Tracy Maleeff: Invite more people to dance. [Analyst]

Tracy Maleeff: Tracy Maleeff, I am a cyber analyst with a Fortune 500 company.

Tracy Maleeff: I spent a total of fifteen years as a librarian mostly in law firms. I have a masters of library and information science degree. 

Tracy Maleeff: About say three years ago, I decided that I had reached everything that I could accomplish and I just didn’t find any opportunities that interested me. So, a friend, who was a longtime IT person moved into security, saw me spinning my wheels and finally just said, let me tell you about, you know, the backend. 

Tracy Maleeff: I took a very librarian approach to it and I set up Google alerts for different tech issues, security issues. And I realized that I kept clicking on the articles that were security-related. So then I was just this librarian with security as my quirky hobby. 

Tracy Maleeff: I created my own company, Sherpa Intelligence. And February 2016, I was finished at the law firm. I had quit. You know, I quit my job that had the office with the floor to ceiling windows and the door and two weeks after that, I was on a plane to San Francisco to attend RSA. 

Tracy Maleeff: It was exhilarating. There were some nights when I first started that I just was so happy and ecstatic that I couldn’t sleep. And, I wanted to go to as many conferences as I could to just learn and to meet people and I really enjoyed going to the exhibit halls which I know most people avoid because I wanted to know who the players were. I don’t think people understand how crucial, you know, human to human contact is. You’re selling yourself, so you need to be your best sales person and your best advocate. Know that your skills you have have value, but you need to be able to explain them to people.

Tracy Maleeff: I ran into some people who just dismissed me as soon as they heard the “l” word of library. I had to be ready to explain my skillset and you need to be able to do that so you need to have confidence. And, you need to be bold enough to go up to someone. 

Tracy Maleeff: Be courageous, be curious, and, be thoughtful. And, what I mean by that is you need to be able to put yourself out there and be vulnerable, you know. Hiring managers have an open mind when it comes to to diversity and that means many different things. That means looking at liberal arts majors, you know. It’s enough to say you know that you’re open to diversity, but you actually need to include people. Diversity is inviting someone to a party. Inclusion is asking them to dance. So, ask more people to dance. 

Tracy Maleeff: I’ve just embraced it. I went all in and I like to bring with me this special brand of viewing security through this library science lens. So I am just doing my part to represent library sciences and security.