 Welcome back to the Think Tech OI Studio. We've got another exciting episode of Security Matters for you, and this is one of my favorite topics of the year. It's a two-year-old program. We're going to be talking about the security industry associations, Women in Security Forum. And I know that's a mouthful, but the Women in Security Forum is sponsoring a scholarship. This is our second year. Last year was amazing, and I've got Cameron Javdani with us here today who helped with last year's campaign. He's also volunteered on this year's campaign. And our surprise guest, we've got Kathy Hansen, who is the chairman of the Women in Security Forum now, who's just joined as chair, taking over from Maureen Carlo. She's with us today, and I can assure you it's difficult to get on her calendar. So we're happy to have you both today. Again, thank you so much for being here, and thank you for helping with the Women in Security Forum. It's as the first guy, you know, Valen told to join that group, it's a close passion for me. Yeah, well, thanks for having us. And yeah, we're excited to have you involved, and Cameron involved, and the team's been doing an amazing job on the scholarship fundraising, and so excited to talk about that today, and the work. And we have a couple other things up our sleeves that we can share as well. Ah, bonus coverage. I love it. Yes, bonus coverage on charitable give back and what's happening at ISC West. So you tell us where you want us to go, Andrew, here. OK, I get to drive. I get to drive. So let's talk, Cameron, let's talk about last year. Let's talk about the success that we had, and it was sort of unexpected, unprecedented during the pandemic. And just your thoughts on how that went, and then those final awards, because they were large. And we had a lot of them. You know, it was amazing. Yeah, I think, Andrew, when we got started on last year's campaign, it was about March of 2020. And if you remember March of 2020, the first half was going OK, and then the second half, everything across the country stopped. So in the middle of everything shutting down and freezing in place, we start reaching out to companies saying, hey, I know there's so much uncertainty right now, and you don't know what tomorrow is going to bring. But can we have some money to better the lives of young professionals in our industry? And you know what? They said yes. We raised an incredible sum of money over a few weeks last year. And I believe the scholarship program awarded 12 scholarships that were a little above $6,000 apiece, which given the landscape of last year, it was just an incredible outpouring from our industry. Now when we look to this year and we say, well, OK, the conditions in the market are better than they were last year. There's still that uncertainty, but things are objectively better. And now, hey, we're doing the same program again and look at the impact that we had last year on the lives of these 12 scholarship recipients. And I am just incredibly grateful to our industry. I'm blown away by the response in our industry. And over the course of the last four or five weeks, since we started fundraising in 2021, we've raised from the industry more money than we did last year, which is an incredible testament to the strength of this program and the commitment among leadership in our industry to get involved and make a positive impact. And I think it's really important. I mean, the team has done an amazing job. The industry is responding. I think it's also important, too, to call out the deadline for applying for scholarships. I believe it's this week, right, Cameron? It's tomorrow. Tomorrow. So you still have time. And I think the interesting thing is that for any SEA member company, if someone has some education debt, they just finished school and they have some debt, or maybe they want to get a certification, you can apply. So there's still time to do it, which is exciting. Yeah, and our industry came out. I don't know that maybe Cassia called them and bugged them. I know I called you on their legs about donating. And I mean, this is a cause that, obviously, we saw the benefit. We had folks last year who were able to pay off student debt, finish up a master's degree, things like that, right? So some amazing things that may not have happened, right? And given the, especially given the pandemic. And this year, I think we'll have some more of those great stories to tell. I did, I know that we are over 10 applicants this year in our program. So get your applications in. Maybe you'll have till Friday. I'll just throw that out there. But the official deadline is the 30th. So don't wait any longer. What is that? Is that tomorrow? Yeah, today's the 29th, right? So I encourage you to get in there and compete. It is a competitive process. So don't hold back on the sharing of the information when you're answering the questions. There's a team dedicated to grading that. We have part of our committee that calls for sponsorship and calls for donations from industry. We have another part of our committee that grades the responses from all of the applicants. And I almost all of them made the cut last year. I don't think every one of them made the cut. But you should apply. You should put your best foot forward. You should put the information in there. Make yourself a standout candidate. And collect on this. We've, to Cameron's point, we collected, I think, more money than we did last year already. So these could be very sizable scholarships based on the final number of awardees that qualify. Then we just divide up all the money. So we're not keeping any. I think it's important to call out. You don't have to just be out of college to apply for a scholarship. You can be further along in your career and decide, hey, I want to get that certification. I think that's really going to help me at work. I want to take some additional classes that are going to help me further my career or whatever it may be. So I think that's the exciting part, is it's not just limited to folks that just got out of school. And I know I finished up a certification myself earlier in the year. But it's little things like that. There are a couple thousand dollars sometimes. And you do an eight-week course, then it makes the world a difference. So super excited to see who the recipients are and how they use the money and how it can impact their lives. So I think it's exciting. Yeah, and we'll bring definitely media to that. And we're also going to bring media to our awardees. So it's a chance to get yourself out there in the industry, get yourself a little better known, kind of get on other people's radar if your career is, if you see your career moving around, maybe you're going to stay where you're at and move up. Maybe you want to jump over and try something else new. Our industry is broad, and the types of education that help people in our industry is also broad. So that diversity of thought is a thing that I think we're all striving for, to improve our industry. And I think we're looking to pull talent from outside of our industry into our industry as well. Cassie, you came out of IT, you know? I mean, I used to tell folks that Intel wasn't really around that seemed like they were inside everything, but they weren't in the booth and in the show, right? And now, you know, in the last few years, it's been super refreshing to have Intel come in and bring a wealth of influence and a wealth of information to our industry and kind of partner up with us. Was that sort of strategic on your part or did they kind of lay that in your lap and say, hey, you know, the security industry needs help, Cassie. Go figure it out. You know, we, it was an opportunity that was, you know, I was in our storage business then opportunity came to join IoT and get experience. And then they said, oh, what happens to do with video? And it was really exciting, really small team, but a lot of impact. And I jumped in and learned. So yeah, you know, consistently encouraging people to jump into this industry. It's an important industry. It's exciting. I think it's a lot of folks that, you know, have helped me along the way in mentoring and teaching me, you know, even asking the dumb questions around security though, just, hey, can I double check? Am I making sense here? There's a lot of great folks in the industry to learn from. So, and that then, you know, really helped me get even more hungry for, you know, continue my education. So completing, you know, and looking into the cyber space for example. So there's just so much this industry brings. So, you know, really, really happy that I've been in it and just can't say enough about it and the people in it. Yeah, and alongside your leadership, I just want to let everybody know Intel puts into money where its mouth is and they also donated to our scholarship program this year. So thank you for your influence on that. As well as the team at Sound Secure, Cameron, I happen to know that you guys donated last year and this year and you're leading the industry by helping work on the committee. So I want to thank you for that and give you your props for that stuff. What do you think is the sort of the biggest gain we get, you know, for the women in security forum by, you know, having a scholarship fund and promoting it? You know, are we going to gain more followership? Are we just going to gain that, you know, blessing from industry as a valued partner with our rest of our industry team? You know, what's the, what do you think the number one sort of takeaway is so far with this program? Cause it's still new. Andrew, I think the primary goal or the primary objective behind the scholarship for the women in security forum is to provide an opportunity for professional development and advancement. Now that means different things to different people. So as you just mentioned, there are a number of different ways that the scholarship funds can be utilized be it for professional training, repayment of student loans, courses, trade show attendance, all sorts of things that will help a recipient get ahead in their career. Now what happens when you have an industry now of folks who have advanced in their skill set gotten ahead in their career? It makes our organizations more effective. It makes our companies do bigger things better. So it's a rising tide in our industry that will positively impact all of us because at some point or another in an industry as small as ours, we all work together in some way, shape or form, right? So we're starting out by making an investment in the future both in terms of the committee at the other women's security forum committee and the donor companies as well because we all see the long-term benefit of making an investment in our future workforce and our future leaders. So at its core, it's about making our industry better. And the way we do that is providing the opportunities to folks to advance in their careers and develop new skills and try new things and get better at the things that they already do. So it's an exciting thing to get involved at the ground floor of a long-term campaign. And just in the span of two years that we've been doing it, it's exciting to see positive impact already. Absolutely agree, 100%, 100%. And the other, I want to mention another campaign as well to sort of, you know, we've had the scholarship campaign happening, right? Such an amazing effort. The team has raised money. It's going to help people. We'll get to learn more about the people that get the scholarships. But it's just the right thing to do, right? By helping to bring the industry forward and people in the industry who want to grow and helping bring them forward. But the second piece of that is our give back campaign. So I don't want to, you know, leave this call without mentioning the give back campaign and the team's been working really, really hard to develop what that's going to look like. So, you know, anybody that's going to ISP West and the give back campaign will be benefiting the Dress for Success in Southern Nevada. And so, instead of clothing, you know, because some people are still online and what not, you can bring like small items. And there will be collection bins throughout ISP West. But you can bring notes of encouragement. You can bring makeup, you know, there's Walgreens and CVS nearby. You can go and buy stuff there. You don't even have to pack it and bring it. So we're making it really easy to give back and it'll benefit an amazing organization that's trying to help women in the workforce. That's awesome. I love it. I want to, we're going to jump to the break and I'm going to get, take you up on that makeup thing because I know I need some of that today. But the, we're going to pay some bills. I want to hear more about what's planned for the Women's Security Forum going forward this year. And we'll be right back with Cameron and Cassia. Stick around. Zenitel. Aloha. Hey everybody, thanks for joining us. We were trying to hunt up some information but we're back and we're live. So excuse the hiccup there. So we've got not only our scholarship program which is, I think off to a great start. We're talking about in two years time having given out I think by the time this campaign is done this year $150,000 or more amongst well over 20, maybe 25 awardees. So amazing start there. I've been beating on Don to maybe make it a establish like a long-term fund so that we could have folks make a perpetual donation and make that, it's also currently we're not listed as a tax exempt donation. So I think that might even help us make it a little bit bigger, maybe we could endow the thing over time where we can build a fund that gives out a substantial amount of scholarships each year. So I think this program just in its beginning is has a lot of opportunity to impact the industry for a very long time. And I'm super proud of that. And the women's security forum is a very, I think Maureen did two years. So this is only our third year as a forum. I'm off the steering committee now. Cameron got violent told, maybe not Maureen, I'm not sure. Cameron got in there to help the steering committee now. So he's working for Cassie in case y'all don't know. Anyway, what other things you think will come from this? Or what other types of initiatives you think this year we could build out of the security forum with the momentum that we've got? We've got I think 800 members or so. Yeah, so first of all, have an amazing steering committee. We got together last week as well, have had some great leadership, Maureen as the past chair and she's on the steering committee as well. And Cameron joining, we have some new folks that have joined the steering committee. So we started looking at the different pillars of what are we trying to do and what are we trying to accomplish with women's security forum? And it really comes back to what are we doing to serve the members and serve the forum? And what do they need from us? I know Andrew, you and I have talked before about getting feedback from the forum and the forum members. And so we have done that. We did a survey, we got some feedback. We really was really appreciative to get the feedback that we did receive around what the members need. I believe I'm gonna say, I think we can double the membership over the next year. I think there's a lot more women in this 800. So I think we'll be able to double the membership with some great efforts planned. I kind of bucket in three areas, right? Connect, grow and impact, right? How do we connect with one another? Network, professional development is gonna be really important. Cameron mentioned scholarship funds really important because the feedback for us from the forum has been professional development, networking, education. So we're planning some things throughout the year that are gonna deliver professional development to the forum as well as some ideas for next year at IEC, by the way. And maybe it's a larger conference for Women's Security Forum that encompasses a lot of skilled development and additional professional development. Then there's of course growing, right? How do we help each other grow as an industry and as individuals? So through like mentorship programs or scholarship for sure will help. Awards and recognition, I know we've talked about that before. We've created a subcommittee around awards and recognition, working with the industry to bring together what does that look like, right? What is the, my experience in the IT channel they have some pretty good recognition programs that we might be able to use some best practices from to create a Women in Security recognition program. So some good things happening there can share more later. And then of course we're trying to grow the speaker bureau. There's a lot of great women out there that have a lot to say and have some expertise in their areas. And we have a Women's Security Forum speaker bureau and we would love to have more women in that speaker bureau so that we can get them visibility and opportunities to grow especially in public speaking for example. And it might be panels, it might be presentations or teaching classes or doing trainings or sharing experiences but we'd love to build that speaker bureau. And then the last part is the impact and that's really around the charitable giving. Very large team supporting the charitable giving on Keller and really proud of that team for pulling together such an amazing effort for ISC West. And then of course we're looking, we've created another new subcommittee around industry partnerships. So how are we reaching into other women's groups such as women in cyber or as is and how are we partnering up with other women's organizations? Part of that will be building up the speaker bureau and then of course, what are we doing with the CME members who have women's groups and so forth. So Maureen's gonna have that up for us. So lots to do, lots of work but at the end of the day everything we're doing is linking back to value to the members and to the forum. So really lots to do, we're rolling up our sleeves. Yeah, it sounds like Cameron's gonna be busy. He doesn't have a company to run, you know. It's interesting that you bring it up because the participation piece is sort of what spawns this. We had members asking what can I do to participate in the forum? I said, well, let's start a scholarship committee and we can go out and get members to join that committee to help us A, collect monies or canvas for donations I think it's the appropriate terminology. And then the other half was to, somebody's gonna have to grade. And so that ended up being, I think we had 12 last year Cameron on our committee. So the opportunities are there for these subcommittees and I'd encourage anyone that's watching if you're in the industry please join the Women's Security Forum. If you're in the Women's Security Forum try to join one of these committees, reach out and ask how you can help because there's no better way to really get to know the people in the industry than to stamp your name on an effort that is having an impact or creating education or doing sharing some of the knowledge and stuff that we're all trying to, I guess, open up to or open up the channels for other people to participate. So to Cassie's point, this is especially if we're gonna double. Like if we get to 1600 by the end that'd be awesome. So there's just so much more opportunities to meet people and to learn. Cameron, what was your initial take? I know when they called for the, you were on the committee last year to help with the scholarship. And now you get to call, hey, can you join our steering committee? And then of course, Cassie only has like one or two plans, not 30. But what was your initial take on, even just guys being on the Women's Security Forum? Well, Andrew, I think when we look at the membership of the Security Forum Steering Committee and then we compare it to what our industry looks like where overwhelmingly male, I think my role on the steering committee, in addition to advising in an area, I might have some subject matter expertise in marketing or in, we did okay in fundraising, but there are other members of the committee who are doing a much better job than I am. But I think that we can communicate that the Women in Security Forum membership and involvement isn't just for men, or excuse me, isn't just for women, it includes men as well. And there's no sign on the door that says no boys allowed, right? So we need to get involved. You've led the way both in fundraising and speaking at different events. And that's a model that we can all follow. So regardless of gender, regardless of your position in the industry, whether you're new out of school or your first job as a career role, or whether you've been doing this for 40 plus years, get involved because the contributions we can all make better our industry, right? So again, looking back at what it does to our industry to have these resources available. And if the number one thing that the membership of the Women in Security Forum is looking for is professional development. And I think number two was networking and number three might have been industry news or industry relations. We don't get that if we're not involved with each other. We don't get that if we don't talk to each other. And I do wanna recognize you, Andrew, for something that I think you were too modest about earlier in recognizing some of our donors. IST is also a donor to the Women in Security Forum Scholarship. So thank you and IST for your support. And for all the gentlemen in our industry watching, the water is just fine. Jump in and get involved with us. You can find me on LinkedIn. You can find Cassie on LinkedIn. Just send us a note and ask how to get involved. One final thing I wanna bring up too is that at ISC West in just a few weeks, we'll be having a breakfast on the morning of Wednesday, July 21st with NASCAR driver Julia Landauer. How awesome is that to have a NASCAR driver speak at ISC West? But that's a fantastic opportunity to meet other folks in the various committees. It's a fantastic opportunity just to hear an amazing keynote from an inspirational NASCAR driver. But that's how I got my start with the Women in Security Forum. I just showed up to this breakfast a few years ago. Maureen Carlo invited me. I said, sure, happy to help out and lend a hand however I can. And just started getting involved. And by the way, starting getting involved meant, hey, we're having a call about something. Can you join? Sure, I can. What can I contribute? Don't worry about it. Just get on the call. And then you start incrementally making contributions and seeing how you can help the various programs. So please get involved. We'll see everyone at ISC West. And to your point, Andrew, and what Cassia said, there are no shortage of ways to get involved and to make an impact. There is a broad, aggressive agenda coming up for the Women in Security Forum. So we're looking for volunteers. I love that, broad and aggressive. But we're on a mission. We are on a mission, that's for sure. So I think the breakfast, the one thing about the NASCAR driver that we're excited about is she can talk about fear, right? You know, in business and in life, there's, you know, fear can creep in, right, to your life. And the thing I love about it is, you know, men and women have, you know, enjoy NASCAR, for example. So there's no shortage of topics, I think, in the keynote for men or women. So we definitely want to see everyone there and look forward to it. It's Wednesday at 8.30 at ISC. Awesome, thank you, yeah. I really encourage you folks, men and women alike, go check out the Women in Security Forum. Get, check out everything we're doing. We've got a page up on LinkedIn. It talks about a lot of the initiatives. There's a lot of information there. And this group already 800 strong, passes on a mission to double it. This is gonna be probably one of the preeminent groups in the industry. And when you go to the meetings, you'll see that the who's who of the industry are already in there. So if you want to get to know the who's who, there you go. There's a great way to meet them all. I really am looking forward to it. I have to leave Vegas early. Unfortunately, I'm not gonna be there Wednesday morning, which is a bummer. But I hear there may be a sneak announcement about this program, the scholarship program. I don't know what we'll know by then, but anyway, I'm looking forward. I'm hoping that they can share some successes for this program. And again, I wanna thank you both for joining me today. I wanna thank you both for helping out the security, the women in security forum, obviously it's an amazing effort. And the scholarship effort is just one of the great things we're doing. So Cassia, thank you Cameron. Thank you for your time today. I know you're both busy folks. Appreciate you coming on Security Matters and Sharing. And I will see you in Las Vegas on Monday the 19th, I think. Yeah. See you in Las Vegas, Andrew. Ooh, we'll see you guys. All right, everybody. Cameron. Take care, everybody. Obviously. Thanks. Awesome, thanks. Aloha, everybody. Take care. Bye, guys. See you later.