big question How that I get to where I am today. Where do I even start? I was born in a village in the Dominican Republic. Um, I was actually technically born in the capital Sum Total mingle, but I was raised in a village called So unaffordable. Now where? You know, we had an outhouse. We didn't even have indoor plumbing. We didn't have a real roof. We had zinc metal plates, sheets over our house, like bad kind of humble. Would bill house eso, you know, very much humble beginnings. My grandmother came to the United States, and, uh, I believe in the late seventies toe you look for a better future for her family. Um And then my dad, who was playing baseball in the nineties, was able to then bring me to the United States so that I could have a better a better future and live with my paternal grandmother. Ah, but I am the oldest of 12. I come from a huge family. My dad is also one of 12. Like I mentioned, we come from a village in another country in the Caribbean. So, you know, coming into the United States, it was definitely very hard for me to learn and understand American culture, American business. Even the gender rules were very different. You know, in a way, I I, uh I would say benefited from the American culture and gender norms because since I was little, I was very much that person who was always, you know, this respectful by female gender norms. So ah, you know, in my culture it is very much put on women's who cook and clean and take care of the kids. And, you know, make sure you know how to sew and make sure you know how toe do all of these things to take care of a man. Um, and alternatively, men are not raised that way. You know, manner very much. Raise too. Go do whatever you want. You know, if you fail, we're still here to support you like you can come home. You don't even have to get a job and work like you know. People tend to coddle men and then push women to be these superhumans who can do everything in the house. That said, even though women are encouraged to be these superheroes for their husbands and their Children, they're not allowed to really explore business to explore themselves, to explore. Let's say you know the different areas of their lives that they want to grow, whether that be they want to go back to school, to pursue medicine or they want to, you know, launch their own clothing boutique. Are they wanna go the business become an investor like historically, those were always rules that were frowned upon. Actually, when they're thinking about a woman in this role so similarly, even though my family, you know, my dad, um, and mother had me at 17. So my aunt on the other people raising you were all teenagers, preteens, if you know, they were done in high school. Um, and still, even though they knew about these gender norms, they always encouraged me to just continue being myself. Continue being out spoken. So I was a child who, when adults would be talking about politics, I'll be like, I haven't opinion. I want to send my president's. When people were talking about the economy, I had no idea what was going on. But at six years old, I was like, I have an opinion. I think that where money should be going to excellent and see, you know. So I was only very much interested in understanding the world around me, understanding the different systems and structures that we haven't placed and being able to get into. You know, these big companies or these, you know, institutions that are historically white or historically male, historically affluent, understanding those systems and being able to remove barriers for people like meeting other people who are immigrants, people who are folks of color. Whether you're black, Latino, Indian, from single poor from Nepal, it doesn't matter where your I want everyone to have equal access to these opportunities and not feel that their accents or their immigration status is a barrier. If you have the talent, you have the curiosity. You have the skills. Come on, let's get the work done. So that was my approach and coming into the United States, I mean, I had a face quite a lot of barriers, um, face a lot of discrimination, faced a lot of racism, quick example, um, in my high school was actually the valedictorian of, you know, 2009 in my class, the first black lefty not to ever accomplished that feat, the only black left in a in the county. I believe maybe in the state of New Jersey at the time to accomplish this. And instead of helping Queen prepare instead of helping me prepare for Harvard what the school's head was, actually they threatened with making me goto these credit completion courses. And what that means is that if I had to take those courses and focus on that, I wouldn't be able to start and prepare for Harvard in the way that I intended to. So even though I was top of my class amongst closest 600 students, they still try to pretty much sport. You know, Mama plan to start Harvard. I have been called to the vice principal's office multiple times because of, you know, absent days and all of these things when I had absences, because the first lady of the Dominican Republic personally asked me to lead some workshops in the New York City metro area for other students of Latino, the San and others color. We were trying to have workshops that we're focused on youth in Richmond trying to teach people how to you know what best practices exist for finishing school for completing high school or getting your g R E for building yourself up professionally. So the first lady of another country asked me personally toeholds these workshops. I had all of the evidence. I showed it to the front desk and they didn't believe me. They thought it was all alive, and because of that, they wanted me to go basically to summer school and they wouldn't let me graduate. So it's things like that that you know, some people I know, especially with race relations and what's going on in the world right now. There are some who believe who followed the school of thought, that if you're a good person of your model minority, if you behave, you will never have problems with authority. And that is not the That's a lie. I see. Amazing, incredible. No Indian consultants, even other, like Latino entrepreneurs. I see black engineers and CEOs who are not giving opportunities all the time, and it's not because they don't have the talent. It's because there are other things that play. So how about experience incidents and experiences that are negative? Absolutely. But to be honest, all of these experiences all of the discrimination, all of the racism, all of the sexism, all of the xenophobia. I've definitely, you know, been victim to people telling me to go back to my country and all of that. All of those experiences have pretty much shaped me to be the person the fearless person that I am today to become a person that says, I don't care what you want to say about me, but I am going to stand in my exactly I'm gonna do my thing. I'm going to stand in my truth and I'm gonna make sure that I can do what I can to give back to my peers, to my colleagues, to others in my community who are disenfranchise and are forgotten and are marginalized. And I want to make sure that whoever comes behind me can also overcome these barriers and convention work on building up, right on growing and building up from the improvements that me and my generation has made. Obviously, you know, debunking and not debunking. But this man telling systemic oppression, dismantling racism, this man selling all of these horrible evil systems is gonna take a long time, right? It doesn't have to if we work together and we each do our part to remove barriers and business, to improve access to economic opportunities, to bridge the gap between marginalized communities and the innovation economy, and we all do our part and work together. I have full confidence that we can make some sizable contributions to a better world and some significant improvements in the near term. So that's what what I do, and that's a little bit about my background.

absolutely so I do work at Rapid seven as a program manager of customer experience strategy. So add rapid seven. What I focus on is essentially tackling the question. How can we meet our customers were there at and ensure that they're having an incredible, memorable, positive experience that is helpful and that is supportive goals, no matter of their purchasing our services, if they're purchasing our products, if they're simply looking to us for advised or if they called us by mistake, even if you print called us, we want to make sure that you had a great experience with Rapid seven. You want to make sure that we're coming off as approachable, as knowledgeable, but as honest and interested in helping our customers succeed, no matter what their goals are. So because that is my goal. Ah, lot of and that is at the end of the day, the mission, right? The Mission Vision motto off my role. I do work and doing a lot of a lot of different things, so I'll go ahead and, for example, if there is a problem, I'll go ahead and do the research. Try to identify what are the customer problems What are the business problems? Maybe there are some impediments to progress. Sometimes we may have shot ourselves in the foot, you know, but not organizing teams in the way that we should. But I'll go ahead and launch that research to identify the pain points identified, dependencies. Then I'll go ahead and create pilots or experiments for trying out new business processes or trialling out new content or a new workflow and putting it in front of customers and seeing if it is helpful, um, trying out a new processes in order to see if we can actually become more efficient. If we can become more organized and were able to reduce waste and maximize on good efforts, right, we can optimize our functions and save money in the long run so that some of the stuff that I do in order to just experiment and identify what are some things that work, you know, what are some things that do not work and what are some viable options for us to move forward? Once that experimentation faces done? I do go ahead and create a list of like business recommendations and sometimes content recommendations or just, you know, suggestions for how to improve the bit minutes and our services. And then we'll go ahead, um, and start enabling the different teams socializing our ideas. And we work towards the execution, right? The operationalization off the learnings that we got. So I kind of take it from, you know, it's almost like a internal business consultant. So reports the problem. Identify what those things are very clearly explained, almost like a user story like This is what this problem means for the customer. This is what it means for us, right? Once I do the experiment to try allowed a new a new system, a new process will go ahead, Take the learnings, create better processes or better content from that and push it out to our customers so that they can give us their feedback. And we can continue improving their experience. Um, so of smart as weekly work hours, something that I absolutely love about. My job is that as a strategist, not only do I get to focus on research experiments and working with people to help them do their job better, faster and reach customers, but I got to do it globally. So misfires work hours. I mean, it's not a typical 95 per se. Like, yes. Um, you know, I I do work from 9 to 5, you can say, but sometimes all you know I'll be up between six and 8 a.m. I'll read my emails. I'll get that done. I'll take a break. I'll come back, You know, long as I get my work done, I'm fine. Um, and I love that. I have a lot of flexibility on my company, a rapid seven. We do have a limited time off. We do have while a lot of perks and benefits as an employee. And honestly, one of our biggest perks is our people. We have incredible people at Rapid seven. Um, to be honest, the company is not perfect. There's still a lot of you know there's tech that, like in any company, there is a lot of questions that we have. We still need to do a lot of work, you know, to smooth it in some of our processes, to streamline some things. But our people are incredible, and it makes everything worth it. So I love the fact that, you know, I just got a new manager I had. And even with my last manager, you know, he was someone who was always like Cam. That's a great idea. If you have to go take a plane to London to go enable our team and ready go to it. You know, he had me going out to Dallas for focus groups. I wasn't in Austin with our other teams, you know, and my current manager is, well, same thing. She understands the importance of meeting customers were there at. So She also encourages me that if you know if I need to take a flight to go work with our employees, we call them our moose. That's our That's our mascot. But we're definitely a family where definitely one moves, Um, so if I have to go to another city or country or state to work with our people, they encourage me to. So it's nice because it's a global position. I get to travel the world, work with different people in cybersecurity, an industry that I absolutely love. Um, and I got to have a flexible, flexible, you know, work life, Fallon. So it's definitely something that I appreciate. Rapid seven is an incredible company with a phenomenal CEO and incredible people. So I'm definitely feeling very, very blessed to work there. And I do encourage anyone who is interested in high tech, um, in cybersecurity to apply. And let me know if you want me to refer you internally, I'm always happy to have coffees, get to know people, and if it is a good fit, I'll go ahead and refer you internalise.

question. Um, I actually do quite a few workshops and talks and key nodes on this question. Exactly. Andi taking us that back. I also have quite a few sessions and have held talks on How do you break into cybersecurity? Like, what do you need? Tohave. Um, so we'll take it from there and then go into the specific question with relation to my job. But as our cyber security, something that I want people to remember is that you do not need to be a hacker to be in cybersecurity. There is this misconception that you need to be extremely technical. You have Teoh, you know, be a part of a hacker squad and have all these tools. That is not the case, especially for a cyber security company. You gotta remember it's still a business at the end of the day. So we're gonna need people who do marketing. We're gonna need people who do legal. We need people who can work in sales as ah BTR, which is a business development rep for self development crap. You know, we need people that have, ah, very background, a diverse background. We need people who our history majors are English lit majors are Spanish majors. You know, we definitely welcome people who come from all sorts of backgrounds. As long as you're curious, you're hungry to learn and you're willing to put in the effort to solve and tackle some crazy problems. And you're gonna do it with, you know, bringing your folks along educating, um, and really creating, you know, generating energy and excitement around these big improvements. We are happy to have you. Um, that said, it is obvious that for a job where you will need tohave technical skill, let's say you wanna work, you know, in a particular support role where you're gonna be helping out with no cloud questions, you should have at least some, even if you know, there's some free cloud certifications out there. The azure aws. You know, there are some that are a little bit expensive, but they're very good certifications also, you know, with azure. Um, I know Microsoft has quite a lot of classes. Cisco, um, even cyberwar academy has some classes that I always tell people if you can get a certification related to that technical problem that you'd like to solve or that you the technical space that you like to live in. Please do as an example with relations of cybersecurity for the people who are network or system engineers, and they want to strengthen their backgrounds as network defenders. I do encourage them to take E C councils. Ah, the fender a network. The Fender certification like that courses called E C Dash CND Certified Network. The Fender Course by EEC Council always put people towards that. It's not going to prepare you 100% for that job, but it's definitely, you know, a stamp of approval. And it does help you get a better sense of what does it mean to protect the network, right? Would it mean to truly be good at vulnerability management at asset protection? For the people who are interested in getting into ethical hacking, penetration testing, this is now when you know it's ethical hacking because you're still hacking. You're still breaking into a system or a network that's not yours, but it is because an individual or a company is asking you to hey, police break into my networks, hack into my systems and let me know what are the vulnerabilities. What are the issues that we have that could be exploited so that we can actually that up, right? So hackers come also from all different types of backgrounds, and it's pretty awesome. I personally know some hackers that have been hacking since they were in middle school and even have a college degree. They were hired right out of high school like they're, you know, they were great, and once again they weren't perfect. They're not geniuses. They're simply people who are very passionate about their job. They're curious. They're hard working there accountable, and they're ready to get things done. We've also had, you know, hackers and other cyber security consultants and other other security advisers who have a bachelor's or have a masters, an info set, management right. But they also will have certifications, for example, with penetration testing with ethical hacking, I do recommend for people to take the E. C Council certification called Certified Ethical Hacker. So it's East dash CE age and the certified ethical hacker certification. It's also one of those things that it like, gives you that stamp of approval like this person knows a theory and then obviously continue practicing and honing your skills to make sure that you're able to do the real job. But it's one of those certifications that I also recommend for people to take, um, or to complete, take the classes, take the test in order to strengthen ah, their resume and make it very clear to employers that, hey, not only do I have the experience and ethical hacking or penetration testing, breaking into systems and telling you how to patch it up, but I also have that badge that, like academic theory badge, right, So that's some quick tips for cybersecurity. That said, when it comes to my job as a program manager like I mentioned before, I'm in a way like an internal consultant. I'm a strategist, so I do have my bachelors. Some of the things some of the certifications I have helped me become a better project manager are actually project and program management courses and scrum courses. So, for example, um, even though I am not ah PMP, you know, like a certified project manager professional, I have taken some of the free courses online. I'll go to sites like GDX dot com that offer free content and will take some classes on Project management. But I have also done certifications like the scrum master certification. I've done the CSP Oh, which is certified scrum master product owner. So I've also taken those certifications for me to learn a little bit more about managing projects in an efficient way, Um, and being able to eliminate ways to optimize my teams performance, to make sure that we're not only doing great work but also that we're happy we're in high spirits were keeping morale. So I take those classes and I also participate in a lot of, you know, see X conferences, whether it's because I'm there as a speaker or on there as a listener or of they're just network. But I do think it is very important to stay close to the communities that you wanna either go into or that you know your role isn't part of this industry. So I do and, um, and I participate. I'm a member of quite a few communities and teams that focus on cybersecurity on robotic process, automation on machine learning, on empower in black and brown professionals to enter tech on helping immigrant communities and people who are recent immigrants or having immigration issues getting them set up on the right path to be able to take advantage of jobs in cyber security and so on and so forth. So I okay, and I find some of these events on eBay employees dot com on meet up dot com. Do not think that I am get A, you know, special requests. I do think that it is important to be proactive, and, like I mentioned, identify what these community groups are. Submerge yourself in this world and learn. Learn as much as you can, and that is a way that I have been able to build myself up assed faras customer experience knowledge and be able to give back to my job.