Leadership Recognition Awards
2026
Awardee
Lauren Zabierek is a national security and cybersecurity leader working to change how the technology industry approaches security and software safety. At the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), she served as a Senior Advisor in the Cybersecurity Division and helped lead Secure by Design, a movement to shift responsibility for cybersecurity upstream and establish security as a core expectation of technology manufacturers. She helped build the coalition behind the effort and drive industry adoption, including the Secure by Design Pledge, which brought hundreds of technology companies together around concrete commitments to improve the security of their products.
Lauren is now co-founder of the Software Safety Institute, an independent public-interest nonprofit working to build the evidence, institutions, policy, and market accountability needed to make software safer by design.
Over more than two decades in national security, Lauren has served as a U.S. Air Force intelligence officer, counterterrorism analyst, technology executive, and leader at Harvard Kennedy School’s Belfer Center. A graduate of Harvard Kennedy School, her work increasingly asks a broader question: what if we defined national security not only by the threats we defend against, but by our ability to build systems that allow people and communities to survive, thrive, and remain resilient?