I got into cyber through…the simple fact of being born in the late 90’s. There’s a generational gap both above and below for base level technical competency, and I’m lucky to have grown up on the era I did – with cheap computers, cd-rom games, using html and css on my blog instead of pre-made themes, and more email spam than you could shake a stick at.

For me, a positive cyber mindset is…multifactor authentication and a password manager, shaken, with extra lime.

I would tell my younger self…Buy Nvidia. Eat more fruit and veg. People, almost exclusively other women, are going to care that you’re a girl in a field “not meant for you,” or “hostile to women,” and they will want you to “carve out the space” or “paint it pink” and “be a pioneer.” They may tell you that you have to work twice as hard for half of the recognition. None of this is necessary, or true. We live in the 21st century. No one with actual skill or even just interest in a field is going to care that you are a girl if you also have skills or interest. Walk into every room smiling and ready to learn and don’t imagine roadblocks – or even speed bumps – where there are none.

The quote I live by is…“Failure is not an Option.” – Gene Krantz is attributed this quote, though he never actually said it out loud – he just lived and worked by it, and it was so imbued into every action he took, that as the Flight Director at NASA, there was never a thought he’d let his Apollo 13 crew down.

Something few people know about me is…My mother’s maiden name is Mentir; The make and model of my first car was a Jeep Cherokee; I was born in Hollywood, TX; and I hate the security theater of “security” questions. Oh wait, that last fact is well known.

What I thought I wanted to be when I grew up was…a park ranger. Turns out the hat and boots are compulsory, however, and I wasn’t willing to give up my Teva sandals so here I am instead. Only you can prevent server rack fires!

My recommended read is…Bloomberg Businessweek. The economy, trade, and politics have a lot more impact on the tech world than most people consider, and while you can get the rest of the news delivered to you with a tech lens, you’ll be a better leader, or at least conversationalist, if you learn to interpret the cyber effects of the news cycle for yourself.

The experience that helped me in my career was…taking a career gap year to teach and travel in Korea. I learned to soothe, interpret, and work with customers, engineers, Mac users, and even the beeps and whirs of distressed printers from working with ESL kindergarten classes and exhausted Korean teenagers preparing for national exams.