Maril Vernon: 0:15

Welcome everyone to the very first episode of The Cyber Queens, where we are inspiring Gen-Z women and minorities, to help us close this gender and representation gap that we are experiencing in cyber. We are your hosts, The Cyber Queens. My name is Maril Vernon, also known as SheWhoHacks, and I am the resident pentester, red teamer, and general offensive security perspective on all of our topics. We also have...

Erika Eakins: 0:41

My name is Erika Eakins. I am a career salesperson, but I came into the cybersecurity space 12 years ago, became technical while I was a salesperson. I can answer questions on the sales and business side, all the way to the technical side. I do say I'm slightly technical, but my co-hosts here have told me I'm more than slightly technical.

Maril Vernon: 1:03

She's technically savvy. We're gonna give that to her. And our third Queen, last but not least. Miss Nathalie Baker.

Nathalie Baker: 1:10

Hi, I'm Nathalie Baker. I actually started off as a paralegal and transferred some skills and got into technical when I was in the military. And then I just decided I fell in love with security and I decided, I wanna be able to get in like doing the things that you're not supposed to do and then, but being allowed to do it, like I'm the one that's allowed to do it. That's what it appealed to me. So from there, I worked up from a Sys Admin all the way up through and became the SOC Manager now. I am all things blue team.

Maril Vernon: 1:38

Yes. Nathalie is a SOC Manager, also known as the security operations center manager, which is where most of the business's, alerts and investigations and security incidents happen. We are your Cyber Queens, and we've got a lineup of topics for you coming up this season first and foremost, because we are speaking to the Gen-Z demographic and not a lot of people know pretty much anything about cyber. What it entails, what it is, why they should do it. And they all think that we like to hide out in our parents' basements. We are here to rebrand cyber. We are here to rebrand, cyber to you as sexy and fun and innovative and approachable and successful. So that is the topic of today's episode. And to lead us into that, I wanna talk about how the idea of the podcast was born. I got brought in last, but apparently the idea for this podcast was created in the comments of a LinkedIn post.

Nathalie Baker: 2:32

Absolutely. It sure was. Actually post was very vague and it was just, we need more women in cyber and I was looking through comments and I came across Erika's comment and I was like, this is somebody else who's asking the same kind of questions. What are we doing about it? Saying we need more women in cyber is just whining that there aren't enough women, but why aren't women interested in this field is really what it came down to. And me and her went back and forth about how, like we needed reach down that next generation and pull them future of cyber. And Erika, go ahead, take away.

Erika Eakins: 3:10

Like Nathalie said, we started talking and her and I both realized we had the same passion and just apart, we weren't doing enough, we can reach out to organizations, stem schools, go to local, elementary schools, high schools, but it's not enough. And I see this all the time."We need more women here. We need more women. Why aren't we doing something about it?" Nathalie and I started talking, we started holding, Zoom calls, planning. She came to me and said, "Hey, I have another lady that, I would really love for you to meet," and thatwas Maril. And here we are today. We are not here just to say, we need more women in cyber and bash men. And we'll talk about that in our core values, which will be another episode, but we're here to actually do something about it, help you. We cannot guarantee job placement, education, or anything like that, but we are here to guide you, give you some advice, and to actually tell you that we are not nerds that sit with hoodies on, in a basement to hack, even though sometimes we probably do...

Maril Vernon: 4:13

I do have a hoodie. I do have a hacking hoodie. It's in the wash.

Nathalie Baker: 4:16

I love that for you, Maril.

Maril Vernon: 4:17

Hence the blazer. Yes. It is requisite hacker uniform that you own at least one hoodie that you've done midnight hacking in. No, I'm kidding. I got approached and I just loved the idea for this podcast. I was like, let's not just point out a problem. Let's actually identify a solution. What might we do? How can we get more women and honestly, minorities from other lifestyles, other ethnicities, other points of view into this field because the thing all three of us have in common is that we came into cyber as a secondary career or mid-career pivot point, or like Erika said, technical sales just became another aspect of what she does. And we're like kicking ourselves because damn if we had gotten started a long time ago, we could be, I'm pretty badass today, I won't lie, but I could have been so much better by today. And I'm like, we need to get women like before they're already married to a career before they're already miserable in the career that they have. I personally came from social media marketing just over three years ago. And not even three years, you can completely change your life around, learn a new industry, learn technical skills, which I did not have, and succeed in this field, which is one of the things I love about it the most. I think it's the most approachable, possibilities are endless field you can get into. And I always say anyone can do it because you can, but it isn't for everybody. It's not gonna be for everyone, but we did want to break some of these norms that women experience. Why do we go into other career fields? I remember when I was in high school, pretty much every girl I knew was going to be a teacher or a nurse and all the dudes were going into mechanical and electrical engineering and I'm like, "okay, that's outta my depth. I didn't really get along with that subject matter." But I'm like, "Fuck, is that all I can do? Is that it?" And I told my mom, I might be a lawyer and she goes, "don't be a lawyer. That's oversaturated field. You'll be a starving lawyer." I'm like "Well, fuck I'm screwed."

Nathalie Baker: 6:00

Here's the thing. I think most girls in high school, they look at life and they're like"what can I do to make a difference? If I choose to have kids, I might not have the ability to like, be working all the time. So what can I do to make a difference? Because I'm probably going to be a homemaker at some point, if I wanna have children." Because there was not work a remote workforce back in the day. So I think now that's why so many women went into these different career fields. Because when I was in high school, I was asking myself, "when I'm looking at my career field, what am I gonna do that's gonna make a difference in, in something else and be bigger than just myself?" I don't wanna be small. Play it big, kind of ordeal.

Erika Eakins: 6:39

And like Maril side, some of us are mid career changers, so I have always had a sales background. I didn't come into this industry at a young age. I was young, but I'm a little bit older. I wish I would've found this career before my late twenties, because I had kids really young. Right outta high school. Actually I dropped outta high school. That's why I dropped out. I had a child life got in the way. I went to school online and 10, 15 years ago, that was the startup of online colleges. And I sat there and I looked and I said "what can I do as a single mom?" Nursing was out the realm for me, but thinking back, even in the high school, it was okay. Stay at home, mom, nurse, teacher, maybe like a secretary. And I fell into that customer service/secretary because I had to, but as I got a little bit older and I got my business degrees, I was like, wow, I love sales, but I didn't start in sales, customer service, project management sales. And then I found the IT field in my late twenties and, it's been over 12 years now. If I would've found this in my early twenties, I would've been way better off financially, emotionally stability-wise, but you can make that time up. Even if you're early career mid-career, this is a career for anybody. I just know that Nathalie and I, as well as Maril, after we all got together, had a purpose. We want to. Gen-Z, Gen Alpha, a young age, and stem is great. They will, we didn't have stem when we were younger. Most we're all millennials, but it doesn't really sit there and say,"Hey, you could be a ethical hacker. You could be a sales guru. You could be a SOC analyst. Shit. You could just run the governance and risk, program at a company." You don't hear that. You just think that you're a nerd working with a hoodie on. And then you're really gonna make money as a nurse or like a, doctor.

Nathalie Baker: 8:32

See, here's my thing, unlike the two of you, I don't regret my first career because I think it makes me a stronger security professional for it because I can look at risk and compliance and know, "Hey, you have liability, you have legal liabilities here." I can know that, and I know how contracts are written, so I know what kind of documents need to be in place to be able to do pentesting testing and stuff like that. I think it does make me a stronger security professional because of it, which I think is so interesting, but I wish I wouldn't have spent as much time there building that and I would've moved on faster.

Maril Vernon: 9:10

I got sucked into that cycle. Erika talked about, for some reason, I thought, " we're women and apparently we're conditioned to believe the only things we can do well are like soft skill type things." And the most technical, or like honestly me type level job we can have is a nurse because nurses, honestly, y'all the unsung heroes. Y'all do a lot more work than physicians sometimes. And I tried that, believe it or not, I tried like everything. I went into sales, I went into marketing. I tried nursing, not for me. So I did all of those careers. I was told to try. And none of them really married with me. None of them challenged me enough. None of them not that nursing isn't challenging, it was too challenging that was too much a challenge. I was like Maril no get along with that, but like it's. Yeah, it just goes to show that. That's how we're conditioned. We're conditioned to believe that we have certain strengths as women. And we are gonna be mothers one day. So why not pick a career? You can just drop and pick up, like after your kids are of an acceptable age, because we're expected to work like we have no children and raise children like we have no job, but there's no way you can put children in daycare on a single income. And also now we're dependent on men for our income, which will never be a position we advocate you be in. So I was just like, you. I love my salary. I love my work. Everyone's like if the salary went away, I saw this on Twitter. If the salary went away in cyber, if they weren't paying you six figures would you still do the job? And I'm like, abso-fucking-lutely, I could not do anything else now. This is where, like my passion and my capability and lucrativeness all came together. Like I'm doing what I was meant to be doing for sure. And I just wish I'd found it sooner. It just goes to speak. What was our influence? What was our influence back then? Our teachers who are teachers. Probably had failed dreams. Teacher was probably their second career unless they were born to be teachers or her parents. A lot of us. And even still today, in a later episode, we have a Gen-Zer come on, who tells us that like her parents or who she looked to for how she should interpret the world, how much, healthy fear she should have, how much paranoia she's got, how much anxiety she's seen them experience and where she thought she could go in this world. It still comes down to our parents. And who are our parents? Ladies? Gen-X and Boomers. Yep. Gen X and Boomers who still hold the antiquated ideals that like the only people who belong in technical career fields are men..

Nathalie Baker: 11:12

And here's the thing is more Gen-Z have the millennial parents like the younger side of the millennial parents. So like they're starting to be, it's starting to get more progressive. So now they're looking to those younger, I want work life balance. I wanna work from home. I don't wanna be tied to an office chair all day. I wanna go for a walk every four hours or something. That's acceptable. Do it take your time to go for a walk cool down and do whatever you need to do. Now you're starting to see that shift. I think because the millennial influence is coming down to Gen-Z and now you're gonna see that people valuing their mental health like that same Gen-Zer told us that they value their mental health more. They value different things than what we ever knew to value. They value their worth. And that's amazing.

Maril Vernon: 11:58

I came to this industry cuz I was like, what do I want a new career? I want a freaking challenge. I want it to be different every day. I wanna use my creative problem solving. I need work that I love or I won't do it. What Gen-Z though is looking for because we chose to target them very effectively because we just don't wanna convince people to leave their jobs. And if you want to, we'll help you, but we wanna convince people who are still unmolded and fresh and have a fresh perspective. So Gen-Z is gonna say, I want, like you said, work life balance. I want good money. I want progressive companies. I want innovative projects. And when looking at that criteria, they're gonna say, "where can I get this?" It's not hospitals, it's not universities. It's not school districts. It's going to be tech companies. And these progressive forward thinking companies with these leaders who pioneer these initiatives and what to suck them in and what to get the good talent and the smart people. So they're gonna end up in tech companies anyway, I feel like.

Nathalie Baker: 12:47

But they don't just wanna suck them in. They wanna keep them too. Yes, because retention is everything. If you can retain Gen-Z, you are doing your job as an employer. So that's how, if you have a good group of Gen-Z, that's going to stay for a few years. Gen-Z they'll leave fast. They don't care. They are like, bye boy, bye. Get gone. I'm outta here. See you later.

Maril Vernon: 13:09

What's a two week notice you, you give two weeks, I just walk off a job. If I'm unhappy, I'm gone that day. Yeah, they don't give a flying. Fuck you guys. They'll just leave you high and try. They do not care.

Nathalie Baker: 13:19

But I find that legendary, like I, yeah, I can respect it so much. And I'm just like go do that go girl. Yes. Yes.

Maril Vernon: POV: 13:26

I'm gonna stay at my desk, but you blaze the path. I love you.

Erika Eakins: 13:29

I'm gonna stay here. Cause as millennials, like we talk about in a later episode is, we started some of that change. But as, at the same time that we were asking for change, we said, "oh yeah, okay. You want us to work a hundred hours a week? Yeah. You're paying me this salary. Okay, I'm gonna do five hats." That's not something that Gen-Z is gonna put up with. We're gonna say this several times in several episodes, if you are not leading those progressive initiatives and caring about what the Gen-Zers want in their lives and their views, you're not going to attract them or keep them. Because the Gen-Xers and the Boomers they're leaving the workforce. So that leaves the millennials and then the Gen-Zs are gonna be a huge percentage of the workforce. And then not to mention those guys, the Gen Alphas, which are coming after Gen-Z. So you as organizations have to be able to appeal to millennials. We just kinda let you walk all over us. We started to change, but then now we're like, "okay well still I'll work weekends. No problem."

Nathalie Baker: 14:30

I think it's so funny because the minute that Gen-Z came in, millennials were like, I, with you Gen-Z, let's do it together. Now we out-power the masses of those other generations. Now we are the workforce. And it's what we wanted all along was the norm. We didn't out-power them in numbers until now and now we're embracing it. And we're like, you better be keeping an open mind as somebody that manages Gen-Z. You have to keep an open mind as to what they want and ask them what they want. You don't have to know right off the gate. If you ask them, they're gonna tell you, even if you don't ask them, they're probably gonna tell you anyway. But if you ask them, that's gonna mean so much because you show that you cared about them enough to.

Maril Vernon: 15:17

And you know what? You can't fake it either. Like I knew a guy who hired a new kid, like right outta college. He's like, "They told me to try hire a junior position. I did. I can't relate to this guy. I can't even talk to him. I don't understand half the shit he's saying." You can't even fake relating to them if you're not, if your heart's not genuinely in it and they can tell, and like they have admitted, they will work themselves to death willingly. You don't have to do it. They'll do it themselves for a leader they believe in and love who loves and believes in them. But managing Gen-Z is an entire LinkedIn learning course. Now guys like so many people suck at this, that it's actually a skill you can cultivate on LinkedIn. And the more millennials get into management, like Nathalie said, we asked for small changes like innovation. We started to pioneer that change. And we kinda loosened the lid, but we let a lot of other shit go. But now that they're coming in and us plus them outnumber y'all, we're gonna get all the things we wanted. We're in junior and midlevel management positions. Now there's gonna be a tidal wave of change coming your way. And if you're not coming with us, you gonna drown.

Erika Eakins: 16:16

Well, and employers, you'll hear a Gen-Zer say what they look for when they go to look at a company it they have certain priorities and I cannot stress this enough. Gen-Z take notes. Employers, you need to get rid of the typical old white guy in your executive level team start promoting these younger managers or younger employees, because when you are looking for this Gen-Z to come into cyber, they care about that. They care about, D&I, they care about, what if there's transgender, do you accept that? Do you have bathrooms for them? Do you not look at them differently? These are all things that they have been born on. They don't see color, they don't see other, ethnicities. They see people. And if you can't keep up with that, and you're just sticking to the same old retreads in the cyber industry or in the tech industry, you're not gonna have these employees.. And then you're gonna have these same old people in the industry that got retreaded again, as your employees, because you can't attract the new talent and they've grown up on technology. So take notes, employers. Take notes, Gen-Z. Y'all need to figure it out because Gen-Z has arrived.

Maril Vernon: 17:28

And it can't be a one-off hire either. It can't be, "we've got Tom over there. He's our diversity hire, he's like an African American, we've got some diversity over here." No, th ey're gonna see right through that shit. Like for the first time they do not care simply what the job and the salary is. They care about the work-life balance. The maternity- and paternity-leave policies. They will look at the whole org from your senior C-level leadership all the way down to your technicians and say how much diversity and how much of people like me do I see? If not enough then I'm not going there. They're not willing to fight uphill battle every day. Like we were, they're not having it.

Nathalie Baker: 17:57

And because the millennials were playing the long game, we were playing the long game all along because we needed the numbers on our side. Once you promote those millennials into leadership, they already know what Gen-Z wants, because it's the same thing that they always wanted. They know what they need to implement. They know how they need to approach them to make it better.

Maril Vernon: 18:17

We got what we wanted. It just took a little longer.

Erika Eakins: 18:20

Gen-Z. Why cyber? Why cyber? Yeah. Okay. Now that we've hated on the industry a fair amount and we've identified the problem. We had to get that off our chest. Y'all we've been repressing these feels for a long time. And now that we finally have our own podcast, they come into light. What can we do about it? Why cyber? Why should you want to join us here? If this shit sucks so bad? No, it doesn't suck that bad. It's not that bad. Really. It's not, we just wanna tell you, we wanna tell you as females who work here, like despite some negative mindsets and some toxic leaders here and there, like overall cyber is a wonderful place to be.

Maril Vernon: 18:53

It's a great place to work. You get, honestly, from the single mom perspective. The unlimited earning income potential was the reason I targeted this industry. I was like, I wanna work a regular nine to five job. I couldn't do shift work as a nurse because I'm a single parent. I wanna make a lot of money doing it in that nine to five so that I can provide for my children and not just provide, but put them in dance class and put them in soccer and send them to prom, and give them that quality of life that they deserve. And I wanna love the work and I wanna use my skills to the best of my ability. And I wanna come in and kick ass and make a difference and go home feeling good about it. And tech was all those things. Cyber gives me all of that. You guys, and don't get attached to the idea you're gonna make the income levels that we make. We address this in a later episode five debunking salary expectations. It takes a minute, there's still a ladder to climb, but you start off at a much higher point at a much higher technological capability than you do previously. So just keep that in mind. What about you guys? What attracted you to cyber?

Erika Eakins: 19:50

As a single mom, honestly, they're earning potential from a salesperson perspective. You could come into this industry and really not know too much about cyber. They, want you to know a little bit, but you learn as you go. So I came in as a salesperson and. In the beginning of my career, like in my early twenties, I wanted to become a programmer. And then I went to the college like Devry University, which is now called Devry University. And I was like, "holy shit, I cannot do this like this." Cause I'm horrible at math. I just can't sit there in front of a computer. It deterred me away. I will tell you, there are gonna be things that deter you and we will talk about how you can get into cyber. In a later episode, you don't need a four year degree. You don't need this, all this crap. What attracted me, the earning potential, the ability to work from anywhere before 2020. I have worked from home since 2011. I have been working as a salesperson in cyber cause I've been in cyber my whole entire it career. So far. I worked from home. The ability to take time off when I want work from The Bahamas. If I want send my kids to dance class, like Maril said, but the other thing is. I actually am doing something that I love. I am so passionate about cybersecurity. I cannot tell you you're gonna hear this. If listen to more episodes, I love what I do and I get paid a boatload of money to do it. And I also have created meaningful relationships and friends that I will have forever Maril and Nathalie, we will be sisters for life. The other thing that I like. As much as we say, there's not diversity it's coming around. I am able to work with other people that are not just the good old boys club or the vice presidents, friends and families. It is such a rewarding career and you will always be employed because cyber's always needed. And there's what is it? Maril like 900,000 open jobs or 700,000 right now.

Maril Vernon: 21:49

Oh yeah, though. There's over 700,000 open jobs. And for every 100 jobs there is open. We only have 60 qualified cyber professionals to fill them. And that's, by the way, not even aligning niches and skills that's just saying you're a cyber professional. We count. Like for every 10 cloud architects, we need, we have eight devs, but we don't have cloud architects. There's a severe shortage. Y'all you will not want for a job.

Nathalie Baker: 22:10

Can I pipe in with why I chose cyber was I was getting so bored. I was hopping around. I literally had 15 different industries. I could have chosen to have a, like a career in. Because I was just so bored. Like I would learn something I'd master it and I'd get bored. And I love the idea that to be in cyber, be successful in cyber. You had to be a forever learner. You can never stop learning. And that's one of the main reasons I wanna come in this field. I job security, job stability. Was also a big one because I kept hopping around to different jobs, but I wanted to. I wanted to have knowledge that would always stay relevant and that I would always have to keep progressing with. I also wanted innovative places to work, like who doesn't wanna have Nerf gun arsenal at the work guys? Come on. I have one, like I might go to the office a couple days a week. I don't always go to the office. I have that work from home potential. But if I do go to the office a couple days a week, I have Nerf guns to play with. Like we have Nerf gun wars, randomly break out for five, 10 minutes, and then we get back to.

Maril Vernon: 23:16

Who doesn't want that. If I can't watch a weapon at my coworker, I literally don't even want it. We used to have these tacos, like we had this taco program at my insurance company that was like, oh, you can kudo someone with tacos. So I bought physical squeaky toy tacos, and I'd be like, "Hey Bob, good job, bro!"(Taco impacts) Weaponize that taco. Not to mention tech conferences are off the hook. If you've never partied with nerds, we partied 10 times harder than anyone else. Guaran-fricking-teed. DEFCON baby! I did. I almost didn't survive. You do get the interesting work. You do work for the progressive companies, the fun companies, the forward thinking companies, the one for whom, DEI and things like that are not simply initiatives that they're pioneering. It's something that they've built into their culture from the beginning. And, Someone like me, like I've worked in so many tech jobs now that like unlimited PTO and encourage me to take it and work life balance isn no longer an ask." I'm sorry. I have to leave to go pick up my kid. She has a fever. I'm sorry. I have to have the dentist today." It's just assumed that this is okay."Maril if your work is getting done, leave it, pick it up tomorrow. Nothing here is so crucial that we're gonna dock you for leaving early." There's a lot of grace and understanding that I'm a single mom and that means the world to me because I'm not stressed out that I'm gonna lose my for simply being the caretaker that I am.

Nathalie Baker: 24:33

I bet that you're like, you appreciate that from your employer. And so you work harder for that employer for it

Maril Vernon: 24:40

So much. Chris, Sasser, and Dave, I love you guys. I tell everyone how much I love you guys. Anyway, and Andy, I love you too. You're my OG love and Bert and Heather, all of them I've had great managers, but anyway so tying it full circle, and this is gonna be a bit of longer episode we're not gonna go 30. We're gonna go almost 40, audience. If you wanna bail out now. We're gonna bring it full circle. So Gen-Z, why is this applicable to you? Why is this relevant to you and why should you want to join us here? I just gotta say, I wanna dispel something right off the bat. Everyone likes to harp on me cuz my favorite hashtag on Twitter is do I look like a hacker? And that was from a little campaign a few years ago that someone got off the ground actually a different company. Do we look like hackers to post a picture of yourself and say, do I look like a hacker? Cuz a hacker can look like anybody. And a hacker is a function of offensive security. Ethical hacking is legal. I'm not wanted by the FBI. I think, I hope, I promise. And it's just goes to show that we're not all socially awkward. A lot of us are socially awkward, but we're not all just people who can't get along with other humans. And we don't hide in basements and we get an adequate amount of vitamin D. We know how to contour our cheekbones, but you can look, however you wanna look like a lot of women have the interest in science and tech ridiculed out of them. And it's you can't be a girly. You can't be a fashionista and work in tech and it's yes, you can do anything. You can look however you want. You can look like me. You can look like someone else. I still play D&D I still play video games.

Erika Eakins: 25:58

Most of the time I have purple hair. And that is acceptable.

Maril Vernon: 26:00

You can have purple hair.

Nathalie Baker: 26:02

I've had pink. I've blue hair. And you know what companies are starting to love the fun colors more and more because it's trending.

Maril Vernon: 26:11

Apparently I need a fun color. I need to hop on this train, but yes you do. My point is you can come as you are and be anything you want to be. And no, one's gonna point out the differences. No, one's gonna be like, wow. Like,"Maril didn't show up in a tech t-shirt in jeans day. She's obviously crying for attention." This is just how I am. And people know it, this is my brand. So come here. Don't be afraid to be boldly who you are. And we know you're not, we know you guys are all very outspoken but we think you would love it here because, and I, we will each take a point. I'm gonna address the security and stability. You guys watched your parents struggle with reception. You guys watched your parents struggle with a recession. You guys watched them not know, if they were gonna live paycheck to paycheck, whether when they were gonna get promoted work for years without getting promoted and you guys think this is the norm, this is not the norm, like security. This isn't going anywhere. Tech isn't going anywhere. Privacy isn't going anywhere. There's more and more breaches. And every time the bad actors get a little bit. We get a little bit better and then they get a little bit better. And because of that, my job is literally never going to go away. You will always have a job. Your skills will always be applicable. And again, if you're willing to continuously learn like the boomers and gen Xers downfall, when we showed up was that they were like, I'm done learning now. I'm not learning anything new. I'm not learning the cloud. I'm not learning container. I'm freaking done. And we came in and we were like I will learn that thing and I'll learn it in a week.

Nathalie Baker: 27:25

It's because they were overworked.

Maril Vernon: 27:27

They were overworked. You guys are burned out. We love you. We love everybody, it just goes to show that like you guys who have that hunger and you have that desire and that passion, you guys can outrun us. You can accelerate faster and quicker than even we did even better than three years. My story, because you will have that fire behind you. And I think you can do well here. I think you belong here and I would love to personally see you come in and kick my own. Kick my ass out of my position, automate it and optimize it and show me what I did wrong and let's work together. What about you ladies?

Erika Eakins: 27:59

You took, you took security and stability, and I wanna talk about places to work, innovative places to work. Innovative places to work is literally every company I have worked for Nathalie talked a little bit about it. Nerf gun wars. Okay. Great, but it's not just about that. Companies will tell you if you have an idea, you bring it, you invent something, we will brand it and pay you. So you could be an inventor. You could be an innovator. And then for years to come, people will be using whatever you've, created or innovated. Not only that. Let's just talk about, I worked for an organization, a startup, and it was the first tech startup that I worked for that implemented genderless bathrooms, accepted, transgender, accepted, the LGBTQ+, everything was accepted there. You are, who you are. You're so innovative from not only a knowledge perspective, but innovative from who you are, come as you are be you and that's what's up, there's no shame in your game there. Nathalie, what about you?

Nathalie Baker: 29:10

I say, come for the leadership because. Your leadership is going to be that millennial who got promoted into their position. And they're going to take you under their wing. They're going to give you the advice that you need to hear. They're not just tell you what you wanna hear. They're gonna tell you what you need to hear. And sometimes it's a little bit of tough love, but that's important for you to grow and learn to be better. And we're going to help you get to where you're surpassing us in your life. And I just. You're going to enjoy it. So much because it is innovative and a lot of you guys are visionaries and we need visionaries to be better than the attackers because every day, like Maril said, they get a little bit better and then we have to get a little bit better. I just think that's why so many girls, we need girls. We need different cultures. We need everything to come into this field because we need different perspectives to be better than the attackers and to think differently than the attackers.

Maril Vernon: 30:13

I gotta say, no one does better investigative work from a sock or a hacker perspective than a female who thinks she's been cheated on. She does better work than the NSA. We, can bring something to this industry and we do. One of the reasons I was told that I was hired in my first pentester position, mind you, I had no pentesting skills at the time. I'd been working in risk for four months. So that's how new I was. And they said, okay, if you were gonna break into someone's house how would you do it? And a lot of people just said, I would break a window and go into the side or whatever. And I was like, all right, I need some information first. They're like, okay, this is a scenario. We'll give you any information. I was like, cool. Married? Do they work? What are their working hours? Do they have cars? Do they have dogs? Do they have pets? Do they bark? Do they have a home security system? Which home security system is it? Good? Do they have 'em on the windows? How many windows do they have? Do they have two stories? Do they have, and I was asking all these questions. Do they have kids? Do their kids come in and check on them regularly? And they were like, oh fuck, you scare us. Like you obviously understand. And I'm like, that was before I was a technical professional. That was just when I was a, an average woman. No matter what it is, you've got you bring something unique, you bring something innovative. And like Nathalie said, you're either gonna work for a millennial like us who love and believe in you, or you're gonna work for a Boomer or a Gen-Xer who at one point believed in us and are thus those forward and progressive thinking people. And. It's not all gonna be sunshine and rainbows. We are here to make you a qualified professional. And then a later episode, we talk about y'all's weaknesses and strengths. We have our own weaknesses and strengths. I'm not naturally a very EQ inclined person. I'm a very blunt and logical person. So I had to learn to be less abrasive in the workplace to get along with the average human. Take a look at us, take a look at how outgoing and vivacious and, no offense, hot we are and just know that. You can be any of that. You wanna be introverted. Fine. You wanna be on camera? Fine. You wanna give briefings and meetings? Great. You wanna just be the person who codes and never talks to a soul. There is someone who will mentor you and grow you and teach you how to be the well rounded, professional, and unlock all of that potential that you've got there. We're here to help you do it.

Erika Eakins: 32:11

I love you guys.

Maril Vernon: 32:14

Just having a big, old love Fest over here. I know.

Erika Eakins: 32:16

I'm super passionate. And honestly, I didn't realize I was passionate about this industry until I was in it. So like we said, one of the reasons cyber Queens came about is we want to. At a young level, but not only that mid career changes early career. And I hope that you guys get something out of this because we are so passionate about this. We have been getting nothing but praises for what we're doing. So we hope you feel the same about The Cyber Queens and you are legendary Gen-Z. You will be talked about for, decades to come that century, decades to.

Maril Vernon: 32:53

At least two years, you'll be talked about for at least two years until the next gen and the next rev comes out, but you will get a very quality spotlight like the iPhone. And you know what I say, find a woman. If we've inspired you to wanna check this career field out this industry, there's so many places you can go, you don't have to be a coder. You don't have to be super technical. Look at Erika, although she is very technical. You can work in privacy. You can work in GRC. You don't have to work in hacking. You could be a security engineer. You could be a cloud architect. You could be a DevSecOps person, someone who codes, but in a secure manner, a lot of people suck at that. Right now that's a hot niche. No matter what it is you love no matter where it is, you wanna go. There's a place in cyber for you. And this is one of the things I love about cyber. My own mother, worked in banking, her entire life, and now she works in customer service. She's like the head of a BPO team. And I was like, "mom, I'm sick of seeing you hop jobs and work for shitty bosses and work your ass into the ground to get people results who don't fricking appreciate you. You need to come work in cyber." She's like, "Maril, I could never do that. I could never do what you and your father do. I don't understand it. I'm not a technical person. I'm a left brain thinker." I'm like, mom, it doesn't matter. You can work in compliance. You can work in regulatory. You can work in audit. Are you good with really long documents? Yes. Are you good with attention to detail? Yes. Then guess what? You can work in this field. There is a spot for you, so it's literally anyone can do it. Anyone can come in and start working in cyber tomorrow and please show up because we need you. We need you here with.

Nathalie Baker: 34:16

Here's the other thing that you don't think of as. You could be HR supporting a cyber company, get all the fun benefits out of the company that is. And so you're supporting the cyber professional still. So you're still in cyber like you. How about marketing? Have a technical position, exactly marketing. Like you might not have to have a very technical position. You could be very technical or you could choose to not be very technical. But wouldn't you love to be the one planning, the fun picnics or planning, the fun outings and planning the fun team building exercises. Wouldn't that be fun for you?

Maril Vernon: 34:51

I like fun.

Erika Eakins: 34:52

We all love fun and there's something in the industry. They and I will talk very brief about it. They're called channel sales account managers, and I work on the vendor side. There's the reseller side vendor. We can talk about that a later time. I'll explain it to you if you'd like, but the channel person is the liaison between. A Cisco or an HP in Dell and the companies that resell the technology. A lot of these are women and they are sales professionals. They do have a number of tied to them, but they help me as a sales professional work with my resellers. And oh, by the way, they do all the happy hours, the events, golfing, Top Golf. We're gonna Vegas and doing some, casino nights or in Colorado where I live casino. You could do that and you still are a cyber professional. There is so many areas that you can go to. We need you

Maril Vernon: 35:43

Just because you're a woman doesn't mean you have to do the soft stuff. If you wanna do the technical and you wanna be in the weeds with Nathalie and I, you do that too. We will help you. Ladies, we gotta wrap up this episode. It's been so wonderful having you here with us, our listeners, we hope we've planted a seed. We hope that we've inspired you to wanna check out more. If we have feel free to DM any one of the three of us will drop our social links. In the episode notes for you, we would love to hear from you. We would love to help you. We would love to answer questions and pair you up with someone who works in a field that you're interested in potentially working in. We're gonna do some final takeaways. Erika, what do you got for us? Final takeaway.

Erika Eakins: 36:19

If you're not technical, you can learn it. Listen to our upcoming episodes. We'll talk about certificates. You don't need to go to college. You don't have to be a good student. I am stupid with math. I was a single mother and I'm a salesperson who is technical. Please ask for help, come to any of us. And we would be happy to direct you in the, the right direction.

Nathalie Baker: 36:43

So for me, it's, if you love what you do, you never work a day in your life. You'll work super hard, or you'll love what you do. And you get to have a lot of fun doing it. Why wouldn't you just love life then? Like you get to love your life more and more, and it's worth it. And your mental health does matter. That's why you need to come join us in cyber. Join us for that.

Maril Vernon: 37:02

Nathalie, I love that so much. That was a great one. My final takeaway is going to be, please. Don't be afraid to try, please. Don't think that you suck automatically, cuz you've never done it. At one point I had never done it. I was hired into it, didn't know what IP addressing was. I was hired into pentesting, didn't know a damn thing about pentesting. We can teach you the technical. We can teach you to bash. We can teach you frameworks. What we cannot teach you is that drive and that passion and that mindset, which I know y'all have, you guys are such an impressive generation. There is so much about you that we love and we want to emulate and we want to harness and we need it specifically in the cyber war. Cause we're losing it right now. You just saw Cisco get breached. So please come help us. Please join us here. We would love to see you. Thank you for bearing with us for this long future episodes will be shorter. We sincerely promise you. It's been so fun. Thank you so much. We, The Cyber Queens, we love you. We hope to see you next time. If you did find value in this episode, feel free to like, and subscribe and share with your friends. And as a parting shot, we wanna let you know we will be we all three of The Cyber Queens will be in DC. From September 26th to the 29th for the Uniting Women In Cyber (UWIC) event, sponsored by the Cyber Guild. I myself will be speaking on a few panels. You can come see us, you can hang out and you can gain some cyber knowledge and we are going to do this together. We're gonna build a sisterhood of cyber, but it is not exclusive. You can be anyone, you can be a brother. You can be a non-binary affiliate sibling. We are here to build a sisterhood that includes everybody. And we hope to see you here. We love you so much. From The Cyber Queens. Byyyyye.