Women in Cybersecurity - Why the industry desperately needs them, and why they should get involved

Chenxi Wang is the Founder and General Partner of Rain Capital, a cybersecurity focused venture. A well-known operator, technologist, and thought leader in the cybersecurity industry, Chenxi also serves on the board of directors for MDU Resources, a Fortune 500 company. Chenxi recently founded the Forte Group, a women-in-tech advocacy group. Previously, Chenxi served on the board for OWASP. She was CSO at Twistlock, VP for Intel Security, and VP of research for Forrester. She was recognized as a Women-of-Influence by SC Magazine. Chenxi's career began as a faculty member at Carnegie Mellon University. Chenxi holds a PhD in computer science from the University of Virginia.

Renuka Nadkarni is the Chief Product Officer at Aryaka, overseeing engineering, cloud operations, product management and marketing. She is responsible for the company's technology strategy and execution. She is a security veteran with 20+ years of experience building new businesses, at startups and at large, publicly traded companies. Before joining Aryaka, she held the CTO of Security position at F5 Inc., where she was instrumental in driving F5's entrance into the security market. Previously, she held various positions and built cutting-edge cloud and security products, and launched new businesses at F5, VMware, Infoblox, and launching startups. Renuka holds an MS in Electric Engineering from the University of Houston and a BS in Electric Engineering from the University of Mumbai.

Tschudy Smith is ForgeRock’s Chief People Officer (CPO), bringing more than twenty years of human resources experience for large enterprises. Tschudy leads with the mission to see others at their best, building programs that help organizations recruit and retain top talent. As CPO, Tschudy leads talent strategy, including employee experience, rewards, attraction, retention, development diversity and inclusion globally. Previously she was the Senior Vice President of Human Resources at Cisco, where she spent 16 years providing strategic consulting to leaders and teams. Tschudy graduated from the University of Denver and earned her master’s degree from San Jose State University.

Aanchal Gupta is the Deputy CISO and Corporate Vice President at Microsoft. Aanchal leads a diverse team of security experts working around the clock to protect one of the world’s largest corporate networks and providing the first line of defense for billions of customers against an evolving security landscape. Previously, as Chief Information Security Officer for Novi (Calibra) at Facebook, she led a team responsible for assessing and mitigating security risks across Facebook's cryptocurrency initiative. Aanchal joined Facebook in 2016 after serving as Chief Information Security Officer at Microsoft for Skype and Skype for Business. Prior to Microsoft, Aanchal led Yahoo's Global Identity team, contributing to various authentication and authorization open standards such as OpenID and OAuth. Aanchal was named one of Business Insider’s “Most powerful female engineers of 2018”. She serves on the board of Silvergate Capital Corporation (NYSE:SI), Internet Security Research Group (ISRG), and is a fellow at the RSA (Royal Society for the encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce). She also serves on Silicon Valley CISO Investments’ (SVCI) board and invests in and guides cybersecurity startups. Aanchal is also a staunch advocate for building diverse teams and serves on the review board for the Grace Hopper, Enigma, and Black Hat conferences.