Death by Chocolate

Tuesday, May 23, 2023 | 11:00AM-2:30PM ET

The Whittemore House | 1526 New Hampshire Ave NW, Washington, D.C. 20036


Women Who Cyber brings together a diverse group of aspiring and thriving cybersecurity professionals for dynamic and interactive events where they can network with peers, establish meaningful mentoring relationships, share knowledge, and enjoy unique experiences.

You’ll learn from, and be inspired by, our panel of influential women as they discuss how they broke through the glass ceiling and continue to pave the way for women to lead and excel in the industry. They’ll also discuss the unique challenges women face, as well as the importance of diversity and gender equality in the workplace.

Learn and be inspired as our panel of influential women discuss:

  • How women are reshaping the industry
  • How women can grow and enhance their career
  • The importance of interpersonal skills, including leadership skills and emotional intelligence
  • How to engage and encourage the younger generation

Death by Chocolate
After the discussion, a local, craft chocolate maker will share their expertise and demystify the techniques of flavor pairing and tempering chocolate. We’ll learn how to temper chocolate and create bark topped with local fruits and nuts, while chocoholics can explore the art of tasting with artisanal flavors from DC confectionary. Lunch will be provided.

Register now to support women in changing the face of cybersecurity!

Agenda

  • 11:00AM-11:30AM
    Registration and Lunch
  • 11:30AM-12:30PM
    Women Who Cyber Panel Discussion
  • 12:30PM-2:30PM
    Chocolate Making with a DC Chocolatier

Host

Erin Leonard
Erin Leonard | Global Director of Sales Engineering, Sigma Information Protection, Proofpoint, Inc.

Erin Leonard is Proofpoint’s Global Director of Sales Engineering for Sigma Information Protection. She has more than 15 years of experience with Information & Cyber Security, focused on enterprise risk and remediation. She started her career in enterprise compliance at Fidelity Investments and Iron Mountain Records Management before spending 10 years at RSA Security, focused on the Archer Governance, Risk and Compliance business. Erin’s background as a systems administrator, Professional Services consultant and Presales technical leader of security technology has given her the ability to view risk from people, process and technology perspectives. Erin graduated from the University of Vermont and received her MBA from Bryant University and her MSCIS from Boston University. She lives in the Boston area and has a passion for exercise and running – she has completed 8 full marathons including Boston, Chicago, Berlin and NYC.

Featured Panelists

Jothi Dugar
Jothi Dugar | Acting Deputy Director, The National Institutes of Health, Center for Information Technology

Jothi Dugar is the current Acting Deputy Director where she shares in the leadership, management, and vision of CIT. As a member of the CIT senior leadership team, Jothi oversees mission-critical systems and services supporting basic and clinical research, extramural research management, and administration and management activities for the NIH. Prior to her Acting detail, Jothi served as CIT’s Chief Information Security Officer (CISO). As CISO, Jothi helped lead the award-winning NIH Cyber Safety campaign to embed cybersecurity into everyone’s day-to-day activities and raise awareness of cyber safe practices and tools across the enterprise. In addition, she has also led the first-ever Health & Wellness program at CIT and the NIH Office of the CIO to bring awareness to the importance of employee well-being and workforce development.Prior to serving as CIT’s first CISO, Jothi served as the first CISO at the NIH Clinical Center where she spent seven years establishing and leading the Information Security Office. The Clinical Center is the largest hospital in the country that is focused on biomedical research, serving thousands of patients from around the world. Jothi brings a wealth of experience, expertise and innovative solutions to address challenging issues. She is also a fierce advocate for diversity in the workplace and a public speaker on topics including the value of a diverse workforce, women in leadership, holistic approaches to cybersecurity, wellness for the technology world, and other topics. Jothi has been published in numerous magazines, media, and press. Prior to her NIH career, Jothi held positions at the Defense Information Systems Agency, the Internal Revenue Service, and a variety of private sector firms. Jothi holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Electrical Engineering from the University of Maryland.

Dr. Margaret Meiman
Dr. Margaret Meiman Layton | Security Architecture and Engineering, Children's National Hospital

Dr. Margaret Meiman Layton (Meg) is currently serving in the role of Security Architecture and Engineering for Children’s National Hospital in Washington, DC.. It was her work as Director of IT for a telecommunications company doing business in Africa that helped her to discover her passion for security (and her passion for travel!) at the height of the dot-com era. In 2001, she joined a start-up company that was acquired by Symantec, and she worked for close to two decades in various roles within the company - both on security products that worked on logging & event correlation, and working on the intelligence that fuels the front-line responders until she joined Children’s National. Meg has been a regular speaker at conferences, both nationally and internationally, on technical and security related topics, and can be heard occasionally on technical podcasts. Meg has a Doctorate of Information Assurance from the University of Fairfax, which she achieved in 2017 defending her dissertation “The Implementation of Double-Loop Learning: An Improvement on the Incident Response Process”. She has recently been published in the books “97 Things Every Information Security Professional Should Know” and “Reinventing Cybersecurity” In her spare time, she volunteers with several organizations in technology, such as Women in Technology, Women in CyberSecurity, and WSC (Women's Society of Cyberjutsu). She works to actively educate and promote lifelong learning, serving as a Technical Mentor for local CyberPatriot organizations, badge counselors for scouting organizations, as well as serving as Adjunct Professor for colleges where she teaches courses in Information Security, including Computer Forensics and Risk Assessment. You can find her on Twitter @vamegabyte or on LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/meglayton.

Karen McDaniel
Karen McDaniel | Information Security Program Lead, Fannie Mae

Karen McDaniel is an Information Security professional with over 20 years of experience managing cyber security initiatives, education and awareness programs, security operations activities and delivering leadership performance metrics. In her current role, Karen is responsible for leading a team in the development and delivery of cyber training and education to the entire organization. She has a strong background in developing plans and evaluating cyber training/education courses, methods and techniques based on instructional needs that enhance overall program awareness effectiveness. Karen has consulted and coached cyber security project teams through organizational change management and project implementation efforts. She has led cross-functional teams and has excellent stakeholder and client relationship management skills. Throughout her career at Fannie Mae, Karen has participated in several Women’s Resource Engagement Group (ERG) initiatives. She was selected to attend the UCLA Anderson School of Management Women’s Leadership Institute, where she earned a Certificate in Management Leadership. Karen has a M.S in Information Management from Trinity Washington University and a B.S. in Information Technology from University of Phoenix.

Who Should Attend

While we are dedicated to bringing talented women together to celebrate and foster their passion and drive for cybersecurity, we welcome everyone - all genders, identities, and generations!

This event is suitable for information security decision makers, including: CXO, VP of IT, Director of IT; mid-level information security management (Senior Security Manager, IT Security Manager, IT Manager) and technical information security practitioners (Security Engineer, Messaging Architect, IT Analyst). This event is not open to channel or technology partners.

Government and public sector employees are reminded to ensure that their acceptance and participation are permitted by applicable rules and regulations.

NOTE: Registration requires a valid email address from your organization’s domain, so Gmail, Hotmail, AOL, Yahoo or any other ISP are not accepted. Yahoo or any other ISP are not accepted.