Empowering Women in Cybersecurity: Overcoming Challenges and Building Diversity with Lynn Dohm

This is Textron tv. Hi everyone, it's Alan Shimmel here on Textron tv. I'm excited to have our next guest back with us.

We don't talk to her enough, frankly, but her name is Lynn Dome. Lynn is the Executive Director of Women in Cybersecurity. Could call it we sis like we sisters.

That's W-I-C-Y-S though, but it's Women in Cybersecurity. Lynn, welcome back to Tech Shrunk tv. It's great to have you here.

Thanks so much. It feels good to be back. I, and I'm looking forward to the conversation.

Okay. Hey, Lynn. Um, you know, as I was talking to you before we started recording, it's great that you're the executive director, the ED over at Weist.

Give people though a little bit of sense of your journey, right. Of, you know, how did you become, how did you come to be the executive director here and, and you know, where, what, what it's been like for you. Sure.

I'd love to share that story. So I started with cyber working in cybersecurity workforce initiatives about 16 years ago. And how I got started with that very niche focused area was that I was working on an NSF funded grant.

It's called the Centers for System Security and Information Assurance. It was here, housed here in the Chicago Land area. And through that it was, uh, education workforce solutions.

There was a lot of, uh, training facilities and programming efforts and association with that. And through that process, I became really just zero in focused on how come there is the cybersecurity workforce shortage. You know, there's, there's so many unfilled roles within cybersecurity, but yet from what I'm seeing, the folks that are involved in cybersecurity are so hyper-focused.

They're so incredibly enthusiastic. They love what they do. They love problem solving and puzzles and, you know, going down the rabbit hole.

And they're just incredibly, um, focused and excited about the work that they do and the findings that they have being very mission focused. And so that's what led me to start building up resources to diversify the workforce and really tap into underrepresented and underserved groups in order to come into cybersecurity and help build that pipeline. And through that, it was a journey for myself to get more collaboration with other individuals in the space.

And I would join many different associations and various initiatives throughout the Chicago land area. And I came across the woman in cybersecurity organization, the organization, and I started working with them in a support capacity. But what was interesting, Alan, is that even though I myself was seeking this camaraderie and this network and this community, and I had a really hard time finding it when, when I was in the workforce, you know, 10, 10 years ago.

But when I started working with Wiis and to support capacity, it was right in front of me the entire time. But I didn't experience it myself until I went to my first WIIS conference as a consultant in 2018. And it was the first time when I was sitting at that TA table, at the keynote banquet hall that my network was formed and my community was found.

And I knew that this was a place where I really belonged and that my career was gonna advance because of it, which it certainly did. The following year and a half, I had so many more opportunities that came my way, and it was an incredible experience. But then in August of 2019, our founder, Dr.

Amber Rain Sarraj of Wiis, who was at Tennessee Tech University at the time, she sent me a short and sweet little message asking me if I would consider applying for the executive director role. And that's when I knew, my gosh, when else can I merge my passion and my career into one and serve in the executive director capacity for the organization they absolutely love and already know about and a part of. And then also to know that the founder believed in me and reached out to me for this role, seeing that vision was super important to me.

She believed in me before I might have even considered or believed in myself in that moment. And so, it's a great honor to be the executive director of an organization that transformed my life. And that each and every day, I, we continue to pay it forward.

Whether people are early in their career, mid-career, or those senior and executive professionals, you OIS isn't all about that early career building the pipeline. We're super involved into that retention and the career advancement and looking into the future and seeing how we could prepare our women in Nicholas for those senior roles. So there's lots of work that needs to be done, but that's how I got here.

What a great story. You know, you said something that kind of resonated with me. I, I think people don't realize, especially, look, I've didn't, I've been alive a long time, right?

And I've been working for a long time, and I've been lucky enough to found co-found several companies over those years, tech TRO of being the latest, obviously that's 10 years ago, more than 10 years ago. And, um, you don't realize as a mentor, as a, as a founder, as a person who's been there, done that, the influence and impact you could have on other people's career by giving them the vote of confidence, like you said, even before they believe they've got it in them. You see it in them, you know, and I, I've seen this over and over and over again.

You see that there's a diamond there. It just needs, it's in the rough, it needs to be polished up or just cut right. Or what have you.

Right. It needs a little bit of polish, but there's the, the, there's a diamond there, or, you know, a lot of, and, and unfortunately, I'm sorry to say this, it's a lot of times with women in tech and cybersecurity in particular, they don't have that self-confidence because they're not given the opportunity to, to project that self-confidence. They always feel, whether it's imposter syndrome or, or, or male colleagues saying things or just the attitude that they perceive.

Right? I'm married 35 years, one of the things my wife has taught me is don't tell me how I feel. Right.

And, and you can't tell them how they feel. Right? A woman, a woman, and it doesn't have they necessarily be a woman.

It could be any person. They feel, if they feel that they're not empowered, that people don't respect them, that people don't think they can lead or excel. It affects their whole aura, their whole thing.

And as a leader, if you can instill that confidence in people by saying, yes, I know you can. Yes, I think you can. You've got it in you.

I I know you can, it that helps. It helps a lot. It helps a lot.

Yeah. People need that. Yeah.

And Wiis has many different programming efforts. Uh, we have so many. org, you'll see we have program after program that's constantly rolling out for, for individuals no matter where they're at in their career, getting ready for their next growth and their next advancement.

But one of our signature programs is their mentor mentee program. And it's important to build that network. And when we were researching what does that mentor mentee program look like for the organization, we realized that individuals that have a mentor are five times more likely to get promoted.

And that's really powerful. But what we also realized is that individuals that are mentoring are six times more likely to get promoted. So our mentor mentee program has this curriculum to upskill anyone within their career, women in cybersecurity.

Um, but also it's there to also build that leadership capacity and that leadership skill set of mentoring for the mentors that join the program. So essentially, we're mentoring the mentors. We're putting together this network in the cohort, so as everyone grows and advances in their career, they could grow with that, that collective space already being provided for them.

But that's a really critical piece is, uh, covering those different types of topics in that mentoring program like leadership, executive presence, um, you know, the power of your presence, the presentation skill sets, the negotiation, how to give feedback, how to receive feedback. These are all building, you know, capacity building that are setting up individuals for success through the longevity of their career. Agreed.

I wanted, if we can, actually, before we do the Wiis website, what's the URL? It's wiis. org.

Perfect. Just wanted to get out there. Let, let's now pivot.

So September 1st this year was, again, international Women in Cybersecurity Day. I don't know who gets to pick those dates in all of these different ones, but September 1st was that day. And, you know, you guys highlighted some challenges facing all of us, not just women.

It fa we all as a community in cyber faced this, right? Mm-Hmm. When I first started doing cyber late 1990s, women were few and far between, quite frankly.

And we had already started, I have been told that originally it wasn't like that, that there were a lot more women in tech in general. But sometime in the eighties to nineties, that kind of flipped out. And by the time I got into cyber in the late nineties, it, they were few and far between, few and far between.

And then, you know, there was a big push made about it. And I'm going to guess probably sometime around 2010 in that range. Mm-Hmm.

Everyone started touting, oh, what do you mean? We're up to 20% and growing of women in cybersecurity. And everyone was like, wow, we're, we're really making strides.

That's great. And we're gonna stop having booth babes at RSA and well, not a blackout 'cause it's in Vegas, but you know, women are moving ahead here. Right.

But we, we've plate it, it seems that we've plateaued. Yep. So that, that's problem number one.

I'd like you to, to talk about how do we break through that plateau and, and keep that number, I mean, 50% of the population thereabouts women, why shouldn't we have damn near 50% of women in, of the people in cybersecurity? Right. 8 million unfilled cybersecurity roles globally.

And so that is Mm-Hmm. 8 million. And so we have this workforce shortage and we have 51% of the population that aren't gaining the accessibility or opportunity really.

You know, actually knowing cybersecurity has done a really good job of making it very confusing pathway to even get into, you know, if you wanna become a teacher, you have a very clear, uh, career pathway. But with cybersecurity, there's so many different entry points. So it could be very confusing.

So if you're not introduced to it or if you don't have a clear pathway, and if you see this predominantly male industry, uh, you really don't see, and not many women in it, is, you're not seeing yourself. And it's hard to be, which you cannot see. And so we amplify that message.

Well, when we're looking at where's progress gonna be made in the workforce, Wiis isn't only about building a community and a network. However, that's very important. And we're also about training in what is needed for our Wiis members.

Because we have over 10,600 members in with representation in 99 countries. And then in addition to that, we have 71 professional affiliates, which are mini Weiss organizations, and then the 304 student chapters. So each and every day we have hundreds and thousands of individuals that we're reaching, but hundreds and thousands that we continue to serve.

So we have to ensure that we're, we're making clear decisions on how we're, we're leading as an organization. But when you peel back the layers, we have to look at our mission, uh, the recruit retain in advance, and we have to look at that retention piece. 'cause we could recruit all we want and we do it very, very well.

And we could, and so do other nonprofits. They recruit into cybersecurity well, but if we can't retain then and can't advance more women into leadership roles, then there is always gonna be perpetuating the problem. And so last year we put together our time and resources on really looking at what are the pain points and what, so we could be very intentional as a nonprofit, how are we gonna build out programs that overcome those challenges?

And that's when we partnered with Elyria Research and we put together the state of inclusion benchmark report. So we did indeed find that women are at a glass ceiling at around six to 10 years within their career. Yeah.

So what do you do if there's a glass ceiling at six to 10 years within your career? I'm sure you could think back, Alan, and, and you could consider, wow, what would that feel like if I was at a cap at six to 10 years within my career, that would feel very stifling and not a place where you really belong. And when you see your colleagues get promoted and you're not getting the stretch assignments, and our data has shown that women in cybersecurity are five times more likely to have experiences of exclusion come from their direct managers compared to men in the industry.

When you're having that exclusionary activity and your direct manager, his, his or her, uh, or they, they're, uh, uh, uh, career advancement for you tends to start to diminish. You start getting bored. And what do you do when you're bored?

You either step out of that position or you step outta that career altogether. So until we really look at what does the state of inclusion look like for women in cybersecurity? And from that point, diversity will expand.

That's when progress is made. And that's why we've invested so much time as a nonprofit to do these resources, share 'em with our over 60 employer partners that invest in us so we can invest in the most valuable and expensive asset in cybersecurity. And that's its people.

And they could have a good understanding of what type of initiative should they put in place to ensure that retention is being had, that they don't have the attrition, and that they're not only always cycling this problem. So that's where we're at. You mm-Hmm.

I, I've seen this an interesting sort of phenomen phenomenon about this. And it's not just cyber, it's all technical. Recently I've probably interviewed three to six executives, some senior executives in large public tech companies, women Mm-Hmm.

But their executives in product marketing, marketing, you know, analyst relations on, on that, let's call it the business side of the house, the non-technical side of the house. Mm-Hmm. And all of these women started their career careers as engineers, whether they be actual coding or maybe cybersecurity or, you know, technical roles.

And what happened to each of them was, for various reasons, for some, was because they did wanna start a family. And these technical roles didn't lend themselves to a good work life balance to raising children or having children and raising them, but others, it was sort of this glass ceiling where if they were gonna continue their career path o onward and upward, they had to make the move from the technical side of the house to the business side of the house, which meant giving up the technical skills that they were good at. And some of them went back to be, get an MBA or, you know, transition to business role from technical role because they didn't feel that they can continue onward and upward in their technical roles.

And that I, I think this is real. And, and it, it kind of bears out what you, what your, your study shows, right? That for many women, they, they hit that ceiling and, and they've gotta make a detour out of a technical role to a business role in order to continue their career climb.

Well, what's really interesting about that, and, and you'll see in 2020, uh, five, you'll see a different, uh, a trend with Weiss is we're gonna continue all our incredible programming efforts and, and add on more of it. But you're gonna see that we're really focusing on that make career space. And for, and there's gonna be two different tracks that we have to focus on.

One is the technical advancement track. And so women that wanna con continue to stay in the technical advancement that are interested in managing a team, team are interested in leadership, uh, career advancement through technical, um, advancement, and of course pay compensation associated with that and that technical side. And then you'll see a leadership, you know, make career preparing them for going into more senior and leadership roles, because that make career spaces really very, very critical.

Uh, especially as we're forward looking at what is the workforce gonna look like when some of the baby boomers start retiring, and how are we setting up Wiis members for success to advance in that space. And so you're gonna see that. But what's interesting is that we partnered with N 2K, which is news to knowledge.

They did a hard skills assessment on WSIs members according to the NICE framework on the cybersecurity practitioner level. So it was a test and they were able to, um, we did that for the WIIS members and we were super pleased and happy to report that Weiss members are absolutely killing it. And that, and, and, and this as the cybersecurity practitioner level.

As a matter of fact, we CIS members have outperformed all other participants in the N 2K hard skills assessment in all seven nice categories and outta 17 of the 20 specialty areas. But what's also interesting is that they, those that self-identified in more junior roles were actually performing at more mid to senior capabilities. So the skills is there, and we, we know this data in the reports.

We know ISE two does a very good job reporting on the data that 46% of women in cybersecurity have more advanced degrees compared to the 32% of men. We're well aware of that. But when it comes to the actual, um, and the cybersecurity practitioner level, we cis members and more junior roles are performing at more mid to senior.

So it's looking at what, you know, we have this big conversation skills-based hiring skills-based advancement and all of that. And for Wiis members, we're really not seeing that skills-based advancement because they are outperforming their peers. So there's all sorts of factors that are here to play.

We like that. We have data, we have an interesting story to tell. What we're gonna do with it is, you know, the future, the next five year strategy of the wiis org.

But there's lots of more things that others need to do. For one, employers and managers having a better understanding of the actual data that we've produced from the state of inclusion benchmark report and the N 2K, um, cyber talent study. And realizing that there are ways of advancement in careers.

It's not a lack of talent, it's a lack of opportunity. And for some reason in a lot of women's lives, they choose to pivot in some capacity at around that six to 10 year mark. And perhaps it's made because, you know, the value of their talent and the con the contribution is that they bring, aren't being elevated in a way that it should be, which causes a specific pivot to happen.

So there's lots of variables, lots of factors, but it's nice to have the data, nice to have the conversation. And it's, as we're looking forward, it helps us with our decision making as an organization, what are the needs of, of our community. Fantastic.

When we're over our 15 minutes, I gotta pull the plug on this one. We'll come the next time we talk though, if you remember. I want to talk about paid disparity too, because that's getting worse.

Not better. Um, is the data I've seen, but, we'll, that's for another conversation for now. Thank you for coming on as always.

And thank you keeping us informed about all the great things Wey is doing. There's still lots of work to be done though. Lin Dome Executive Director, Wey Women in Cybersecurity here on Tech Stroke tv, we're gonna take a break.

We'll be back.