Christie Hutcherson

First and foremost, I had two parents who told me I could achieve and do anything if I put my mind to it and worked really hard and dedicated myself to it. Hard work equals the output, and I credit my mom and dad for that foundation. I've also had really good mentors around me. I've purposely sought out individuals who are smarter and brighter than me to learn from them and listen. I think a skill that we need to get back to more is really, truly listening and not speaking. I've been really fortunate to surround myself with people who have helped shape my career and taught me so much.

The best career advice I would give, especially targeting younger women, is to fail faster. Failure is not a negative, it's actually a positive. You have to turn the negative thoughts and negativity into positive outcomes. When you look at where you've been and what you've done wrong, it's an incredible opportunity to learn, to grow, create, and improve. So it has to be looked at as a positive thing, not a negative. If you get knocked down, get back up. Also, surround yourself with positive-thinking people, because the negative will always outweigh the positive. You have to drown out that noise, because not everybody wants to see you succeed. Don't ever listen to other voices. Have your own personal internal compass and have a vision wall. Go for that vision, go for that dream, and don't let people tell you you cannot.

This is a tough field. You're going to be knocked down, you're going to deal with a lot of personalities in this male-dominated space, and there's going to be a lot of stereotyping around you. You have to drown out the noise and rise above it, and just do the best that you can. You can only control what's around you and your environment, right? So take what you can control. Don't worry about the things you can't control, and focus on your mission and your vision. The same advice I give to all young women applies here: fail faster, because failure is actually a positive. When you get knocked down, get back up, surround yourself with positive-thinking people, have your own personal internal compass, and don't let people tell you you cannot.

The challenges are easy to identify. We live in a very different security threat environment, even more so than it was 2 years, or 5, or even 10 years ago. The security landscape is constantly changing, and the threat environment changes, so it's an evolution. We always have to reinvent security and how we look at it, and I love that part of this. As for opportunities, we're presented with incredible opportunities daily, again because of the threat environment that we're in. We're asked all the time to solve complex issues, and so that's very challenging to our teams, and we thrive on that. Being able to think outside of that box, look at new technologies, new human intelligence, and different tools that we have, and bringing those tools together in a collaborative way to solve complex problems is what drives us.

The values most important to me are integrity, honesty, and trust. In this field that I work in, you have to have a lot of trust. These principles guide everything I do, both professionally and personally.