While the gender gap in IT is indeed narrowing, women in tech still have a long way to go in terms of equal representation, particularly in leadership positions. This is why devmio wants to give inspiring women the opportunity to introduce themselves and share their stories about why they chose a career in technology.

Every Wednesday, devmio celebrates inspirational and powerful women in the tech world. This week, we bring you Christine Whichard, Chief Information Security Officer (CISO) at SmartBear.

Today's Woman in Tech: Christine Whichard, Chief Information Security Officer (CISO) at SmartBear

Christine Whichard is Chief Information Security Officer (CISO) at SmartBear, a leading provider of software development and visibility tools. Previously, she was SVP, Client Engagement and Operations at Videology (now part of Amobee) for nearly seven years. Christine was also Senior Director of the Technology Solutions Group at Merkle, a global performance marketing company supporting nearly 10,000 employees and 50 locations. She has held various roles in data analytics for Advertising.com and Medstar Health, among others.

What first got you interested in technology?

I have been interested in technology from a young age, though I didn't necessarily always know it. I’ve always loved to problem solve and make things work – which I believe lends itself to technology. Growing up, when we got our first VCR, I asked my parents to move aside and let me connect the TV and the VCR and get it setup! Hindsight being 20/20, there is my interest in technology from an early age.

Upon graduating from college, my first job was at a tech consulting firm and this seemed to be a natural fit – the evolution of my love for solving problems and making things work.

Could you tell us about your career path? How did you end up at your current position?

I started my career as a developer, quickly moving into project management, and then I began managing developers. I continued to expand the scale of what I was leading and managing, starting with smaller scale applications moving to large-scale custom technical solutions, to where I currently am in software.

Within all of my roles in technology, I’ve always been lucky enough to work for organizations that really embraced curiosity, which I have an abundance of. I’ve been able to build and lead tech teams internally and also gain a lot of exposure in leading and managing clients in the roles I have had along the way.

I’ve been at SmartBear for over four years now and was recently promoted to Chief Information Security Officer, in addition to my current role as SVP Information Systems and Technology. Security has been and continues to pique my curiosity. I may have actually met my match in a space that is dynamic and changing enough that it will always hold my attention focus, and ultimately, my curiosity.

What are you most proud of in your career?

Without a doubt, I am most proud of the many teams I’ve built and grown, many times new functions from the ground up. I’m proud of the business outcomes these teams have been able to accomplish, how these teams have driven operational efficiency, and I’m very proud of the careers these team members have been able to build.

Building and optimizing teams and the resources within these teams is the most difficult, yet most gratifying work I do.

A day in Christine's life

In my current role, any day can be dramatically different. I spend most of the day problem solving, both technically and on the security side. First up, I do need my coffee, and then I'm religious about sitting down and thinking through mindfully and deliberately how I want to spend my day and what I want to achieve.

I have worked remotely since starting at SmartBear four years ago, before working remotely was widely accepted. I have three teams – business systems, corporate IT, and security – and some are local to our headquarters in Somerville, Massachusetts and some are remote. I employ a lot of 15-minute stand ups where video is required. I believe video enables a better connection. I spend a lot of time deliberately connecting with my team virtually, and we aim to meet in-person at headquarters on a quarterly basis.

As a remote leader, communicating is a big part of my day. It's about consistent cadence, finding the right cadence for each audience, staying connected with individuals and the group. That takes time, and it’s a large portion of my day, but it’s critical.

As a remote leader, communicating is a big part of my day. It's about consistent cadence, finding the right cadence for each audience, staying connected with individuals and the group.

Who are some of your role models or people that inspire you?

The first person who comes to mind is my grandfather. He was a second generation Italian who grew up in tenement housing in the west end of Boston. In high school, he sold oranges in Faneuil Hall. A hard worker, he ultimately went on to build two successful glass businesses that he passed onto his four sons, and now his grandchildren run. What inspires me was his ability to overcome obstacles. He came from a terrible living situation, though all I ever knew was a successful, thriving man. His ability to overcome obstacles, his perseverance, and his grit have inspired me. I like to believe that I get some of my work ethic from him.

What are some essentials in your toolkit for success?

I essentially have a soft toolkit and a hard toolkit. My hard toolkit contains technical skills that are learned in many cases. As a leader, I have spent considerable time within the soft toolkit – leadership abilities, ability to collaborate and align different groups and different individuals, emotional intelligence (EQ), ability to optimize communication.

I personally take pride in being able to identify talent. I put more weight on the kind of potential a person has and how a person thinks about approaching challenges and problems. Are they curious? Do they have the ability to navigate through conflict? I’ve hired people who come from unique and different backgrounds using this mindset. I just hired someone who has some experience in identity access management, but I ended up hiring the person for vulnerability management and threat intelligence based on their soft toolkit. I think what makes me successful is utilizing what’s in my own soft toolkit.

I personally take pride in being able to identify talent. I put more weight on the kind of potential a person has and how a person thinks about approaching challenges and problems.

How can the industry help support and retain women in tech?

We need to socialize technology and career tracks around technology much earlier for young women – whether that’s cybersecurity or information technology. We’re doing a good job bringing awareness to STEM programs, but it’s not just about exposing young girls to math and science. We need to expose them specifically to careers in information technology. I liked technology when I was a young girl, but I didn't really know what that meant. Nothing was presented to me that it could be a really gratifying and successful career experience. There are cybersecurity tracks in college now, which absolutely wasn’t the case when I was in school, and that's exciting.

But we need to start even earlier. We need to expose young girls to the world of technology in a way that they know they can have a career in technology and it can be awesome. We have definitely seen some growth in this area; I would just love to see more.

What was the biggest challenge you’ve faced in your professional career and how did you overcome it?

One particular challenge early in my career was leading highly educated, senior engineers. When I started to get into management, I could see they had questions like, can she play at our speed? How technical is she? Does she know what she's talking about? I knew they were vetting me out of the gate, which made it difficult. No, I didn’t have the technical background that they did. I didn't have my PhD, but I wasn't trying to go toe-to-toe with their tech experience. For me to be able to effectively lead these groups, I relied on the soft side of my skillset. I helped them to understand the value that I could bring. Building bridges by helping them see what value I could bring to this project or program in the organization and building rapport over time was how I tackled solving the problem.

Building bridges by helping them see what value I could bring to this project or program in the organization and building rapport over time was how I tackled solving the problem.

What tech topic would you like to learn more about?

I am very interested in Machine Learning (ML) and Artificial Intelligence (AI) as it’s the future of the technology space. I'm very interested in how ML and AI can support the functions within the technology that we use for security. How can ML help me identify and predict potential security events earlier than a human can detect? How can AI and ML detect visibility into potential threats sooner?

In security, it's all about visibility – seeing your threat landscape to know and understand where potential behavior is that could translate to a security event or incident. Humans can only go so far. You could have a user log in from headquarters in Somerville, Massachusetts and India at the exact same time, three times in a row, in the middle of the night. ML would pick that up and behaviorally know something's wrong. ML and AI are taking our ability to get ahead of security problems, giving us visibility into potential threats and identifying issues before they snowball into real problems.

What advice would you like to give women looking to start their careers in tech?

It cannot be overstated to be yourself. Show up as the person you are and not the person you think people need you to be. Authenticity will always drive your leadership. Come as you are. I think my authenticity, not compromising who I am versus what I think somebody wants or needs me to be, is how I got to where I am today.

Additionally, if you want to grow and be a leader in tech and security, find multiple mentors and coaches who come from different backgrounds and have different perspectives. Find peer mentors – people who do the job that you aspire to do – and find leadership mentors. Have mentors who come from different vantage points – both men and women. I cannot say enough for how much that's helped me navigate as a female technical leader in a male dominated field. I've had both female and male mentors, and I have gotten some of the best advice from both.

Find peer mentors – people who do the job that you aspire to do – and find leadership mentors. Have mentors who come from different vantage points – both men and women.

What job did you want growing up? How does that compare to now?

I was actually a nursing major in college. That was going fairly well until I actually had to practice giving shots to a human being. As soon as someone winced, I was out of there! Obviously, I took an extremely different career path from nursing, but I do think there is a common thread. I love to solve problems, and I Iove to help people. I believe I have been doing both within my career in IT and Security. I really enjoy solving problems for organizations and take a ton of pride and satisfaction in building high functioning teams.

The cybersecurity field is constantly evolving! What’s currently happening in the world of cybersecurity that more people should know about?

Well, this is a loaded question. There is so much going on!

More and more people are trying to build security programs by tech alone. There are more solutions than we know what to do with at this point – the market is flooded. Throwing tech at problems, specifically security problems, is scary. The reality is, the more complex your tech stack is the more blind spots you can create. My goal is to have as much pervasive visibility, early detection and response – as far to the left of the cyberkill chain as we can. To tie it back to your last question – this is where I think ML/AI can really help with detection and response – earlier and faster.