Boston BSides - Roads to a Career in CyberSecurity

I think we're ready and I think that's a great way to start is thanking bides for allowing this talk and understanding the importance of it such that we're usually focused on our practitioner side of of what we do every day and um generally that means we leave out the soft skills and we leave out the human stuff and so I really applaud bides for uh bringing awareness to some other topics that really uh do challenge us every day and and that we can all change together and that's why this group of lovely ladies came together is that we wanted to raise awareness raise awareness in uh the different types of careers that are out in cyber that aren't strictly being uh

very very technical and uh are some of us up here are and um ask all of you to help us solve a very difficult challenge that we have in the community right now we're short uh you know the Statics are all over the place but anywhere from you know you know 500 to a million positions we certainly don't know exactly yet we're all trying to figure it out but we know it's a lot and we know it's growing uh and if you listen to mud's speech just now it's probably going to continue considering the vendors are creating these challenges that's another story so we're going to deal with the here and now and that is we've got 10%

Max uh females in cyber and of that 10% there's about 2% in leadership so we presentent the 2% in leadership and uh that is really wonderful because they are very special women up here and yet we want more and we know that we can't just rely on our education system we need to as a community recognize that we're not marketing or selling the positions in cyber correctly we are selling one position out in the media and education and that's strictly definitely tactial you know software engineering uh network engineering and uh as we all know now there's tons of different roles so we're going to introduce ourselves we're going to share our stories and our different career

paths and the different jobs that we've had some wisdom along the way and uh and then our 50 minutes will probably be up so uh that's all we have time for today so I'll start on your moderator my name is d diamond I'm the founder of cybern and CEO of cybern I've also founded a not for-profit called brain babe it has nothing to do with the way we all look and everything to do with uh let's not ban Booth babes train them and make them brain bases and so cyber is on a mission we're bringing um women with liberal arts degrees women that have gone out and had children and want to come back to the workforce and we're going to be

training them to be level one incident response folks uh analysts and we're going to help uh bring women into the field uh my story is I'm a Liber Arts major I'm a criminal justice sociology major I grew up in California I happen to stumble upon two serial entrepreneurs who um had a a staffing agency a small one at the time technical I joined and 5 years after I joined we went from 2 million to 89 million in 36 offices across the country and I was Vice President of Sales with them for 10 of my 13 years and they are the same founders of Rapid 7 so uh I got the opportunity to leave the technical

staing business and and be the first vice president of sales at rapid 7 so uh was employee number 19 and I was with them up to 50 million of recurring Revenue I spent 4 years building that organization with amazing people one moose for anybody that knows what that means the culture is spectacular uh some of you might not have had the best phone calls from salespeople many many many times but I will tell you that if you can consider that we didn't have any VC cash until we were at 7 million but we knew we had a good product we were banging down doors so I apologize if you got too many calls however it was the

only way to get the message out and we definitely had something better for you practitioners so we believed it and we went after it uh from there I went to become CEO of one of our other companies percussion software where rapid 7 was uh born from P Jus was there he's the one that built an expose uh that was one of our first software companies and I went to restart it new products content management content marketing had a lot of fun uh made the jump from VP to CEO uh very very interesting different world uh had a lot of fun however I really missed the cyers space and uh I decided that it was time to do one of my own

stories and so that's how cybern was bred and cybern is focusing on Staffing for cyber professionals so I put the two together but we're also building a solution because digital search is absolutely broken it's ridiculous as how hard it is for you folks to find jobs is terrible and uh so we're we're building some solutions to fix that having a ton of fun based in Boston but we're National and uh so I can tell you that you know coming into this field and getting to work side by side practitioners my whole career it's been amazing I love my I love what I do I love this industry I uh get to travel the world I get to make great money I

get to be on the Forefront of what's happening I remember being 22 looking for an HTML programmer for Earthlink I remember the first time I heard visual C++ it was you know virgin games asking me to find them a developer I have been side by side watching this industry and I love you all and so not only is it a lot of fun to work beside you it's also a lot of fun to solve some problems that we're having so that's why I'm here it's what I'm doing that's my career path and we'll share some words of wisdom later i' like to pass the mic at this point and uh hear more from these ladies but uh it's a true pleasure

to be here and let you all know that there's that somebody that's not technical can be a CEO of the software company and uh and that's the true message all right here we go I'm going to pass on I have a m i have a mic um I'm Lala shadan I'm director of marketing it's cyber reason my career started at unit 8200 as you can hear in my accent I'm Israeli so as all Israelis we have obligatory uh service in um uh the Israeli Defense Forces and some of us are get selected um to some special missions um I was part in 8200 that is the cyber security unit I knew nothing about it I knew nothing about what this

world is and there is gender equality there because both female and male start at the age of 18 and go to the same uh unit together and just get trained on the job didn't have any information about it that was the best job of my life did it for two and a half almost three years it was amazing never had such a job with such an impact then out of uh uh that went to school studied biote and ended up uh spending 12 years in Pro and gamble doing marketing um moved with my husband that spent all his career in software and in cyber security space moved to the US and then got into a point that I want to change I missed

that technology that I had in the past I missed the the kind of uh um spice that you had every day that new things happen um consumer goods were awesome but was kind of a slow industry and my husband said move to security you have to do this change and I was like I don't know I didn't learn software I don't know anything about technology time passed since I started this uh and he really really pushed me to do it and I joined Rob 7 uh worked at the time um as a product U manager product marketing manager and then evolved and moved and learned the space um and I want to tell you all and I want you to tell your kids

it's something that anyone can learn it's it's not necessarily something that is taught in school or taught in certain classes obviously the classes but it's something that if you're interested you can just go on and learn it you can teach yourself there's so many ways and so many smallart people to teach you that really glad that they did this move uh and today with cyber reason um a growing startup it's amazing the Journey of this industry there is no better time to join the industry than today the opportunities are endless [Music] all right um my name is Sandy Carelli and my journey into Security started when I was in college I was a math major

as in undergrad and my main interest in math was number Theory and the only real practical application of number theory was cryptography so I became interested in that and studied it a little bit and knew I wasn't going to be a cryptographer or anything but thought it was kind of cool stuff and so coming out of college I found a job as a software engineer at BBN in their cyber trust group so I was doing programming for things related to pki and I really enjoyed that but I also found in retrospec you know I had a very narrow sense of what security was I was looking at crypto I was looking at pki I didn't

really see or have awareness of a world beyond that until a friend of mine recruited me into atate and I then got this exposure to everything in application security and network security and policy and started to see you know a broader World there started Consulting doing a lot around that and after about 4 years decided you know what being at a startup was really interesting and I want to understand a little bit more about the decision-making process and building a business so I went back to business school and in doing so I ended up stepping away from security for I guess about four years after that out of business school I ended up doing sales

for a really sort of hard technology company mechanical engineering for a little while and then moved into product management and what I found I liked about product management was that hey I'd been an engineer I had been a consultant I'd done a little sales i' done a little marketing I knew how to speak all those languages and so product management which requires you to be so cross functional really appealed to me but my first product management role again wasn't insecurity and it wasn't until 2010 when an opportunity with RSA presented itself that I found myself back in security and I realized how much I missed it and I realized how comfortable I felt in it how much I

likeed the community and how much I'd liked having those conversations and being part of those problems and part of all of that stuff and it was just you know the past five and a half years or so was really great because I got exposure to different Technologies different parts of the market more people in the community and just had a really phenomenal experience there and I ended up leaving RSA earlier this year and I'm now finding myself contemplating okay what am I going to do next and I feel I'm at such a different better spot than I was was before because I have so much more breath in terms of understanding the different types of

options I have that I can look at product management or I can look at product security I can look at marketing I can look at something more technical that I have a lot of options and I can choose the thing that's going to be the right Next Step for me versus feeling as constrained as I might have when I first got into the industry is it working um my name is n carage um so my story is little complicated um so I'm I grew up in a small Central Asian country called K uh I finished high school when I was 16 and I had two options either do Finance or do computer science and I and I chose

computer science um it was fun uh I finished my degree and I was still young I was 20 years old I I I felt like I I need to get out of the country travel do stuff um so I started applying for scholarships and um I got a scholarship to do Master's in India so I said yep uh you know any any any place outside my country will work so my my parents freaked out my mother um she was a doctor she's like what um but I didn't care so I had a best friend um she's um so we we we applied we got in and we went to New Delhi to um to do Masters and to learn

English because we didn't speak English so that's um but that was those three years we spend India that was the best time we spent um youve made a lot of friends we've learned a lot of new things to uh learn English and um so after that um again I had this urge that I want to do more travel more do stuff and I applied for internship um in DC with W bank it's the international um organization and I got in and um so 5 months after my graduation here was in DC a huge United States of America I was like you know crazy thing and my internship was in it Department in security um Security Group so that's how

I got introduced to security so I worked with them for um 2 and a half years I did a lot of of um P stuff smart cards um identity management user provision so it was all on infrastructure security and then um so it was a program it was um with a limited um was a twoe two and a half year program and after that you're supposed to go outside of organization and and then reapply after 2 years so I started looking for a job and it was 2008 joob Market Market was horrible let along security and I I was in Security in DC every job I applied needed clearance cuz it was all contract you know government jobs and I was like

oh my gosh what are we going to do and I applied for a position in um EMC and it was in um application doing application security but I didn't know anything so in my interview you know they're asking about buffer and CLE injection and you know cve and CVSs I'm like oh my gosh I'm not getting this job um but I got it so that's awesome um so I've been with the EMC for eight years I started as a security engineer um so I did um security development life cycle I did vulnerability response and now four years ago I took a management role to manage the team and that's what I've been doing so yeah that's my journey

awesome y awesome hi my name is Sona and I am the security officer for T's Medical Center it's an academic 400b academic Medical Hospital right down the street um with the floating Hospital for Children so the Pediatric Group as well um my road to security I had no intention nor desire to get into anything related to security and here's my path so I went to business school in Dallas I'm a graduate of Southern methodis University undergraduate in um management information systems out of the business school and uh also have a degree in uh a Bachelor of Arts uh study art history while I was there as well studied art history in Madrid my intent was to

become an art broker for like soft bees and do something very glamorous and and this is glamorous too I tell myself that every day um uh my background is in management consulting so I'm very you know process procedure policy probably more business operations background than technical background per se always worked in it space um started Consulting for pero systems which is Ross per old management consulting firm did some work with Dell Services when that they got acquired uh took a branch off and did some Consulting when that was the Bing of the science really popular did some work in San Francisco so I think what really lends um some intelligence to my job is that

I've actually kind of seen the p&l I've did some work in Texas Instruments I've seen you know the Silicon chips be made from Sand all the way to through the manufacturing process same for paper same for you know recycled Plastics so I kind of know a little bit about various Industries telom industry um and that's really informed my work as a security officer because the first thing that I do is tend to map what the business value is for whatever investment we're making on the security space or why does that make a difference and it seems that that's um really resonating with the Executive Suite as of late we all know that it's hard to get budget um when

we're fighting with another you know it initiatives um and so really mapping that value uh is is very challenging within the security space but very very rewarding when it's uh when it comes to fruition awesome such great stories up here I think whether you know we're men or women the interesting thing is that the security space is growing so quickly and it's so vast that there's all kinds of jobs and I would encourage again whether you're male or female to if you have interest in other roles to to check them out because at the end of the day there aren't enough of us you're always going to have a place to be even though I know again when you search sometimes

it doesn't feel that way if you have patience it can pan out for sure so uh so hopefully you know everybody can take that from these initial stories how about we move into a little bit uh more of the female focus and share some stories that we have just from a perspective of raising awareness we all believe that we wouldn't be sitting up here if it weren't for uh men particularly white men uh who got us into this industry and we're willing to train us so you're not evil uh at all we love you and we need help right we need more women in here and so my story you know as you heard earlier I've worked 19 years for the

same two men that brought me into the industry and uh powerful cultures definitely no sexism it was all merit-based and absolutely wonderful uh promotion structures based on performance and lots of different companies we can you know move in and out of and um all of that being said there was a situation that uh is in interesting story to hear so that again not everything is so obvious in terms of what can be uh you know what can happen and and a woman could get left behind let's say so uh I'm 12 years into my 13-year career at Staffing and I am the top vice president there is no question on that because it sales and numbers are

really easy to count and uh and all of a sudden I'm at a bar and the main founder that mentored me on the sales side uh who's the the money side of Rapid 7 I hear him pitching the Vice President of Sales job to one of my quot peers and yes we occupied the same title however the the track recordss were um definitely different enough to suggest that I should be having that conversation and uh and I I when I realized what was going on I leaned over and said wait a minute are you pitching him a new job outside of this company and I why aren't you talking to me and he's in front of my buddy who we grew up

in business with and he said deer you just got married and you've now got two stepchildren I didn't even think you'd be interested and genuinely truthfully coming from care coming from Love right I mean he's groomed me for 12 years at that point and I said well John that's just not the case and of course I got the job uh and you know thank God I was at that bar I generally didn't miss any bar moments however uh you know thank goodness I was there and come to find out there was one other VP who was uh pitched the job that turned it down even before the one that I heard that was getting the pitch and so both both of

them I'm sure wish they had uh done things differently that being said uh interesting right nothing malicious and that's really something that I I really want everybody to think about that most discrimination isn't malicious it isn't you know somebody gets out of bed every day and says I'm going to go be mean uh there are those people but we're slowly weeding them out certainly in this industry uh and and yet you know we need to be aware we need to think outside of our own experiences and and that's a great story that I'd like to share in the company that I work for the University was part of the beginning I mean Leo the CEO says that when he

started a company there were just a three co-founder it was clear to them that diversity needs to be thought of as of day one and they need to bring in because if it's an afterthought later let's make it's more diverse it just doesn't flow it does doesn't fit you cannot make it part of the DNA it has to be part of the DNA when you started the company he always talks about um his day being on the office and understanding that offensive teams are very diverse that's the interesting part um they're diverse in nature because you need different perspective you bring into the room different people from different background not necessarily the gender um uh diversity there is diversity they're

not just coders that people from different if if you need to hack into a bank obviously you will bring the haers but you would also bring the guys that know a little bit about find somebody that worked in a bank that knows the procedur so obviously there is gender um diversity as well as different kinds of diversity and I think that we don't understand it that much while the guys on the offense side see it all the time so it's really important I think that uh we all as a community kind of embrace it internally and see the benefit at the end of the day we are fighting something that has diversity as part of d a oh that's

interesting that's really interesting mean we only know our own experiences right we know what we know and we need others around us that have had other experiences so that we can know more uh and take on our adversaries in a more holistic uh approach that's awesome yeah so I learned a really good lesson a few years ago I was at a Women's Conference and there was a speaker there and I'll tell you who she was afterwards but she was talking about the different approach approach that the women and men and on her staff responded when she offered them promotions she said that a lot of the time when she offered promotions to the women on her staff the first thing

out of their mouth was do you really think I can do it to which her internal monologue is saying well yeah that's why I offered you the promotion whereas men on her staff would often say hell yeah it's about time and she you know called that out as a very strong difference now a few weeks later I was offered a really significant promotion at work and the internal monologue in the back of my head was going oh my God holy crap can I do this but having heard that a few weeks ago I thought to myself I am damn well not going to project that I just said absolutely hell yeah I can do that

I want to do that about time and it really impacted me in terms of how I approached it and how I presented myself that I was not going to be tenative I was not going to appear freaked out even if I was freaked out and really just you know make sure that they knew that I valued myself enough and expected this and I believed that I could do it um and the person who gave this advice is now running for president so I love that story absolutely love that story there's a ton of research that says that women do not go after promotions women do not go after raises uh we're trained to um not take

the risk really and put ourselves out there so again another thing that you can help with the women in your life help you know teach them give them that same story because if you hadn't heard that story who knows what your responsib be interesting it was really nice that it was there and it was sitting right in my mind when I'm having the conversation with I think I was talking to the CTO and just okay I can do this yeah thank goodness you had that story Josh did you want to say something so something crossed my mind as as you were telling that story just you know I've uh hired and worked with uh not equally afor

there not as many women in the security space obviously but both with very very high act and very talented women and men and one of the things that's interesting is I think that a lot of the guys that I work with like they have that same inclination internally I mean I think it's the standard representation of impostor syndrome which is like clearly I'm not this smart like what what what what what's but what I'm really starting to just listening to to some of the dialogue is it feels like the the impostor syndrome is is the same in both of these of these groups but one of them is more like more likely to be like you

know YOLO I'm going to go figure this out the other one's more likely to be like I'm not sure I can do it like what is this like something that we're we're uh bringing our daughters up is this is is this like how we're raising our kids risk yeah yeah I'm not supposed to climb trees and fall I'm interested in the thoughts like like growing up like why well for you guys like why do you think that that yeah there is a a really great um T talk about that that we are not teaching our daughters to be brave like you know we are teaching them it's okay you know you know like we teach our sons to be brave

you're not teaching our daughters to be brave and that's I mean it's it's eye opening talk so as successful women though in adulthood like how did you learn that so for like my uh sister-in-law who's just starting to try and enter the the computer science world like how do you start to alter that mentality uh uh an adult or young young I think we lefted out and that's the problem meaning somebody said something right you heard something at least for me I feel I lefted out I feel like I I uh got a chance to work for two men that were always saying I could do it and as soon as I heard that I was doing it and

I never looked back but see my experience was totally different I guess I didn't get that affirmation along my career what I really made a point of doing is observing what was happening in the room or the circumstances that were I mean I think that in this world of technology our social skills are a little bit at a at Peril because the the skills that you learn to me um in business at the time were you know reading a room understanding people's needs understanding the what they wanted to get out of the conversation or the deal or what whatever was uh in front of you from a business perspective and I think you know as a female I always I I

never it never occurred to me to look for affirmation from others I was really looking at my peer group and they may have been predominantly you know very very smart men um but just being very real real about my talents in line with the other people that I was sort of swimming with at the time and um and just accepting so I think it's something that happens internally I think that you know if we build um some sort of structure that's going to um you know obligate Society to to you know deem women worthy or young women worthy I think that we're going to be setting ourselves up for for something that's not too stable can can I jump into one

thing on this because I I'm reminded of being 10 years old and visiting the Boston Science Museum and there was some quiz that was going on about are you tense in mathematics now I loved math growing up and I had no fear about it whatsoever but the entire point of it in all the language Around It is Well women are often tense in mathematics and this was the first time that I had ever heard about this as a 10-year-old from an external Source at the Boston Science Museum and it was I mean you know and so that started to be something that I was aware of the people talked about and I hadn't known until

then the people did and then actually I think it was true until a few years ago if you went into the Mathematica exhibit at the Boston Science Museum when it had the whole timeline of mathematicians the title said men of modern mathematics yeah conditioning yes just have a comment on that which is that I think what you're saying is completely right which is once you get to the the point where you're you always have to as an adult measure yourself against your own selfworth and and find it within right um where but then I also think about s's story and that you know how do we then encourage not so how do we encourage girls from a young age to be able to

take more risks fail faster um you know be more persevering um when they reach obstacles and there's actually some really interesting data on that um one of the women at Simmons conference last year had run a bunch of studies and basically said sports are one of the key ways that that we can help young girls develop into you know their self-confidence their self-esteem their resiliency all the things that we need in order to put ourselves forth for that promotion um because those are the you know that that's a good environment for them to try so there's lots of things we also need to be doing when kids are young to encourage them to develop the

skills that you want so that when they then get older that point of have that self-esteem that y I can do I think it's the same thing that happens when you reach a level in your career my husband and I were just talking yesterday and he said you know you reach a certain level and you look around you're like I have no you know you think about mentors like it's getting slim picks at this level right at this layer so you have to kind of go find them yourself and maybe find people that inspire you differently than your you know the career track mentor maybe somebody that broadens things for you now then moves towards an upwards path I

really like the idea of let's just not treat men and women differently growing up you know right let's teach everybody to be brave and confident and secure and if that means climbing a tree and falling then let the girls climb the trees too right whatever that means whatever that excuse me translates into it does just let's not have a difference and let's not dress them with Juicy on their ass I mean seriously it makes crazy I just talk about this at RSA I mean in all seriousness it's you know there's that component of it too right so uh it really is let just not make a difference right who's got another story gu just um

another point it's not only about when the girls are growing up it's when you start to make it and when you start to get into into the rooms with the men there's also differences in how women are treated interacting with large groups of men in senior discussions and if you try to be smart aggressive assertive and straightforward you get labeled a certain with a certain word that everybody knows what it is whereas if the men are that way they're seen as Superstars so there's still those differences and bias even when you're getting later on and I see just about every head up you guys know what I'm talking about still there's still work do there too yeah also starts talking to

our boys too yes so that starts if we start taking it away at a younger age that there's differences than our boys grow I have a boy and a girl and it's been really interesting to raise both and see the biases that other people are trying to put on my children and I'm like we don't that's not what we actually do in our family you know we treat everybody kindly and we hear all voices and um to watch them as they interact with their environment um but I think it also starts early absolutely absolutely want to hear from you absolutely you know I like the point for it is you know different once you get into the space

right and different meaning how long have women been working with men side by side how many years everybody anybody know no I'm like in the workforce please uh in terms of having the right to vote having a say even being able to get into the room you being an executive in a software company you know like that's only been it's been in the making for 40 years of our entire exists so it's a it's new how do we work together so once we're here then how do we work together how does sex not get in the way how does you know all of that uh you know past judgment and stereotypes not get in the way yeah let's get a man

talking for one well no I just want to say uh you know it's funny because sometimes it is attributed to gender bias but I do see that there's a lot of idiot men too because because you know I see people it's like how' that person get promoted he doesn't know how to deal with people he doesn't even know how to manage problems he treats his people terribly and so you see things like that it's because there's just not enough emphasis on soft skills and on what's on business yeah so so I do feel you know very upset about seeing that a lot of times it's terrible it affects everybody and then there about the cultural thing you're

mention people from different cultures like in Japan if you're interviewing you're not supposed to brag about your accomplishments so there's these cultural aspects that kind of promote people into these positions because they they're very outgoing even though they're a horrible fit for the job absolutely absolutely we have little training on management leadership soft skills and we see uh people moving jobs every 18 months that's a massive disruption of humans not getting along that means I like you and now I hate you see you later that's terrible and it's happening everywhere yes back there we had a discussion at my workplace about um these kind of issues being mased as quotequote culture F you talk about

that's interesting how how to overcome that you know I I think that there's two things for me one is I would say work to change it quickly and then get out if it doesn't right meaning don't stick around a place where people aren't interested in treating others kindly and making such that everybody's got an even playing Shield but the best way to wake all those people up is to leave them behind right to not participate in their in their game so uh however luckily I've never worked in one of those cultures thank goodness so maybe one of the other ladies have some advice on that or uh well it's not necessarily malicious it's just they're blind to it cult yeah the

millenniums call it you're not woke my 2 year-old uh my Salesforce team told me that the other day and when I was talking about this person just couldn't get what I was saying she go oh he's not woke and I guess Beyonce made a song it's very common term which means you're not awake you're not you're not awake and it is difficult for those that haven't experience something to be awake and that's why I say help them get awake and if they don't wake up get the hell out because you know it's not going to be fun it's and you're you're too hot of a commodity that's the great news yes so um I have two ERS and I think

environmental you know what you're surrounded in your family home plays a really big part you know if you have very gender specific role sometimes that's what you see you watch TV that's what you see I'd like to ask the ladies up here um how much is your upbringing influenced where you are today based on how you've perceived yourself if at any I can take that so I'm one of four girls in my family my dad and I had a son right um and my my dad has a background in mechanical engineering and that's what he pushed me to do science and stuff and and he always encouraged us maybe sometimes he pushed us really really hard to get out of our comfort

zone and try new things so I think yes I agree your you know your upbringing your family your surrounding environment will will play a huge role yeah I completely agree my parents took me to a lot of science museums um and I like to say I come from a line of female scientists my mother was a nurse my grandmother was a biochemist and you know they both worked parttime and so I had this you know set of Elders that were encouraging an interest in this and that definitely played huge part maybe we all did how about you um yeah definitely my dad exposed me to science that's his great love and we used to do it together on weekends but I

must say that I do remember being told you know what if you don't want to learn those kind of studies it's okay I did get this message and I was resenting it I do remember as a kid um seeing this you know it's okay if you don't go to the highest grade in math it's okay it was this okay thing um uh I have one sister um she is a software engineer both of us ended up learning science and and being in the software industry and when I go and speak with my mom I I ask her how come you told me not to do those things uh and you didn't push me and she

was like cuz I didn't think that I can do it when I was your age we even didn't do it so she just now got walking and kind of awaken that it's possible cuz she is from this generation that you know what it's okay you learn Humanities you do arts and get married and everything is going to be fine um so she was like I thought that's a good thing to do um that's it it's interesting the generation gap that we see yeah absolutely women are that were our mentors still not pushing it my mother too she was a teacher LA City School drove two hours every day had seven kids I was number seven uh you know and she never said to

me you got to go do something you know ever Meanwhile my father from the Middle East and IM engineer pushing my brothers to be Engineers one of them is one of them went to Yale he's an attorney and you know I graduated high school I'm like what am I doing looking around oh I think I'll go to college cool and of course you know look fast forward but I'll tell you what as much as it was sort of it was okay if I didn't my stepfather who was African-American uh came into my life when I was six he was always telling me you're a leader you're amazing people love you do something good with it but he just kept saying

you're a leader you're a leader and I there's no way that didn't affect me you know in terms of my confidence and willing to take risk and get out there and that's why I saying I bet you we all do because I think whether it's our parents or somebody else uh has got to be that that's the the opportunity piece right I guess I just wanted to go back to our original topic of the the the discussion which was the I guess careers in cyber security and kind of hone in that although Healthcare has traditionally been kind to women leadership and there's a ton of women leadership and healthare in the it space and in the security space we don't

definitely see as much um but I encourage that you know if you really want to study and hone your skills in a specific area maybe go bury yourself in an industry didn't quite work for me because now Healthcare cyber security larger than I expected it to be in terms of you know political agenda in the National Spotlight right now with medical record uh data breaches but um you know bearing yourself in an industry you actually have an interest and then working your way up silently in that space allows you to make lateral movement later so I I would caution against you know thinking that the company that you're you know investing the most of your time in might not be

the industry that's you know sexy or appealing to you but it is going to give you talents and skills and let you kind of sit back maybe and make those observations that will improve uh your career later um at least that's what's happening from my perspective awesome I think we've got seven more minutes how about some working with these ladies uh recently heard some stories that I didn't even understand uh one of them just challenges that women still have so if you're a man and you're unhappy with your job and you start looking for a job whenever you feel like looking for a job well I thought women did the same thing but I found out just because I didn't

biologically have children or birth children I did not know that uh you know women have to think about that twice because uh if you most companies won't pay for child birthing in the first year right and so as a woman you got to think about you know timing and when you can move jobs and careers and this still happens today and again it's all just about awareness and hopefully we can all help change these policies I don't think any organization would really want a woman sticking around just because right I don't think that's good for anybody else or or right so maybe as all we as we're out there working uh in our everyday Liv lives we can help change

those things we just you know thinking of things that are different for women than for men and that is one and I bet you it does hurt folks a lot in terms of their ability to take risk or put themselves out there or take that job that they that came across their lap that they would love to take but they know they can't cuz they're pregnant or they're trying to get pregnant right crazy but true yeah I I have a story that just barely happened to me I'm a hiring manager and somebody came to to apply for a job and she was pregnant very pregnant and I was told myself my dad was no I won't do any of that so I just

treated her exactly the same and interview enough people that I could go through all the regular questions and she was great she's always led her company she wored in the same industry but on the user side rather producer side everything was great and that's what I did break down the line didn't even oh she had an hour and I just couldn't understand like I said did straight down on I wasn't the only one everybody loved her and we were like you got to do it we gave her the offer she said you know I realized the crappy a new mom you know whatever but then I realized this was an investor and a really really good person

she's going to be out of the workforce for few years our company's been around a long time she'll be back and she'll know she had a really good experience all right so maybe you know 15 years knows yeah thank you experience will and her experience with your company will get back to her colleagues her friends other people looking which will give you more access to other talented people absolutely Josh so this might be a little controversial two two questions first is uh when I think about like not being correct if I had a position I'm like oh my God I need to hire this person and then a woman who's in her third trimester walks in interview like

my initial inclination is uh and I don't know how to avoid this is like oh my God I need this person to be like working right now I've got this huge project like is that something that shouldn't enter our train of thought is that something that should like how do you how do you balance that because I like I I think I struggle a little with that the other thing I struggle with is that uh so our corporate policies reinforce uh uh Mother's caregivers now I think child birth birth obviously me like has a much more physiological impact on on women but uh it's much harder for the father to try and take off and help raise the kid for 6 months

because his company gives him you know two four 6 weeks and the woman three four five months right six months and so I'm kind of interested in perspective on those on those two two are can I take it yeah um I think there is a point about having a very cand discussion with this candidate about when are you coming back how available are you going to be and she may not know because it's hard to know when your last testic are you even ask I'm not even sure if you're allowed like you probably I'm not allowed as a corporate policy and stuff but I would bring it up if I come to an interview on

my third trimester I'm going to be very open about it and because I'm not GNA hide it right there's no way I mean it's Visual and you know I I think it's about time we we kind of open it up my best employees were women coming back from maternity leave because they were so effective so efficient not wasting a minute really going to get things done and getting they didn't waste time in coffee chat and so not I'm saying that coffee chips are not important for corporate culture but really there is something that I think we are being uh very much PC that prevents us from being human beings so I don't know what legal

would say about it I don't know what you know the rules of a corporate is but I think it's a shame not bringing in somebody in a third trimester if she do plans to be involved if she will catch up if she will be involved I can tell you even though I I took six months off I was very much involved with my team while I was away important meetings I attended I was on conference calls so even when I was out I onboarded uh people that could take over I think there is some flexibility that we can take cuz the same will happen if somebody gets sick if it's a male and you got sick and he needs to leave for

well well that's life so that's my Approach uh not sure that Leal would approve on it well it's it's interesting because like I like that last thing you said is really important if I am interviewing a pregnant woman and I want to bring up that conversation and then there's a better candidate that we don't hire she would have a very legitimate claim uh of gender discrimination so yeah that's something that I'd be interested in if there's another attorney but like it just feels like that is a very taboo conversation my my wife works for a startup she's working for the same serial entrepreneur for four years we had a daughter like she just I mean she works when she has the

flu like the legit swine flu she's like crawling to the desk and so I don't I don't think that that is uh like it's not that you're pregnant I can't hire you but it's the fact that we can't have that conversation and like anybody that says that thought does across their mind for a position that has an immediate need is not sure I think I think yes one second I just think the fact that she would show up in her first in her third trimester so she really she's she's got her stuff together and I say you know what if we're going to error let's error on on giving her the benefit of the doubt she's gonna make it work she's

gonna show up for you and she's gonna you know make things happen when we're fearful of legal crap um that's why I own my own company now I don't care uh that being said as a man who can help with policies in your type of position I think that men are also being left out of the childbearing experience of those first critical three six months that are so you know you know important and so I'd love to see you fight for equal rights on that too because how nice would it be if a couple could decide who's going to be at home more based on their career and where it's at or be there together or you know have that

ability to even decide so I think we need to advance on that piece of it significantly I mean those policies disadvantage women just as they dis have to disrupt their career even though it might not make the most sense for the family absolutely absolutely it might make more sense for the man to stay home based on where they're at so we need that yes so I just want to make a comment I um just recently went through a job search and I'm not pregnant but I do have two small children and um have been subject to the momy tax throughout my career and I can tell you that it's real so that's aside so then I just went through a job search

and it was fascinating to see the questions people would ask me and I will tell you that on two occasions I had met specifically asked me about my children how old they were husband did whether he traveled a lot and whether I was prepared for the lifestyle of the startup world I can also tell you the company that I CH but all these are

network I'm trying to get a sense of whether you're the candidate I'm looking for and this is they're bringing their perspective what I can tell you is that the company I chose to go work for when I met with the woman who was in charge she did not me a damn question about my family he was interested in whether I could do the job and that there's a reason why the laws exist which is the only thing that's relevant is whether that person can the job and and even if legally they weren't allowed to ask me I would never work for them and I will never advise anybody that I know to go work for somebody who would ask that

kind of question so that means like literally I had one of them say to me oh your husband must travel lot that must be hard for you that I was not going to be I like why would I put myself in a position to apply for a job that I do not believe I can do and it done it was just done right there so what you said don't so so I can't I can't speak for all men I can say that there's a lot of there's a lot of stupid men out there I can also say Dy knows me knows me well all knows me well like I have like like we can't like there there

are terrible women leaders and there are terrible men leaders I don't think I've ever asked somebody about uh about anything related to their family during a job interview because it's not relevant to me right I do think there are very rare instances where it's a relevant like there's a relevant concern to be had where if I want to hire somebody that is uh that needs to have a project that's done by Q3 that is clearly going to have a kid in the next 3 or 4 months like there are concern conerns that if we don't address as so as society and have an open dialogue around without demonizing the fact that we're having the conversation there are

things that will will continue to occur and that woman will continue to be discriminated against even though she got laid off and is 100% capable like we have to talk about it we have to figure out how we can have those dialoges didn't choose her couldn't ask question she'd be why didn't get the call back so I open dialogue is definitely a step forward and then it's just how do we what does that look like yeah it's interesting because I ask all those questions of men and women because I like to know who I'm hiring you know what do you do where do you come from what's your story what your experience has been all of that

what's your daily life like such that I can understand the person and um and so you know there's it's so complex right and there's a ton of fear to these conversations and questions and so this generation has to take you know the past generations and say you know we're not going to operate the way you all operate and be bogged down by legalities and help fight for open transparent conversations and and if we do that on top of being equals you know and that we're all raising children that we're all responsible for the children that we bring into this world together then you know I think we can make advancements this is complex this is interesting

which is cool it's so awesome that this community is embracing this topic at RSA my talk from pigtails to prom to cyber careers what about your daughters was crowdsource number two out of 35 right how how cool is that meaning people men white men you all want to talk about it uh which is awesome we meaning like I'm so thankful so the more we talk the more this is going to get better and uh and again please it's all the young girls out there spread the word there's cool careers in cyber and yes science is a part of it don't shy away from it but also understand that if it's not your thing you there's other things there's

leadership right there's business there's so much uh so we're out of time by 5 minutes but uh thank you all for coming and thank you ladies awesome awesome