From government cyber leadership to building for our community

People sometimes ask how I went from working in government cybersecurity to building a community resource hub for Black women entering the field. From the outside it can look like a sharp turn. From the inside it felt like a straight line, because both are about the same thing. Helping the right people get into the right rooms, with the support to do well once they are there.

I want to share some of what that path taught me, because the lessons are not really about me. They are about what I now try to build for you.

What leading in the public sector teaches you#

Working in government cybersecurity teaches you to think in systems. You learn that security is rarely about one clever fix and almost always about process, coordination, and people doing their part consistently over time. You learn patience, because change at that scale is slow, and you learn persistence, because slow does not mean impossible.

You also learn how much structure matters. In well run environments, there are clear paths, defined roles, and a sense of how a person grows from one level to the next. When the structure is good, talented people can find their footing. When it is missing, even talented people drift, because no one ever showed them the next step.

That observation stayed with me. So much of whether someone succeeds is not raw ability. It is whether the path in front of them was made visible, and whether anyone was there to walk part of it with them.

What I kept noticing#

Across my time in leadership, I kept noticing the same thing from a different angle. The people who made it into cybersecurity often had something extra going for them early on. A mentor who explained how things worked. A network that surfaced opportunities. A sense, formed somewhere, that they belonged in technical rooms.

And I kept noticing who was missing from those rooms. Black women were too often not there, not because the talent was absent, but because the path in had never been made visible to them, and the early support that others quietly received was harder to come by.

Two things were true at once. The field genuinely needed more people, and a whole group of capable people could not easily see a way in. That gap is not anyone's personal failing. It is a structural problem, the kind I had spent years learning to think about. And structural problems can be worked on.

Why I turned toward building#

At some point, understanding a gap stops feeling like enough. I had spent a career learning how systems and people fit together, how careers are made, how the right early support changes a trajectory. It started to feel like that knowledge was meant to be pointed somewhere specific.

So I turned it toward the community I most wanted to see thrive. Ctrl+Alt+Elite is, in a real sense, an attempt to take the things that quietly help people succeed, mentorship, visible paths, networks, early encouragement, and offer them on purpose to Black women entering cybersecurity, rather than leaving them to chance.

I am not interested in framing this as a rescue. The women I work with are not waiting to be saved. They are capable, often already doing the work of figuring it out on their own. What I can add is what leadership taught me. Make the path visible. Provide the structure. Be the person in the room who is glad you showed up.

What the two chapters share#

When I line up the work I used to do and the work I do now, the overlap is almost total.

Both are about awareness, helping people see clearly what is real and what is possible. Both are about opportunity, opening doors and pointing toward the rooms where things happen. Both are about support, because no one does hard things well in isolation. And both are about development, the slow, steady building of skill and confidence over time.

The setting changed. The mission did not. I used to apply these ideas inside large institutions. Now I apply them directly to people, one reachable step at a time.

What I carry forward, and what I leave behind#

From leadership I carry forward the systems thinking, the patience, and the belief that structure is a form of care. A clear path is not bureaucracy. It is kindness made practical.

What I try to leave behind is anything that made the field feel like a closed club. The mystery, the assumption that you should already know how it all works, the quiet signal that some people belong and others are guests. None of that is necessary. It just got built up over time, and it can be taken back down.

Why this is personal#

I will be honest that this work is personal in a way my earlier roles were not. When I help a Black woman take her next step into cybersecurity, I am partly doing for her what I wish someone had done more of for me, and what I know changes outcomes when it happens early.

That is why I left a clear, established path to build something newer and less certain. Not because the first chapter was wrong, but because everything it taught me kept pointing here. The most useful thing I learned in government cybersecurity was never really about technology. It was about people, and paths, and who gets to walk them. This is what I decided to do with that lesson.