16 Female Infosec & Cybersecurity Executives To Watch
Get inspired by these privacy and information security experts who are leading Fortune 100 companies, running health and non-profits, and impacting the field of infosec in 2019.
Dr. Alissa Abdullah, Chief InfoSec Officer, Xerox
Dr. Alissa Abdullah is Xerox’s Chief Information Security Officer. Prior to Xerox, she was Chief Information Security Officer at Stryker. She served as Deputy Chief Information Officer for the White House Executive Office of the President during the Obama administration. She started her career as a Mathematician for an Intelligence Agency — a certified cryptologic engineer at the U.S. Department of Defense. Check out her TechRepublic interview about security innovation.
Anne Marie Zettlemoyer, Vice President of Security Engineering, Mastercard
Anne Marie Zettlemoyer is Mastercard’s Vice President of Security Engineering. She was Director of Information Security Architecture and Engineering at Freddie Mac, Director of Information Security Analytics at Capital One, Director of Business Analytics at FireEye, Senior Consultant at Deloitte, Special Advisor for U.S. Secret Service, and Principal Strategy Analyst for DTE Energy. Follow her on Twitter at @solvingcyber. Listen to her interview on “Humans of InfoSec”.
Arlin Pedrick, Chief Security Officer, Accenture
Arlin Pedrick is Accenture’s Chief Security Officer. She was at Disney as Director of Global Intelligence & Threat Analysis, and Director of Global Security at Walmart, and held various positions in the U.S. Government for 32 years.
Coleen Coolidge, Chief InfoSec Officer, Segment
Coleen Coolidge is Segment’s Chief Information Security Officer, having built the Security, GRC and IT org from scratch at the startup. She was Twilio’s Head of Security and Core Logic’s Director of InfoSec. Earlier in her career, she was at First American Title as an Infosec Project Coordinator, at New Century Financial as an InfoSec Specialist/Engineer, and a Tech Writer. Follow her on Twitter at @coleencoolidge. Check out her security talks on YouTube here.
Flora Garcia, Global Chief Privacy Officer & Security Attorney, McAfee
Flora Garcia is McAfee’s Global Chief Privacy Officer, Privacy & Security Attorney. She discovered privacy law in law school when she read the case of Bodil Lindqvist, a Swedish woman who was the first person charged with violating the EU Privacy Directive. Flora is a graduate of the evening program at Fordham Law School,and Duke University, where she majored in computer science and economics.
Jacki Monson, Chief InfoSec Officer, Sutter Health
Jacki Monson is Sutter Health’s Chief Privacy and Information Security Officer, where she’s been for six years at the nonprofit health network. She was Mayo Clinic’s Chief Privacy Officer, and worked in compliance for healthcare companies. She began her career with her JD in health law and healthcare compliance. Her mom worked at a hospital for 43 years! Follow her on Twitter at @jackimonson. Check out her interview with American Healthcare Leader.
Lakshmi Hanspal, Global Chief InfoSec Officer, Box
Lakshmi Hanspal is Box’s Global Chief Information Security Officer. She advises Colbalt.io, CipherCloud and HMG Strategy. Prior to Box, she was SAP Ariba’s Chief Security Officer, and a senior leader in information security and risk management at PayPal. She was Bank of America’s Chief Information Security Strategist and Leader for the mortgage line of business, and began her career at Novell as a Senior Security Architect. Follow her on Twitter at @LakshmiHanspal.
Maria Shaw, Chief InfoSec Officer, Varian Medical
Maria Shaw is Varian Medical System’s Chief Information Security Officer. Prior to Varian, Maria worked at McKesson, where she was a Vice President of IT Risk Management & Compliance for over a decade. She led the information security and risk professionals across McKesson’s distributed business units, as well as the enterprise IT risk program (HIPPA, PCI, training, IT Vendor Assurance). She began her career as a Senior Manager at Deloitte.
Mary Prabha Ng, Chief Security Officer, AXA
Mary Prabha Ng is AXA Equitable’s Chief Security Officer. She’s been at AXA for over 7 years. Previously, Mary worked as Vice President of Risk at financial firms and banks. She started her career in security as a computer engineer for the Department of Defense’s Undersea Warfare Center where she led several multi-million dollar government projects through various states of project development.
Mary Welsh, Chief Security Officer, UnitedHealth
Mary Welsh is UnitedHealth Group’s Chief Security Officer. She worked at St. Jude Medical in Minnesota for over 8 years, leading security and strategic projects. Prior to that, Mary spent 9 years working for the U.S. government, from domestic assignments in Washington, D.C., to residing overseas in Europe and Asia on national security issues. She began her career at Arthritis Foundation working as Director of Health Education. Check out this 2019 Business Journal profile.
Noopur Davis, Chief Product & InfoSec Officer, Comcast
Noopur Davis is Comcast’s Chief Product & Information Security Officer. She was Vice President of Global Quality at Intel for over 4 years. Prior to Intel, she spent 11 years at Carnegie Mellon University supporting the Software Engineering Process Management program. She worked at Davis Systems as Principal for over 6 years, and began her career at Intergraph as a Director of Engineering. Follow her on Twitter at @NoopurDavis.
Parisa Tabirz, Senior Director of Engineering — Chrome (Security & Privacy), Google
Parisa Tabirz is Google’s Senior Engineering Director, responsible for the security and privacy of the Chrome browser. At Google, Parisa’s business card has read “Security Princess”, and she’s been promoted several times since joining the company over 12 years ago. She began her career as a security intern at Google after being inspired to pursue infosec from a campus club at University of Illinois at Urbana-Champagne. Follow her on Twitter at @laparisa.
Reeny Sondhi, Chief Security Officer, Autodesk
Reeny Sondhi is Autodesk’s Chief Security Officer. Prior to Autodesk, she spent a decade at EMC, where she co-authored SAFEcode Security Engineering Training — A Framework for Corporate Training Programs on the Principles of Secure Software Development. She spent a decade working in product before moving into information security where she has been for building enterprise scale security programs. Follow her on Twitter at @reenysondhi. Watch her video at Autodesk.
Sherri Davidoff, Chief Executive Officer, LMG Security
Sherri Davidoff is LMG Security’s CEO. Her infosec consulting and research firm specializes in network penetration testing, digital forensics, social engineering testing and web application assessments. Sherri co-authored Network Forensics: Tracking Hackers through Cyberspace . She studied computer science and electrical engineering at MIT. Follow her on Twitter at @sherridavidoff. Check out “the hacker mom big companies hire for cybersecurity”.
Tarah Wheeler, CyberSecurity Policy Fellow, New America
Tarah Wheeler is New America’s Cybersecurity Policy Fellow, where she is leading a international cybersecurity capacity building project. Tarah speaks frequently on cybersecurity, and was the lead author of Women in Tech: Take Your Career to the Next Level with Practical Advice and Inspiring Stories. She has been consulting on enterprise infosec thru Red Queen Technologies for over 17 years. Follow her on Twitter at @tarah. Check out her article in Foreign Policy on cyberwarfare.
Window Snyder, Chief Security Officer, Square
Window Snyder is Square’s Chief Security Officer. She is a security industry veteran and former Chief Security Officer at Intel, Fastly, and Mozilla. She spent 5 years at Apple working on security and privacy strategy. Window was a founding team member at Matasano, a security company, acquired by NCC Group, and co-authored Threat Modeling, a manual for security architecture analysis. Follow her on Twitter at @window. Check out her conference talks on YouTube here.
Raising Up The Next Generation of Women In Security Engineering
Girl Scouts offer 9 cybersecurity badges for girls learn about the inner workings of computer technology and cybersecurity, applying concepts of safety and protection to the technology used. Sponsored by Palo Alto Networks, the cybersecurity badges activities range from decrypting and encrypting messages, to learning proper protection methods for devices, to exploring real-world hacking scenarios every day.
Women in Security and Privacy is a 501(c)3 group creating pathways for folks to get into the field. OWASP has a lot of in depth knowledge and the “Top 10 list”, suggests Salesforce Senior Application Security Engineer Aisling Dempsey. Books to read include The Web Application Hacker’s Handbook and The Tangled Web — Add a copy of each in your library, or as a coffee table book! Conferences include The Diana Initiative (August 9–10, 2019 in LV).
What are some resources we can add to this page for folks who want to get into cybersecurity as a career? Let us a note in the comments, or tweet @GirlGeekX and share — thank you!
