found out that I was not making anywhere near what I should have been and I had to go to a VP and say look I'm gonna file an uh equal opportunity uh the EEOC

complaint if this is not addressed and in the U.S the EEOC default employment opportunity commission um they don't just let you fill in a form and file a complaint you have to go through a two or three interviews and then they give you the form to cover okay we think you have a viable complaint they triage very hard um so I knew the risk there was that I'm not going to get what I want and I'm going to be out of a job and you have to as an individual be comfortable with that as it turned out HR flew out from from California to to North Carolina and investigated and then by the end of the

week I had a 30 raise so you have to be willing to to suffer the consequences you know that could have gone and it did go very badly because my manager was not really happy about that and basically made my life a living hell after that right so there's a certain amount of I have to advocate for myself but I have to protect myself at the same time and you have to decide which where you're going to fall on that Spectrum nice so I work for a company um and one of the things that we do is we do employee network groups so we have employee network groups for women for vets for um people that are neurodiverse for

um the Asian culture the black culture lgbtq and so that gives those groups of folks a space I also work for a company that's got like 80 000 people in it too across the world so um that's something else that can be done even on a smaller scale as your company starts to grow and build and things like that you can start to think about um creating these spaces for them to come in and have conversation do activities do events get the education that they need you know what I'm saying um so that's a good point thank you um Pam in your role what challenges have you faced if any when hiring um building the diverse Workforce from the

government perspective and how have you guys addressed that okay so working for government it's been absolutely fantastic actually I think that uh certainly as a hiring manager you'll you're empowered uh and you're able to yourself you know take the lead on ensuring that you know you can hire the right people with the right skills and it's not always down to them having a formal education you have to be prepared to find the right candidate somebody that you can retrain and you have to provide those retraining opportunities and and I've done a lot of uh work around internships for around cyber security and it's been a it's been wonderful I've taken on a mix of females

and males and 50 50 on on that front and uh people with who weren't actually interested in cyber security more interested in an internship but you know treating everybody as an individual and providing them with the opportunities has led to Great outcomes and you know when we talk about work experience we always talk about it in terms of internships and 16 to early 20s we need to provide our work experience opportunities for all the people who want to transition into a career we need to work much more closely with Grassroots organization or doing great things like here in the Cayman Islands scifek are doing great things they're a code academies um also entry-level roles and uh

alternative ways of assessing people it's not always down to having formal education and and and uh you know the academic qualification because when truth be told we're all on a journey of continuous learning and we can acquire what we need to acquire for that job while we're in the job working but like I said I mean it's been fantastic working for the Cayman Islands government I feel very empowered to do the things that I've done and there are no barriers so awesome so that comes from the the newer folks but how do we address the issues for career changers for folks that are you know mid-career looking to change transition um what are your thoughts Marcel Carlota

oh I was an intern I did my transition probably the ultimate all this turn ever but um but yeah being open to you know looking at people candidates like that um you know someone who looks like me and is a little older I'm not going to say how old some people might know um but yeah just be open to exploring these possibilities of bringing in folks that aren't traditional you know in your mind um you know another thing that I see a lot of in the states is requirements for like like a four-year degree um I'm I will tell you that there's many many jobs in cyber security that do not require a four-year degree or they

shouldn't require a four-year degree um and not that I I we're both College professors I'm not knocking that but um but yeah just you know being open having people come in from different backgrounds and and that sort of thing and and for my part I made a conscious decision I had a very unusual kind of path into cyber security myself on one hand I'm a College Dropout and on the other hand I have a master's degree from Columbia I did go back to school so I'm very I grew up very poor you know some very uh attuned to to Opportunities and that the fact that I had to make a lot of opportunities for myself so I was an

eye to Enterprise I.T for many years I ended up at a little startup called FireEye in 2013 and they were about 300 people because I love that space and by the end of the year they were 1100 people and then they bought mandiant and they were 2 000 plus people I mean it was it was within the span of a year you went from 300 person org to a 2000 plus I think almost 2 500 person work and I was able to kind of create little opportunities for myself within that I was the platform admin for the for the communities I was a technical platform admin for the communities and content management systems and the person they

hired to run the communities was neither technical nor interested in security and he was failing fundamentally our communities and I started answering questions in the communities and I took them over that's how I got into security right and I got very addicted to helping you know lots I helped hundreds of security teams across the globe solve problems and I got addicted to that but there's there was no other opportunity there were no other like Community manager roles at the time in cyber security vendors I could grow into or move into to further my career so I had to make my own opportunities and I think that you have to wherever you are it's always going to be easier if you're

working for a hospital for example see if somebody in the security team will Mentor you right try to use the connections you have to create opportunities for yourself and also for them especially in the Cayman Islands we have two major industries tourism and financial services and sometimes what we what I see is a limiting factor for professionals is lack of knowledge and medical industry so for instance someone can be intimidated to go and work in Security Financial Services because they may understand their technical side but may not understand the industry specifics so um I could share a mid-career for 100 women finance and that's one of the areas that we're looking at it's uh helping

um in our case women to transition between different Industries to catch them to close that Gap so that they can work in the same area but in different industry nice yeah I was just thinking about um my last job was for you know as security services provider and we put on an annual like threat Intel Summit for customers and really anybody who wants to come um it's secure works I definitely recommend checking out that threat Intel Summit that they do it's very good okay um even though I'm not there anymore but uh but we always had like a cyber competition for the participants and I had the idea I'm like let's open up this cyber competition run it internally for

the entire organization and it was such an amazing thing because you know we had people from finance and HR and and sales all these different teams who really didn't know much at all about the technical aspects of cyber security right and so people just love doing the Cyber competition we would do like weekly walkthroughs of like how to solve things a lot of people got in trouble with it for like downloading stuff on their computers didn't think about that one but but it was just a great way to expose the broader audience of a company to you know what we actually do in in cyber security so highly recommend that I like that idea so that plays into what

managers and leaders can do so what what are some things that the folks that are in those types of positions and those leadership roles what can they do to make sure that um they're they're trying to maintain this diverse group and they're not looking into their own unconscious bias to not hire or not bring folks in what can they do to help maintain that we can start down here at this then I think one of the underrepresented groups I think are and and when when when when the truth be told you know our Workforce needs to represent the cultural society that we're in the communities that we're in and and nobody should be left behind I think

neurodiverse groups are left behind currently and it's actually that is the skill set that fits very well with cyber security it's people that think differently and who probably think like the uh cyber adversaries so that's a group I think is underrepresentative and and more can be done there whether we need to go as far as you know affirmative action to neurodiverse groups I'm not sure we need to go that far but I think our managers can take the lead and I certainly will be taking the lead and providing opportunities for people with with special needs so thank you and I'm going to jump back in here because I have a quote from Linton Wells Linton Wells III was the

former CIO of the dod in the U.S and he's also what's he's he's a volunteer at a hacker conference every summer and has been for almost 30 years he's he's a well-seasoned gentleman and I asked him Lynn he's one of my mentors and I adore him but I said Lynn what would drive a Navy guy a DOD guy to a hacker conference especially in the early 90s and he said I understood that diversity of thought is key to protecting our country and I can't wait for that diversity to come to me I have to go out and bring it to me I want I have to make them want to work with me and I think that from a

leadership perspective is a hundred percent what leaders need to do I think Pam you've exemplified that in many ways yeah I think so um generalized what was I was saying what you need to As Leaders we can build a culture that will focus on individual strength and you know the gaps and recognize and appreciate those individual strengths since um earlier today Ira was talking about the internet response and the qualities and a lot of qualities required for instance response are very different from the qualities required for their uh technical support and from the monitoring there are different mentality that are required to be there so the different people will be differently suited for different roles and

recognizing those differences and celebrating them I think it's important for the managers and um as part of our I mean the type of program one of the programs that we started doing internally is uh heart centered leadership so we teach those going into cyber more empathy and also doing the trainings to help the mentality of our professionals to be focused and to trade so that when we are in a stressful situation we can deal with that situation properly with internal staff with Communications we talked about the importance of communication yesterday uh from a legal perspective another perspective but to just with any incident response you need to have the proper mentality and uh sometimes as Pam

is saying different groups are differently suited for that you have any thoughts okay so I got distracted all right so I have one more question um that you guys probably have prepared for but um once these folks are in an organization how can we help them advance in cyber security in either in this company that they're going to first or into other companies like what can we do or what can organizations companies nonprofits do um to help with career advancement and that's for me to know because I'm trying to get to their level right here all right I'm gonna jump in on this one um when I started volunteering with grcie grca grcie.org we call it Gracie but there's

no a in the in the domain um I deliberately said I am better at this point mentoring mid-career women trying or with people trying to step up in their career and whether they're transitioning in cyber security or already here my time is best spent developing leadership in the next gen leaders right um so I think there's partially recognizing that in yourself I think companies definitely need to uh stop leaving it to individual managers on how you spend uh on whether Education and Training gets approved because that has very much worked against I think women in underrepresented groups in the past is that the manager who has to approve that says well I don't think you

need it uh so they don't approve it right so I think companies need to be more aggressive in letting the individuals choose their mentors and choose their education and being willing to fund that and I think that we as has seasoned professionals also need to be we need to help the entry level and the transitioners but we also need to really be developing the leaders as well and I would say creating Role Models as well yes and that goes for the mid-career Professionals for young professionals and to um scholarship students and even for the younger folks in the universities because sometimes see that underpresented groups don't go in a certain profession because they don't see people like them in those

permissions they don't see those Role Models so they don't think those opportunities are there for them and highlighting that they are is very important yeah I was going to add to like there was actually a campaign that was run over Twitter from a security company a couple years ago and it was called This is what a hacker looks like and people were encouraged to take pictures of themselves doing uh sort of not what you would expect the stereotypical hacker to be doing right and just being a woman if fits that category right but um but yeah so I mean if you Google female hacker like you're just not gonna get a lot of good yeah

from there exactly exactly you're gonna get you know a girl with a dragon tattoo and yeah Angelina Jolie of course it's essential right maybe Penelope from NCIS but there's just not a lot you know for for a young woman to look for and and you can take out the word woman and insert you know any other diverse kind of category um so what Alexandra is saying is just so important to have those role models and those mentors and just somebody who's actually doing you know the thing that these people might want to do and and to be honest that's why I do a ton of public speaking um it's not because I always wanted to

be a public speaker it's quite the opposite but um but I just think it's really important to be that role model and get in front of people and be a technical woman and and so that's what I do but um but um from do you guys have anything in the government here for helping with that career advancement yeah my mark can I speak for my team in my department but my view of career enhancement everybody always thinks it's moving up to the next level um but if you look at the way that organizations are structured everybody can't be a manager that's just the reality of the situation but we can all be leaders we all already are leaders I

tell my people you're a leader you can do this and I get them to go outside of their comfort zone and I plant that seed in them that they're a leader because I'm hoping I plant that seed and it will grow into a tree and and one day they will be a leader and I'm I'm sure of it because sometimes it only takes a few words and believing in people so I also think career advancement is about learning about other areas of the organization you shouldn't spend all of even if you want to be a cyber security to see so don't spend all of your career in that area go and find out about law

go and find out about project management go and find out about marketing round yourself off so that when you do become a a manager or a director or an executive you have got all of those skills and you've built them as you're going along in your career but the key point I want to make is that we're all leaders we can all be champions for change it doesn't matter where we are in an organization I like that um some other ways too I think is with volunteering um we're heavy volunteers I've been volunteering with cyber Jitsu because it's a volunteer role for 10 years at this point um and it gives you a lot of different

skills that Pamela was talking about marketing uh business all of these things public speaking so for those of you that are interested in advancing and enhancing your career volunteer work is a good way to do that as well it also builds a network and if you're if you're coming from another industry then cyber security volunteering at with with an organization like cyberjutsu or Gracie you know those are fantastic showing up to your local conferences in your local meetups it builds your network right yeah network is huge in this industry as I'm sure you all are aware but um like I I can't even remember the last time like I actually like applied for a job it was

because it's always just like hey myself you want to come work for us I'm like okay sure but yeah the networking piece is big and um I mean and my hat is off to the gentleman who run b-sides Cayman Islands because it's a heavy lift to put on a conference like this for sure um Mary and I know because we've put together a conference we're planning a conference now yes we are right we'll take volunteers by the way also sponsors um but uh but yeah so it is a great way to to hone your skills and meet sort of like-minded people um and there's many groups out there it doesn't have to be cyber Jitsu or Gracie

um to find something that works for your your personal needs and and your organization too I think it's great for organizations to support these kind of groups too and one quick more thought on that um for the diverse hiring thing um like for example cyber Jitsu has a job board so you can promote your job openings there and you're going to get an audience of you know of extreme diverse so um and these are things that people don't even know about or think about sometimes right well and I think coming back to what can companies do sponsoring these kinds of organizations and these kinds of conferences you may not see the money out of it you know immediately but

you do get a more favorable reputation I think and you do get that exposure of okay uh I've I've sponsored cyberjutsu now diversity candidates are going to look at me more favorably when they do apply right or when they're considering applying another related area is mentorship yes being a mentor is first you can help create that next generation of the Cyber professionals that help with Recruitment and ultimately with overall security for for everyone and it's uh Mandarin is very rewarding for both minty and Mentor yes you build that relationship and you build that accountability right um so final thoughts I'd like to know what's that what's the top of mind for all of you today as it relates to

security an inclusive Workforce and partnering with organizations we'll start in the middle and then go out to the outside so you can start first to me uh one focus is equity okay so we're focusing on that and making sure that we have that prop for underrepresented Professionals in the community and another is looking broader at diversity so not uh just gender race nationality but neurodiversity and temperament for instance making sure that someone who is an introvert has equal opportunities it can can build a successful career okay more so yeah and I think the thing that this kind of top of mind for me is is that it's not enough for an organization to have like

like oh I've hired a woman on this team my job here is done right um because then it really puts all the pressure on that person to represent you know an entire gender or race or whatever right um so just like don't stop at that first one and I see that all the time um the other thing that I also observe is you know the company where I work is like 15 000 employees and our diversity inclusion Equity game is very strong but when I look around just infosec the team like it's not represented there so so I think it's you know it's on the leadership of these groups to make sure that those initiatives are carrying

through into their departments as well um because it doesn't just naturally flow sometimes okay yeah and my final thought is that you know we work together open private sector to build a pipeline of cyber talent to uh defend our nation from now and into the future because the demand is there and you know the extent to which I can play a role in that I certainly will and I and I'll be the leader in that awesome and Carlota everything it's all on my mind Equity advocacy burnout and Community I think in that order because I I left my last job and I loved my last job um but I was handling eight clients I was decisive for eight small companies I

was handling sales I was coaching the senior analyst I was coaching the the junior analyst and I and and then my boss expected me to build out my own Proposal with no equity right and I was just like okay no I'm not doing that and and I quit and I started pocket see so to build out my own thing and then I realized I am too burnt out to move so I literally Incorporated my my company in November and then just couldn't do anything for three months because I was well hey it's the holidays nobody's doing anything anyway so it's kind of the perfect time um but it was also you know I maybe I'm

maybe in maybe I just need some time off so I took my time off and I came back and I was still feeling very burnt out uh and I leaned on my community like the because I'm a one-woman show I really needed in my community to to cheer me on and I really appreciate everyone who's gone like that's a great idea you need to stay focused on that I know you're burnt out take a little more time right so uh those those things Equity advocacy burnout in community like you're going to face all of those challenges in your career whether you're in cyber security or not nice so we could talk about this this topic for hours days whatever it is

um but I want to thank all of these ladies here for for jumping on and just having the conversation if you all have any questions feel free to ask yes perfect Mary yes Mary can we ask everyone has their notepads in front of them yes Ken mask everyone to take second and write one thing that they can personally do to see what what she said write down what you can do to support diversity and inclusion on your pad right if you haven't already written it down

good morning and I am really pleased to see um this interjection into this um all seminars this week in terms of the diversity that up there and women that are up there this is truly pleasing and I'm totally in line I've taken education and I'm more so pointing my question to I mean spam green the diversity in Tech 2021 states that in the U.S 68 percent of businesses Business Leaders believe there is a lack of diversity in the I.T world and that is a problem my question and I'm totally with you in terms of Education in the field I was exposed recently in the last two weeks to an awesome program that is being done

has been embarked just this year at the ucci University of the Cayman Islands where I was pleased at the I.T table because I've been in the I.T field for over 25 years and there it was only one female among the group of over 10 gentlemen so my question is really how deliberate are we in terms of um moving towards the diversity for females in the industry and with the government being one of the largest leaders employment agencies yeah how are we gearing towards that so um are we being deliberate are we incorporating programs that are out there to try and promote to bring in um female and I'm I'm loving what was shared earlier that we must do promotion

we must have more of this forum so our females can see what the leaders are currently doing and where they too can look to Aspire because again with the hospitality the reverse was there the hospitality table one meal and all female we need to change that complex thank you for that question um I completely agree with you I think statistics from the U.S is not the same as what's going on here so if it's 60 of leaders in the US feel uh there's not enough diversity I don't think that's the same here but you did Hit Upon a good point is that we need to know as a baseline what is that statistic here so when I looked into that back in 2021

actually you know we are ahead of the Us and other jurisdictions in terms of for instance the number of women that work yeah and also behind slightly but the number of women in technology so it's about making sure that those women you know be counted they stand up they show the the young ladies and the young guys that you know technology certainly cyber security is very diverse here in the Cayman there are opportunities for you but seeing is believing as you said so I mean it's difficult to know any one time all of the different panels and discussions that are going on but anytime I'm invited to speak to young people I take that opportunity because

for me young people are the future they're the leaders of tomorrow and uh we must invest time in it and I do that on a personal level I think yeah I think there's also a perception issue right because especially women in underrepresented groups we become very good communicators to get into these roles and once you're a good communicator you're no longer considered technical even if you are deeply technical a lot of times as as a woman especially you're going to be pushed more into Marketing in an Enterprise organization fire three years trying to move me into marketing and um I refused because that's not the path I wanted to take and I think that that especially in

Silicon Valley and I imagine to a lesser degree here but there's going to always be an undercurrent of oh you're not a developer so you're not deeply technical and that's just not true you know your developer is technical in a different way from your systems administrator right your your network admin who writes batch scripts for things is technical in a different way from your front-end developer right it and and conversely similarly I should say um anyone who's communicating those technical Concepts and organizing that and running that program like your csos we're still technical you know we still have those technical chops but because we're now program managers or leaders we're not the technical ones anymore and

we're not the ones that they're inviting to necessarily to the table cool another question good morning um I'm so pleased to be here um listening to your extraordinary women as a member of gender equality came on you know um we promote diversity in the workplace um but I believe it comes down to what Pam mentioned a few minutes ago about education educating people what is diversity um so I'm sitting here one might say you know what this isn't a diverse panel because there's no mail that's true I heard so that person is attributing diversity to gender yeah but from my opinion is very diverse I'm seeing different race persons from different background and so forth so my question

is um what is more important to you high in a diverse Workforce or hiring the right person for the job they shouldn't be mutually exclusive yeah exactly exactly I want to hire the right person for the job but I also want to make sure that I have a diverse team and and like I said you can do both at the same time for sure it should be one in the same because cyber security there are different jobs and there will be a very different people required for each of those jobs if if you hire based on those jobs then you will end up with diversity by itself it just may be diversity in different aspects we're not

saying don't hire men we're just saying look at everyone and pick the best person from that group whether that's a female somebody that's black or Asian or you know from the UK or whatever it is you can find the right person in that group as well right although I mean can you find the right person are you looking in the right places that's the other thing too right so if you're kind of have a narrower pull then that's going to have an impact on on what that looks like for you and I think it also I think it speaks to the pipeline issue right if if only I'm getting white males for candidates I'm going to end up one I I Can Only Hold

the job open so long to look for a diversity candidate to see if they are as good or better right at some point business has to keep moving but if you're in that situation where you don't have that pipeline then you should as a leader in your community or a leader in your organization you should be going out and creating that Pipeline and maybe you won't get the benefit of it in the next five years maybe not in the next 20. maybe you're going to elementary schools and you know trying to to create that pipeline there but you still need to be contributing to it if if you're not seeing a diverse candidate pool all right are there any final questions

I see her all right technically our time's up and we take one more we've got two minutes with the red screen down here oh all right time's up for speaking I think we can still take the questions you were deprived of a few minutes so I think you're okay um I just wanted to say this may come into your support um bucket but what role do you see what should we say employment benefits in terms of promoting diversity and inclusivity um that's a good one um at least in the states I think one of the employment benefits is um having insurance coverage for like same-sex partners for example and I don't know how it works here I apologize

but um but that's not a given necessarily in the states um supporting paying for the costs for like say gender reassignment surgery that's you know something that's going to draw granted maybe a narrow pool of candidates but it's going to make generally candidates um possibly feel better about your organization those are two that come to mind right away I don't know if you think education having the ability to either have your education reimbursed or paid for I worked at General Dynamics and they gave us our twelve thousand dollars a year to go to school every year very nice I mean that was definitely something that Drew me in yeah and I think for the the US the

remote work is huge because so many underrepresented groups uh women diversity candidates whatever if we can work remotely and have a more flexible schedule we can support our family and our community better and I'm not having to leave I'm not having to choose between do I want to stay in your family and Community or do I want to take a job in Boston and that's a very specific example for a reason but you know yeah and and part of my disagreement with my former company and again love the company absolutely would recommend anyone go work for them but senior leaders were allowed to be remote but anyone who is not a virtual CSO had to

be in that Boston area office and I think that's that's just that's the control issue right I get that you want to see butts and seeds there are leaders who honestly feel like you can't create a remote effective remote Workforce it takes a different focus it takes a different level of energy and I get it's not as spontaneous it's more intentional um so I think remote work is huge for underrepresented groups and and just huge and general flexibility yeah but one thing I want to say about facility it needs to be done right so for instance if we talk about overworking mothers flexible is a good thing because you can pick up your child something but it's

also important not to create a stereotype of a bias because someone has children it doesn't mean that this person will be less available right or will have less time and therefore will be less is less promoted because right that they expect it to have more time yeah and uh especially in cyber I would say because we're dealing with incident response incidents don't work nine to five I think they prefer to not work nine to five and another related thing is the the maternity believe in their flexibility around that as well technically I'm going to maternity right now he's trying to be we're trying to believe too is the good thing off as well nothing further to add

all right so um that's all the time we have right now please connect with all of us um I know I'm on LinkedIn they're on LinkedIn are you guys on LinkedIn too yes yes connect with all of us via LinkedIn Twitter whatever other social medias um and if you have more questions feel free to ask after after we'll go out in the hallway let's give them a big round of applause if we can thank you very much