WiCyS is a global nonprofit community dedicated to recruiting, retaining and advancing women in cybersecurity through mentorship, technical training, professional development, thought leadership, networking and career opportunities.

WiCyS started in 2013 by Dr. Ambareen Siraj through a National Science Foundation grant awarded to Tennessee Tech University. In less than ten short years, it has grown into an organization representing a leading alliance between trailblazers from academia, government and industry.

Lynn Dohm’s area of focus is on the most valuable asset of cybersecurity: people.

Lynn is the Executive Director of Women in CyberSecurity (WiCyS), where she channels her passion for building a strong cybersecurity workforce into mobilizing the recruitment, retention, and advancement of women in the field.

With over two decades of experience, Lynn has become a key strategist, aligning businesses, nonprofits, and grant-funded initiatives to cybersecurity workforce initiatives and goals. Her dedication to advancing women in lucrative cybersecurity careers over the last 16 years has made her an influential voice in shaping the workforce of tomorrow. Lynn’s leadership has established WiCyS as a leading model of how a collaborative, multi-organizational ecosystem approach can strengthen the cybersecurity workforce.

Source: WiCyS page

Dr. Ambareen Siraj is the founder of the Women in Cybersecurity (WiCyS) non-profit organization and serves as a board member in her personal capacity and time. She is a program director at the National Science Foundation. As the Emeritus professor of computer science, she served as the founding director of the Cybersecurity Education, Research, and Outreach Center at Tennessee Tech until June 3, 2022.

Dr. Siraj’s research areas of interest include smart grid security, sensor alert fusion with alert correlation and alert clustering, security metrics, security education and workforce development. She has authored/co- authored more than fifty journal and conference articles in these areas.

She has led National Science Foundation projects including: “Tennessee Cybercorps: A Hybrid Program in Cybersecurity”, “Tennessee Tech Gen-Cyber Camps”, “Capacity Building in Cybersecurity: Broadening Participation of Women in Cybersecurity through Women in Cybersecurity Conference & Professional Development”, “CyberWorkshops: Resources and Strategies for Teaching Cybersecurity in Computer Science”, and “Security Knitting Kit: Integrating Security into Traditional CS Courses”.

Source: WiCyS page

Shawn Purvis serves as President and CEO of Sabel Systems, part of the Sagewind Capital Portfolio. As CEO of Sabel Systems, Ms. Purvis is responsible for all aspects of Sabel’s growth, M&A, product development and people strategy. Sabel is a leading provider of digital engineering, acquisition, manufacturing, supply chain and logistics solutions.  Shawn has recently been named as a member of the George Mason University Board of Visitors through June 30, 2029.

Over the course of Shawn’s 30 years of P&L responsibilities, she has led billion dollar organizations in the areas of defense, intelligence and cyber security technical solutions in support of the warfighter and intelligence customers both domestically and globally. Ms. Purvis has in-depth skills in driving strategy, policy, corporate strategic campaigns and financial/non-financial goals across the company. She actively participates in corporate governance in areas of risks, benefits, cyber and policies and engagements with the Board of Directors. She has a passion for customer service and delivery in support of our nation’s most critical missions.

Katie Moussouris founded Luta Security in 2016 fresh off the heels of launching Hack the Pentagon, the first ever bug bounty of the US government. She named her company after the local nickname of the CHamoru island of Rota, where her mother was born in the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands, a US Territory.

Katie was born and raised in Boston, MA and was encouraged by her biochemist mother to study science. Her father was a Greek immigrant jeweler who taught her valuable lessons about running a bootstrapped profitable business. Katie fosters a company culture of equity and healthy boundaries, with all Luta Security FTEs paid for full time work with a 32-hour 4-day work week. She has grown Luta Security proving that businesses can be profitable by putting people first.

Source: Luta webpage

Liza Wilson Durant serves as the associate provost for strategic initiatives and community engagement at George Mason University and professor and associate dean for strategic initiatives and community engagement in the College of Engineering and Computing.

She works to build meaningful partnerships across the university with external corporate, government, academic, non-profit, and global entities to support the mission of Mason’s strategic objectives.

Prior to her appointment as associate provost, she served as chair of the Sid and Reva Dewberry Department of Civil, Environmental, and Infrastructure Engineering, where she has been a faculty member since 2010.

She received her BS and MS degrees from Cornell University and Stanford University respectively, and her Ph.D. in environmental engineering from the Johns Hopkins University.

As director of the first-of-its-kind BS in cyber-security engineering program at Mason, Peggy Brouse is passionate about building a new breed of cyber-security professional. As the nature of cyber threats has grown, the demand for timely response and effective action has built the groundwork for a discipline of anticipatory action and security design. The future of cyber-resilience relies on products designed to resist cyber-attack. Engineers who graduate from Mason’s cyber-security will be prepared to work on teams that develop new technologies designed to safeguard vital systems and data. Brouse’s career in researching requirements engineering, decision support, and process improvement, along with her expertise in engineering education has uniquely equipped her to direct the course of this pioneer program.

Research Interests

Systems Requirements

Degrees

• PhD, Information Technology, George Mason University
• BS, Computer Science, American University
• MBA, Marymount University
• BA, Creative Writing, California State University, Long Beach

Source: Web page