My Career Story

I started coding at 17 years old, and it was love at first sight.

I got great marks in all of my classes in high school, but loved computer science because in every class, I could “make something out of nothing”. Computer science runs deep in my family as almost all of my aunts and uncles are computer scientists, and my cousins are engineers, scientists and programmers. When I announced that I wanted to go to college for computer science my family responded with “what else would you take?” It wasn’t until years after working in tech that I realized that this is not an experience that most young women share.

I landed my first job in tech at age 18, and haven’t stopped since, despite several career setbacks, harassment and toxic work environments. I realize this might not seem very encouraging, but I have to tell you; things in tech have really improved. I’ve had the fortune of work experience in a variety of different situations both in computer science and in my other passion, music. Both careers taught me the value of collaborating with others, confronting differences, and taking constructive criticism well. It’s also given me the benefit of becoming more resilient when it comes to unpleasant situations or less-than-constructive comments made in the workplace.

For many years, I was a programmer by day and a musician at night. My successful music career allowed me to play in countless venues and bars around town, and it taught me many lessons that have since turned out to be very helpful in tech such as how to handle hecklers, how to capture the attention of a drunk and belligerent crowd, and what the best way to throw someone off a stage is. As you can imagine, there were challenges to being a young 20 something woman in a hardcore punk band.

Later in my career I met an ethical hacker who was also in a band and we became friends. He spent the next 1.5 years convincing me to join him as his apprentice and learn how to hack. I became fascinated with the security of software, I wanted to know everything. I joined my local OWASP chapter and almost immediately became a chapter leader, which helped me greatly since I had the chance to invite experts on topics that I was interested in to come speak for us. I also met my next 3 professional mentors though OWASP, who taught me even more. OWASP is an incredibly supportive and amazing community, I strongly recommend that everyone joins their local chapter...

At this point in my career I felt like I had a thirst for knowledge that could not be quenched. Although I managed to switch over from software development to a full time security job, I was frustrated that there was no budget for me to go on the types of advanced training that I was interested in. Then one of my professional mentors convinced me to speak at a conference, and they let me in FOR FREE.

For the next 2 years, I spoke at meetups and local events, taught myself as much as I could, and worked in application security helping developers make more secure apps. I loved it, but I kept striving for more. I wanted to do more modern types of application security, and I realized that the organizations I worked for were not very modern, and resistant to change. I found that my drive and ambition was difficult for certain managers, and it became a point of friction for me in the workplace.

Then I broke through from meetups into speaking at conferences. I honestly couldn’t believe it when I received the email saying that I had been accepted to speak at AppSec EU, the international OWASP conference. I discovered that all of my musical stage performance skills transferred over and with all of my practice at meetups that I had become good at public speaking. After AppSec EU I had invitations to speak all over the world. As conferences started sending me plane tickets, I took time off work and went off to learn for free. I realized that a career shift was necessary. I knew that I had something to offer to the right employer, but I wasn’t quite sure what that would be... Then Microsoft reached out to me.

A Microsoft representative said that he had heard about me, and wanted to interview me for a “Developer Advocate” position. I had no idea at that point that “developer relations” was a job, and when he described what the job would be I said “I already do that, for free”. It took him about 20 minutes to convince me that he was not kidding, this was a really job, and he was actually from Microsoft. Before I knew it was travelling the planet, learning about cloud security, working with absolutely brilliant people and so much more. All the while I was getting paid to do it! Talk about a dream!

During my many years travelling and talking to the community, I learned a lot about my industry, both good and bad. I learned that software developers had a lot of aches and pains in regards to security that I had also felt when I was a developer, and especially during my work in incident response and AppSec. My goal in being a developer and cloud advocate was to help push the industry forward, and to help people create more secure software, everywhere. During this time I founded the #CyberMentoringMonday online initiative and the WoSEC (Women of Security) organization, released countless articles, videos and podcasts, and spoke regularly at security events. Although I definitely felt I was helping many people in my industry, I felt like I could do even more. I also felt the constant travel was extremely exciting, but also exhausting and perhaps not the most efficient way to help the most people. I wanted to figure out how to make a bigger difference, and ’scale’ myself in a more effective manner.

With that in mind, I started to devise a plan; focus my efforts in a more concise way in order to deliver more impact. Do fewer things, but do those things in a very big way. I decided to choose two big goals; to write a book and start my own company. And I decided I would just go for it, even if it was scary.

I realized at this point that I was going to have to leave Microsoft to pursue my new career goals. I met with many security specialists in the field, and decided to start my own training Academy: We Hack Purple! We have an online community, on-demand courses, and a podcast!

I am also in the process of writing my first book! It's an intro to AppSec, "Alice and Bob Learn Application Security", and I’m excited to share it with the community at large when it’s ready. Even though I am at the very beginning of both of these adventures, you better believe I plan to knock them out of the park!
** Book is available now at books stores world-wide.

If I can offer advice to you it is this: if you want it, go get it. Don’t let anyone tell you that you can’t reach greatness; you can, you just need to be prepared to work like you’ve never worked before. The Information Security industry needs all the help it can get, and we definitely need you. Yes you, the person reading this right now. Please join us, and help us make the world a better and more-secure place.

For this and more, check out my book, Alice and Bob Learn Application Security and my online training academy, We Hack Purple!