CyberWire Daily - Anisha Patel: Right along with them. [Program management] [Career Notes]

Episode Date: November 28, 2021

Associate Director at Raytheon Intelligence and Space in the Cyber Protection Services Division Anisha Patel always loved math and it defined her career journey. As a first-generation American from an Asian household, Anisha said she was destined for a STEM-focused career and chose electrical engineering. She began her career and remains at Raytheon (formerly E-Systems) working in several areas of the business thanks to her skills and informal mentors. Starting a rotational assignment in program management (7 years ago), Anisha said she "went to the dark side and then the hole closed and there I ended up." Anisha talks about the need to bring diversity of thought into the industry and adds to her team with this in mind. We thank Anisha for sharing her story with us. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

You're listening to the Cyber Wire Network, powered by N2K. and VPNs, yet breaches continue to rise by an 18% year-over-year increase in ransomware attacks and a $75 million record payout in 2024. These traditional security tools expand your attack surface with public-facing IPs that are exploited by bad actors more easily than ever with AI tools. It's time to rethink your security. Thank you. Learn more at zscaler.com slash security. Hello, my name is Anisha Patel. I'm an associate director at Raytheon Intelligence and Space based in Washington, D.C. And I work in the Cyber Protection Services Division. I would like to say it was some momentous, you know, like dawning of experience that I had. But honestly, it just comes down to the fact that, you know, I grew up as a first-generation American from an Asian household.

So our focus was always mostly on STEM-related type of topics. So the choices of things we had to do in life always centered around science, technology, engineering, and math. As a child, I was always interested in math. That was my strong suit, more than the life sciences. So that basically ruled out medicine pretty quickly. Since I had a strong desire to focus on math, I selected engineering as my career choice. My parents were also from a math and engineering background. That's what folks came here from other countries to excel in.

Stick to what's tried and tested, as opposed to trying something sort of off the wall and new. Because never mind anything outside of science and math was off the wall and new. I wanted to pick a bigger school that had more than just engineering to it, so that it would offer me the option of possibly switching gears if I had to. From there, I ended up choosing electrical engineering just because it had more of a math focus and less of a science focus to it. more of a math focus and less of a science focus to it. You know, in high school, you never realized how few women there are in STEM until you get to college. Because, you know, in high school, everybody has to take everything. So from there, I was basically worked for a year and then decided to go to grad school. And since I did still enjoy

engineering, I went and actually went to grad school at Georgia Tech and got my master's in electrical as well. When I was at Tech, Raytheon actually came down to campus to recruit. So I have grown up in the Washington, D.C. area my whole life, and we'd always seen the eSystems building. Everybody knew eSystems, which was our legacy company prior to Raytheon. They always knew that they did, you know, the cool black world secret spy stuff, right? So Raytheon comes down to campus

to recruit at that point. It was Raytheon eSystems. And since they were local to the area, I interviewed with them and ultimately was given an offer to join eSystems in Falls Church, Virginia as a hardware engineer. Basically building ground stations for the Global Hawk unmanned aerial vehicle. Had some pretty good mentors that I didn't even realize it was not a formal mentorship,

but people who suggested or pushed me into different areas of the company and different programs based on what they saw as a skill set that I had. I got requested to do a rotational assignment in program management because I wanted to basically round out the engineers to understand the finance side. And that was back in 2007. And I guess my rotation has yet to end. I went to the dark side and then the hole closed and there I ended up. I've heard it said many times, program managers worry about everything. And over the years, I have realized you do worry about everything from recruiting to our people getting their ethics training done on time, as a customer, having a meeting that we need to prepare for.

Now, of course, these days, it's all about COVID and vaccinations and mandates and all that stuff. So I'd say on any given day, I couldn't tell you what I focus on because it's sort of, you're always looking into the future as well as the present. STEM has definitely increased its breadth of topics. So it's not as narrow focus as when I was in school that either you're an engineering major or you're a math major or you're some sort of science major and that's it. Now I think we've broadened that scope to include things like cybersecurity and cloud architectures and things that allow people more avenues to get into STEM than what we had back in the day. to get into STEM than what we had back in the day. I do see a lot more uniqueness of the candidates coming forward from a skill set standpoint. It's not just their traditional BS, BA,

and some sort of STEM-related career, but it might be a certification, or it might be their career took a different path from what their degree was in, but they still excelled at it. I see a lot more folks coming in, which includes allowing a lot more females in through the non-traditional path, which is good. If you look at the latest college statistics out there,

there are just more women on campus now than there were. The hope is that general population increasing to female means that more of those females are picking STEM careers as well. But I think even if you don't do it in college, you can look at industry and look at all the various ways that people can get into a particular field. In my ideal world, you would never even see the name of the candidate. We'd just be reviewing the experience portion of resumes and then deciding whether to interview because that way you're not basically detracting yourself one way or the other of you're looking at what their capabilities are and you're not just narrowing it down to

one particular type of skill set or one particular type of experience. You're looking across the board to bring in that diversity of thought. I got results. I drove teams to their top performance and capability and then held myself to that same high standard. I was not a do as you say, not as I do type of person, but I was right along with them, achieving the best of me as well as the best of them. Thank you. partner with ThreatLocker, a cybersecurity solution trusted by businesses worldwide. ThreatLocker is a full suite of solutions designed to give you total control, stopping unauthorized applications, securing sensitive data, and ensuring your organization runs smoothly and securely. Visit ThreatLocker.com today to see how a default-deny approach can keep your company safe and compliant.