As the Chief Information Security Officer (CISO) at Ava Labs, I am responsible for pragmatic security risk management of a multi-billion dollar cryptocurrency company, where cybersecurity risk exceeds security compliance risk by several orders of magnitude. I have more than 20 years of experience as a security leader, engineer, developer, sysadmin, and entrepreneur, with a Master of Cybersecurity from U.C. Berkeley, plus a gamut of certifications, including a CISSP and AWS Security.

My mission is to drive a company-wide transformation from a security-weak immature startup to a security-mature enterprise, with a multi-year vision and a multi-million dollar budget. I work with the CEO and Board of Directors to determine their acceptable level of cybersecurity risk and the resources required to achieve it. I identify and prioritize security threats, and target scarce resources of time and money to mitigate them. I also leverage my domain expertise in cryptocurrency, information technology, and risk assessment to advise management of both near-, medium-, and long-term strategic threats to the business and prepare detailed response plans.