As the former Vice President of Security & Advanced Applications within AT&T, I led a team of 1400+ employees globally. I currently have responsibility for the provisioning of AT&T’s strategic data services for all AT&T Fortune 1000 customers – small, medium business, and state/federal government. I began my career at Pacific Bell as an outside plant engineer. Throughout my career, I’ve supported large operational teams in successfully achieving strategic and financial objectives.

“Being a woman in my profession has been exciting as the telecommunication industry has transformed the way we connect with the world.” A generation ago, “cyberspace” was just a term from science fiction. Today, our entire way of life, from communication to commerce, fundamentally depends on the Internet. The cybersecurity issues that result, challenge everyone: from politicians wrestling with cybercrime to online freedom to business executives defending firms from once unimaginable threats and looking to make money off them. Most of all, cybersecurity issues affect us personally. We face new questions in everything from our rights and responsibilities as citizens of both the cyber and real-world to simply how we protect our families from a new type of danger. And yet, there is no issue that has grown so important, so quickly, touching so many, that remains so poorly understood.