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By Sean Martin and Selena Templeton
Welcome to a new episode of the The Academy on ITSPmagazine! Sean Martin and Selena Templeton had the great pleasure of sitting down with Heather Ricciuto, Academic Outreach Leader at IBM Security, at this year’s RSA Conference.
In this podcast, we talk about all things educational when it comes to attracting and retaining cybersecurity talent. Heather’s path into cybersecurity was accidental, which makes her a great advocate for other non-traditional paths into this industry.
Traditionally, companies like IBM have focused on recruiting from 4-year universities, but how are you going to build a pipeline when you’re recruiting from the same top schools and competing for the same talent?
IBM’s “new collar” initiative (there’s blue collar workers and white collar workers — and IBM coined this phrase new collar which is a mix of technical and business skills) focuses on skills rather than degrees alone and attracting new talent from non-traditional talent pools (2-year schools, veterans, internships, mentorships, self-trained folks, people who have cybersecurity certifications but not degrees). As Heather says, it’s all about opening the aperture.
Listen to this podcast to hear about all the things that Heather and IBM are doing to educate, inform, attract and retain a wide variety of talent to the cybersecurity industry.
About Heather Ricciuto
A 28-year veteran of IBM, Heather spent much of her career within IBM's Supply Chain, developing operations, transformation, people management and project management skills along the way. Today, Heather is Global Leader of IBM Security’s Academic Outreach Program, partnering with educational and research institutions around the globe to develop top cybersecurity talent and close the skills gap.
Heather’s passions include workforce diversity, the advancement of women, volunteering, continuous learning, traveling, and spending time with her family.
