Career opportunities in cyber security continue to grow exponentially. Yet the field suffers from a widening skills gap whose filling requires diverse new perspectives. In particular, the necessity for diversity entails the integration of more non-technical expertise as well as different regional, gender, and cultural perspectives. The purpose of this panel discussion is to showcase the value of diversity in cybersecurity. We will hear from five trail-blazing women hailing from different corners of the globe and the field: government, NGOs, consulting, academia, and think tanks. Join us for an interactive discussion on how to enter and succeed in the field, while broadening its perspectives.

Speakers

Louise Marie Hurel

Research Fellow in the Cyber team at RUSI. Her research interests include incident response, cyber capacity building, cyber diplomacy and non-governmental actors’ engagement in cyber security. She is an advisory board member of the Global Forum of Cyber Expertise (GFCE), Carnegie Endowment’s Partnership for Countering Influence Operations’ (PCIO), and the Centre for Information Resilience (CIR). For more than half a decade, Louise Marie led Igarapé Institute’s Digital Security Programme, coordinating multiple efforts to connect national, regional and international cyber policy discussions. Her previous experience also includes consultancy for the United Nations on data and cyber security and research at the Centre for Technology and Society at Getulio Vargas Foundation (CTS-FGV) where she conducted projects on Internet governance, intelligence activities, defence and cyber security.

Elizabeth Kolade

Executive Director at Resilience Technologies, an organization that provides digital security solutions and services to civil society organizations in Nigeria, the Director of Membership of the Cyber Security Experts Association of Nigeria (CSEAN), and a PhD student at the University of Bristol and Bath Cybersecurity CDT (Centre for Doctoral Training). She is a Fellow of the Young African Leaders Initiative (YALI) and has been a part of several multi-stakeholder engagements on cyber security in and outside Africa. She was listed as one of the Top 50 Women in Cybersecurity in Africa in 2020. In 2021, she was named a Global Influencer in the IFSEC Global Awards under the “Security – One to Watch” Category and was soon after nominated for the 2021 Young CISO of the Year Awards. Elizabeth served as a member of the presidential committee, which reviewed and produced Nigeria’s National Cybersecurity Policy and Strategy (NCPS) 2021.

Alina Meyer

Independent consultant with over 20 years of experience in the area of human rights, gender, diversity and social inclusion. A former Canadian diplomat and development practitioner, she has consulted for clients including UK DFID, German GIZ, Australian DFAT, the UN, and a variety of NGOs. Prior to consulting, she worked for Global Affairs Canada as the Senior Policy Advisor on Women’s Rights and as a Gender Equality Specialist.

Dr Julia Slupska

Head of Policy, Research and Campaigns at Glitch, a UK charity ending online abuse and championing digital citizenship. Prior to joining Glitch, she completed a PhD in Cybersecurity at the Oxford Internet Institute at the University of Oxford. Her research focused on online safety in the context of intimate partner violence and coercive control. As a part of this research, she co-founded 're:configure', a feminist research collective which organised digital security workshops with groups like survivors of image-based sexual abuse, environmental activists, and migrant domestic workers. She is interested in how feminist theories and methods—such as participatory action research and the ethics of care—can improve cybersecurity. She also organises with No Tech for Tyrants, an organisation working to sever the links between higher education, violent technology, and hostile immigration environments.

There will also be a UK government representative.