A reflective narrative on building a tech career through open learning, mastering frontier technologies like AI governance, and discovering that true leadership means elevating others through empathy and authentic mentorship.
Influential Woman · Technology and Cybersecurity
Akanksha Pathak
Senior Consultant, Visa
Foster City, CA 94404
13Years experience
1Article published
In Conversation
Akanksha Pathak for Bold. Brilliant. Unstoppable.
Read the transcript
Akanksha Pathak: And the first thing is you have to master your technical rigour, right?
What does being an Influential Woman mean to you?
Akanksha Pathak: To me, being an influential woman has little to do with title and spotlights. It's more about using your technical voice and your vantage point to elevate everybody around you. And the first thing is you have to master your technical rigour, right? Be it anything. So for me, like building an undeniable expertise in frontier spaces like cyber and AI governance, so your perspective becomes a trusted anchor for strategic decisions. The second is you need to learn in public, right? So demystify those complex concepts in real time and share knowledge openly to lift up the broader tech community. The third is to really elevate others, you know, carrying a vivid memory of being an individual contributor in the trenches to build an environment where your team feels recognised, supported and valued. It really is important in my view. And then you have to balance humility with strength, which is like you stay grounded and you will be open to learning while remaining fierce and unyielding when standing up for your principles and your team. And for me, those are the things that make a woman a really influential woman.
What's one piece of advice you would give to younger women chasing their dreams?
Akanksha Pathak: The one piece of advice is seek out the mentors who genuinely elevate you and never try to build your career in isolation. Ambition is often framed as a solo sprint, but. In reality, sustainable growth happens through connection. So don't hesitate to reach out to leaders you admire, ask targeted questions to them, surround yourself with people who recognise your potential even before you see it yourself. A great mentor will not just offer advice, they will actually teach you how to lead with generosity. They'll teach you and they'll show you how to elevate others and they'll remind you that a true success is measured by the doors that you open for the people coming up behind you.
Full transcript available
Her Story
About Akanksha
Akanksha Pathak serves as Senior Cybersecurity Consultant and Senior Manager at Visa, leading enterprise-scale third-party cybersecurity initiatives across high-stakes financial ecosystems. With over a decade of security experience spanning Visa, EY, Boeing, Colgate-Palmolive, and TCS, she specializes in evaluating enterprise vendors and collaborating with major AI leaders—including Anthropic and Microsoft—to elevate and harden third-party security programs.
At the forefront of emerging technology governance, Akanksha integrates AI and agentic automation into security operations to scale team efficiency, threat modeling, and third-party risk controls. Beyond model training restrictions, tenant isolation, and cloud security architectures, her technical purview extends into forward-looking defense domains, including blockchain infrastructure and post-quantum cryptography. An active practitioner-researcher, she recently published research on AI agents.
Akanksha earned her Bachelor's degree in Computer Engineering in India before completing a Master of Science in Management Information Systems at Texas A&M University—an academic pivot that sparked her dedicated focus on cybersecurity. Based in Foster City, California, she continually advances her technical practice through continuous research and top industry credentials, including CISSP and Certified Threat Modeling Professional (CTMP) designations. She also remains actively engaged with the broader engineering community through involvement in professional groups such as LASCON, SVCC, and IEEE.
Beyond her corporate and research leadership, Akanksha is a dedicated writer and tech podcaster. Through her Substack publication and podcast, she demystifies emerging AI trends, digital trust, and modern security architecture—translating complex security concepts into accessible, actionable insights for builders, leaders, and technologists.
Her Interview
Ten minutes with Akanksha
01What do you attribute your success to?
I attribute my success to three things:
- Maintaining a deep technical foundation while learning to speak the language of business strategy
- Staying relentlessly curious about emerging technologies before they hit the mainstream, and
- Building genuine bridges across teams.
Security isn't just about setting up technical controls—it's about enabling safe innovation and translating complex risks into clear, actionable choices.
02What’s the best career advice you’ve ever received?
Someone I look up to advised me: 'Never keep your learning in a silo; share it as you build.' It’s easy to feel like you need to be the absolute authority on a subject before speaking up. Embracing the habit of 'learning in public' led me to start my Substack, launch my podcast, and stay active in tech communities. Teaching others and translating complex concepts not only sharpens your own technical rigor, but it also builds an invaluable community around your work.
03What advice would you give to young women entering your industry?
Never shrink your technical voice to make a room feel more comfortable. In heavy engineering and cybersecurity spaces, it is easy to feel like you have to prove why you belong before you even speak. Focus on building undeniable technical depth—understand the architecture, the threat vectors, and the systems inside and out. When you master your craft, your competence becomes your armor, and your expertise speaks louder than any bias in the room.
04What are the biggest challenges or opportunities in your field right now?
<ol><li>Governing Autonomous AI Agents: We've shifted from static software to AI systems that call APIs and make decisions on their own. Securing these workflows requires building real-time guardrails against memory poisoning, prompt injection, and rogue agent actions before damage occurs.</li><li>Upstream Supply chain: Modern enterprise security is deeply interconnected. A single vulnerability or missing control in an upstream AI provider or cloud integration can instantly ripple across downstream environments. </li><li>Defensive Automation at Scale: While AI expands the threat landscape, it also gives us unprecedented defensive power. Automating threat modeling, log triage, and questionnaire analysis eliminates routine manual bottlenecks, freeing security teams to focus on critical risk choices. </li><li>Security as an Innovative Enabler: The biggest opportunity is establishing proactive governance for frontier tech—from post-quantum cryptography to agentic workflows. When security builds trust early, the business can innovate at full speed without taking uncalculated risks. </li></ol>
05What values are most important to you in your work and personal life?
<ol><li>Integrity First: In cybersecurity, trust is everything. Doing the quiet, rigorous technical work behind the scenes to keep systems safe matters far more to me than cutting corners. </li><li>Constant Curiosity: Tech shifts too fast for static playbooks. I love running toward unmapped, noisy problems—like AI agent governance or post-quantum defense—and figuring them out as I go.</li><li>Open Knowledge Sharing: Gatekeeping expertise serves no one. Translating complex security concepts into plain English through writing, podcasting, and community involvement is how I give back.</li><li>Real World Impact: Security shouldn't be an administrative roadblock; it should be an enabler. I care about solving hard technical problems so teams can innovate safely.</li></ol>
Her Content Hub
Articles by Akanksha
Learning in Public, Leading with Empathy
From Technical Mastery to Empathetic Leadership: A Decade-Long Journey in Cybersecurity and Team Elevation
When I arrived in the United States in 2018 to pursue my Master's degree at Texas A&M University, my intention was straightforward: build a solid technical foundation. My journey wasn't defined by dramatic hurdles; rather, it was shaped by staying open to opportunities as they emerged and making a conscious choice to share what I learned as I learned it. That simple shift—embracing open, real-time learning—fundamentally transformed my perspective. What began as a personal strategy to process complex technical concepts quickly evolved into a core commitment to give back to the technology community.
Mastering Frontier Tech with Empathy and Conviction
Over a decade into my cybersecurity career, my fascination with technology hasn't faded. Even as my learning style continues to evolve, I thrive on the daily challenge of navigating frontier spaces like AI governance and agentic systems—striving every day to master these tools rather than become managed by them. Working in high-stakes technical environments has forged my professional core: I've learned to listen with deep empathy while remaining fierce, confident, and unyielding when standing up for a critical security architecture or risk decision.
Leadership as Elevation: From IC to Team Lead
Transitioning from an individual contributor into managing a team at Visa has deepened my view of impact. I've been fortunate to learn from exceptional mentors, particularly my VP, Mr. Ravi Soman, whose leadership style reinforced a fundamental truth: genuine leadership isn't about title or authority—it is about elevation. Having spent years in the trenches as an individual contributor across different organizations, I carry a vivid memory of how it felt at every single stage. Now that I lead a team, my highest priority is ensuring they feel valued, supported, and recognized at every step of the way—just as I yearned for in my early career and received from leaders who cared.
The Dual Engine: Humility and Fierce Strength
True growth in modern tech requires balancing two seemingly opposite forces: keeping a humble mind that remains eager to learn while maintaining the fierce strength needed to advocate for your team, your work, and your security posture. You don't need a flawless, pre-written playbook to make an impact or inspire those around you. Share your journey as it unfolds, stay hungry in the face of rapid change, and use your voice to build a path where everyone on your team can thrive.
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