Optimism in the Face of Adversity

You also have to adapt, right? The world is becoming an increasingly diverse place. You work in cyber security, and there’s changes happening in that industry practically every day, there are new cyber threats all the time. In what ways have your experiences shaped your understanding of adaptability in the workplace?

Well, I think everybody has had a very tough lesson in adaptability over the last 2 years -

With the pandemic.

With the pandemic, it has been a crazy, crazy time. When I was, when Chronicle was acquired by Google Cloud, I knew I was going to be leaving Google, it was just too big for me to feel like I could have an impact there. And I started looking around, and talking to people, and I was like so excited, I was like, “The world is my oyster. I am going to have my pick of jobs and opportunities, this is so exciting.”
And then the pandemic hit, and I was like, “I am never going to get another job in my life.” And then it just, I would say, four months later after that, all of a sudden, opportunities were popping up again. So for me, it’s all about trying to not lose hope, and knowing that there could be something exciting around the corner.
When I started talking to Mike seriously about joining Stairwell, which was really my top choice, there were suddenly three other opportunities that were also interesting. It wasn’t really a competition, because I had actually pushed Mike to do a startup when he was leaving Alphabet after Google Cloud acquired Chronicle. He was thinking about parallel tracks, one of which was to be the CSO for a Fortune 500 company, and the other was to do a startup.
And I told him, I said, you would hate being the CSO of a Fortune 500 company. It’s all the things you don’t like about cybersecurity; the processes, the policies, managing huge teams of analysts, I mean, you’re creative, you want to build a product that’s actually going to help people. And you like picking out office furniture, and logos, and none of that when you get to do as a CSO of a Fortune 500 company. And plus, your brand is so strong right now, as after co-founding Chronicle. So, I said, “You need to do a startup, and you need to hire me as your COO.”

Good for you.

So, there goes the, going from being the shy girl who couldn’t tell people what her preferred name was, to saying yes, you need to hire me, and in the role that I’ve never had before, so…

I love that, you’ve got chutzpah, lady!