5/5/21 | Entrepreneurship, Cybersecurity | Written By Naomi Haile

Time for a Change? How to Take Your Growth Into Your Own Hands
With Mari Galloway

“If I wanted to be successful and grow in the industry, I had to take matters into my own hands.” Mari Galloway

Mari is the master of her fate. As CEO and founding board member for the Women’s Society of Cyberjutsu (WSC) — one of the fastest growing non-profit communities in this space — Mari is propelling the next generation of women and girls in cybersecurity, helping them take the small, critical steps necessary to grow and protect their wealth along the way.

With over 11 years in Information and Technology, her experience has spanned across network design, security architecture, risk assessments, vulnerability, management and more.

This episode is for you if:

  • You want to make a career change but don’t know where to start
  • You’re struggling to pay off your debt
  • You’re interested in cybersecurity, but worry you don’t have the skills to pivot
  • Your greatest motivation is helping others to succeed

Looking for something specific?

[4:21] Through the eyes of a military brat

[5:00] Playing with legos, solving puzzles and studying architecture

[6:00] Mari hated her first job in tech — here’s why

[8:40] What drew Mari to tech in the first place

[11:30] Feeling unfulfilled? It’s time for a change

[13:50] Cybersecurity isn’t going anywhere (and it needs you)

[15:00] The Women’s Society of Cyberjutsu (WSC)

[17:30] Unconventional career paths to cybersecurity

[21:00] How Mari nurtures relationships throughout her career

[27:00] Mari’s “why”

[34:00] Mari’s journey to financial empowerment

This episode is brought to you in collaboration with Invest Ottawa. We teamed up to produce this special series in celebration of women leading in Ottawa. Invest Ottawa supports business owners and entrepreneurs through services and programs and recently opened applications for SheBoot, a six-week investment-ready Bootcamp. Visit investottawa.ca/SheBoot to learn more.

Psst — Mari shared some great resources to help you clean up your credit, cultivate a beginner’s mind, nurture relationships and show up for yourself. Check them out below, with links you can access right away.

Naomi: I’d love to hear your origin story.

Mari: I’m a military brat. My mom was in the Air Force. Everyone in my family was in the military. It was assumed that I would join too, but I wanted to go to college. I grew up around diverse folks – white, Black, Asian, Hispanic – from around the world. I got a good education and traveled, graduating high school in Italy.

When I started in tech, I was an architecture student. I wanted to design cities. I got into cyber because when I got married and moved to Georgia, the school I wanted to go to didn’t have an architecture program. So I fell back to my second degree of computer information systems.

I fell into my first job, too. Mom was working for Accenture, they were looking for folks and I just finished school. I got the job, but I hated it. I wanted to build things and rip cables and I couldn’t. If I wanted to be successful and grow in the industry, I had to take matters into my own hands.

Naomi: What did you think tech would be like?

Mari: I had no clue when I got in. In the States they have the 8570, which are certifications you need for certain work in tech. I got my CCNA and my security plus quickly. Then I met Joe McRae, from the Northern Virginia DC area, who was teaching an ethical hacking class across the hall. He came in and showed us router configurations on the internet.

I said, “Hold up. I work on those. Why is that information in plain text on the internet for everybody to see? And how did you find it?” That made me want to do security, because I can really help people versus just installing switches and routers. That helped me stick around, to get what I can from the company. I was there for a year and a half, and then I moved to North Carolina and got a job doing security.

Naomi: What’s it like going from state to state to grow in your career?

Mari: It’s difficult. I got lucky that my husband was in the army, so when he moved, I could move. The move to Vegas was difficult. If you plan to move and take furniture you need to have a plan because it can cost upwards of 10 grand to get across the country. The great thing about the military is that they move you.

I encourage anybody who is not fulfilled with their career to go someplace else. Because you never know how a change in environment, culture or climate can significantly impact how you work.

Naomi: By 2027, the global cybersecurity market will reach about $276 billion. What do you think of the industry as a whole? What resources are available for people who want to enter the space?

Mari: COVID threw a wrench in everything. Last year, I was working for a casino. We were trying to get work from home for months before COVID. And then it happened. I think they’ve gotten a hold of it now, but for the better part of 2020 companies struggled. Work from home is the way of the future.

There’s not enough skilled talent in security. Cyberjutsu is working on that. Organizations are afraid to take a chance on folks that don’t have all the skills upfront, because they have to train them – they’re worried that if they leave, they’ve lost money.

Cybersecurity is a growing, amazing field. If you like to solve puzzles, figure out challenges and play – we do a lot of gaming in the industry – it’s great. The founder of Cyberjutsu, Lisa, just wanted to learn. That’s how the organization started. I failed CISSP. Then somebody recommended them to me.

We bring awareness to cybersecurity as a career field for women, and give them hands-on training, so they can gain the skills to enter, grow and stay in the industry. We provide them with mentors, study groups, boot camps, conferences – you don’t want to feel alone. When I got my first job, the one I wanted to quit, I was the only female, and I was only the only minority. I had no clue what I was getting myself into. That was more than 11 years ago. Look at where we are now.

There’s many more opportunities for people to get educated for free or at a really low cost. In Northern Virginia, we just launched the Virginia Cyber Skills Academy to train people that were affected by COVID to reskill or upskill to get a job. If they work in hospitality, or finance, or the restaurant industry, we’ll train them up and get them a job that’s giving them more money than what they were making before. In cyber or tech, it’s about the community.

Naomi: What are some unconventional career paths you’ve seen in the community?

Mari: Some of our volunteer leads come from accounting. My good friend @infosecsherpa was a librarian. She has the knowledge to research and open-source intelligence. We’ve had dancers. Most folks in this industry have an artistic bone in them. Educators know how to take the concepts of cyber and teach it to someone else. A guy I talked to this week is in anthropology, and could go into digital forensics, and work with artifacts.

It doesn’t matter what industry you’re in. If you have the aptitude, passion and time to learn something new, you can be super successful.

Naomi: How have you approached nurturing connections with people in this space?

Mari: Lots of wine. Happy hours. You don’t have to drink to go. Building relationships can be difficult, so you have to be in an environment that’s relaxed.

Meetup is a great place to find people. People think you have to have a mentor or build relationships only in tech and cyberspace. That’s not true. Build outside because if you decide to leave your job, you can talk to your friends someplace else and say, “Hey, I’m looking for a new position.” LinkedIn is another great place.

Naomi: What’s been your approach to skill building?

Mari: Your journey is your journey. I started down the certification path because I knew I wasn’t gonna stay at that job forever, and I wanted a more in-depth understanding of the tools I was working on. There wasn’t a lot of free stuff back then. Coursera and Udemy weren’t a thing. You got to have a goal. What do you want to do when you get in there?

A friend of mine, Vicki, has this acronym called PIVOT. Plan. Then take an inventory of your skills. Doesn’t matter if they’re cybersecurity related or not. NIST has a great website where you can type in your skills and see what roles come up, and the type of experience and education you need.

I want to go into management, but I really want to do this technical stuff. Take it in small chunks at a time. You don’t have to conquer the world tomorrow. At Cyberjutsu we keep all our previous training recordings on our website. SAM has a ton of free SAM summits before their training courses. CES is another good one. Network with the people in these groups.

If you want to become a pen tester, you can take that route with the EC-Council. Even if you don’t get the certification, studying is helpful, because if you’re interviewing for jobs the information is fresh and you can explain what you’re trying to get to.

Figure out what skills you want to have. I want to be a Chief Security Officer, so I know I need additional skills to get them. I’ve been volunteering, public speaking, running other groups. Once you’re in, it’s easier to move around.

Naomi: What is your why? What motivates you?

Mari: I got into the industry because I needed a job. I wanted to learn, make money and grow. But when I found the nonprofit and saw the impact that it was making on people, I was like, “Whoa, this is powerful.”

I’ve always been a philanthropist. Trust me, there’s days where I’m like, “you know what, I’m out.” And then I’ll get an email from somebody that said, “Oh, my God, I listened to blah, blah, blah, or I was in your study group, and I got the new job, or I passed my certification test.” Folks that are super excited about their success, and come to us and say “you guys helped me do this.” That’s why I do this.

Naomi: What are the best investments you made in yourself?

Mari: Slowing down. I used to work on weekends, all hours of the night, and I don’t do that anymore. I can sleep a bit longer, I can enjoy artsy stuff, and it’s not monetary, right? In the grand scheme of things, you only have one life, and I don’t want to spend my entire life working.

I’m trying to retire soon, so I can live on the islands and work because I want to, not because I have to. I’m not going to get to this point if I’m constantly working like a crazy horse. I may get sick. FYI, you can tell your boss that you need a mental health day.

Naomi: What conversations have you had about financial empowerment?

Mari: I have student loan debt. I didn’t grow up knowing the ins and outs of finance. When I got to college, I got a credit card – where you sign up and get a free t-shirt. I had like eight of those. At 18 I had no clue what that meant.

I spent the better half of my time trying to clean up my credit. And then I got married, and I was like, “hold up. We don’t have any money ever. What is going on?”

It didn’t click that I was frivolously spending money on dumb stuff that I didn’t need. In 2019 I saw somebody on Facebook, The Budgetnista. She said she paid off $77,000 in student loans. I started following her and then I found the Budget Mom.

I never had a budget. I sat down and wrote out everything we were paying for. We were going out and shopping for clothes that we don’t wear. I was tired of the student loan debt, and I can’t retire with this stuff. Now that I have money, it’s great. However, I need to focus on what I do with that money a bit more.

We have conversations like this with our friends. When you make six figures, you’re not spending it correctly. We just finished our estate planning with the lawyers to do our trusts because we felt that was important. We don’t have kids together, he’s got a daughter, and we didn’t want the state to have all of our stuff. If we die tomorrow, we want our family to have that.

Those conversations aren’t had as kids, they’re barely had as adults. Most people in the Black community, in the Hispanic community, they don’t know about that stuff, because it’s not taught. That’s why I started writing about finance and money. If you’re a new cyber professional, and you were making $30,000 yesterday, now you’re making $90,000, you need to know how to manage that. Otherwise, you’re going to be broke.

Naomi: What’s one thing happening in your industry that you have your eye on?

Mari: The cloud. Moving your systems and operations into the cloud has been around for forever. But it’s booming now because we work from home. We need folks that understand how the cloud works, how to operate in the cloud and to provision and secure that space. There’s so much more to come from that area.

Another thing is crypto. That thing is booming. I don’t know what happened. All of these banks are starting to get behind it, and all these different coins are coming out with celebrities behind them, and I wish I had got into it back then. Not necessarily Bitcoin, but blockchain technology in general is going to grow. I’m excited to see how it evolves and how we can incorporate that into more regular operations.

Naomi: I’m not even in this space, and you have me inspired to come on.

Mari: Join us, we need you! We need all of you to fill these roles. All of you.

This episode is brought to you in collaboration with Invest Ottawa. We teamed up to produce this special series in celebration of women leading in Ottawa. Invest Ottawa supports business owners and entrepreneurs through services and programs, and recently opened applications for SheBoot, a six-week investment ready bootcamp. Visit investottawa.ca/SheBoot to learn more.

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When we use the term ‘women’, we are referring to all individuals who identify as women. This includes women of colour, transgender women and women who are gender non-conforming who have historically and systemically been excluded from mainstream women’s programming and opportunities. We are making a concerted effort to create a culture of belonging and to prioritize equity.

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About the Host

Naomi Haile

An intrapreneur, consultant, and interviewer.

Naomi Haile is curious about people, their paths and what drives them. In 2017, she launched the Power of Why Podcast. Her guests have taken the non-linear path in business, venture capital and other creative professions to share their story. Each episode explores people’s philosophy on life and work.

As we all navigate our lives and careers, Naomi hopes that everyone she connects with – guests and listeners – can shape products, companies, and communities of impact.

Naomi is a consultant at QuakeLab. She is starting graduate school at Columbia University.