Voices of the Vigilant EP02 | Hacking the Glass Ceiling: How Women Can Win in Cybersecurity with Stacey Champagne
In This Episode
In this episode, Stacey emphasizes the importance of leveraging diverse experiences and unique journeys, particularly how professionals from non-traditional backgrounds can add significant value to the industry. Hear her inspiring narrative of transitioning from a graphic design career to a meaningful role within cybersecurity, proving that diverse paths lead to innovative solutions.
Join us as we explore the mission of Hacker in Heels, which aims to empower women to secure prominent roles across all levels of cybersecurity—not just within executive positions but as changemakers within their organizations.
Discover the unique programs offered by Hacker in Heels, including career transition support, community events, and resources tailored to foster personal and professional growth.
Moving beyond certification, Stacey shares impactful success stories from women who have transformed their careers through Hacker in Heels. This episode encourages everyone to reflect on their own intrinsic value and how their diverse experiences shape the future of cybersecurity.
With meaningful conversations about equity and access, Stacey and Jess dive deep into the systemic challenges facing women in tech, advocating for a fairer and more inclusive industry. Tune in to be inspired, informed, and empowered.
Whether you're just starting in your career or looking to make a change, this episode underscores the essential role of community support and the value of resilience in achieving success.
You won't want to miss the insights and motivation shared in this vibrant discussion. Be sure to subscribe, share, and leave a review to help us amplify these important conversations!
Tune into the audio version of this episode by clicking the player below:
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VIDEO: Voices of the Vigilant EP02
“Hacking the Glass Ceiling: How Women Can Win in Cybersecurity” with Stacey Champagne, founder and CEO of Hacker in Heels
About the Guest
Stacey Champagne is the Founder & CEO of Hacker in Heels, a pioneering organization dedicated to elevating women into positions of power within the cybersecurity industry. As both an active cybersecurity practitioner and transformational coach, she continues to lead from the front lines while guiding others to success.
Drawing from over a decade of experience securing Fortune 500 companies and startups, Stacey combines her technical expertise in insider risk, security investigations, and program management with professional coaching skills to transform women's careers.
Through carefully crafted content, specialized courses, personalized coaching, and strategic events, Hacker in Heels equips women to get paid their worth, secure promotions, and gain recognition for their contributions to the field. Stacey's innovative approach and proven track record of helping women navigate and thrive in traditionally male-dominated environments has earned industry-wide recognition, including the 2023 Cybersecurity Advocate of the Year Award from the Women's Society of Cyberjutsu.
Full Episode Transcript
Jess Vachon: 0:33
Hello everyone, Welcome to another episode of Voices of the Vigilant. My guest today is Stacey Champagne, founder and CEO of Hacker in Heels. Stacey, welcome to the show.
Stacey Champagne: 0:44
Thank you so much for having me.
Jess Vachon: 0:46
Love to have you here. We've known each other for a little bit of time. I follow a lot of your posts on LinkedIn. Just so excited to have you here as someone who fits the profile of Vigilant Violet and Voices of the Vigilant, because I see you as a little bit of a rebel, but a rebel in a good way, right, standing up for what you believe in. Before we dive into that, though, tell me a little bit about yourself and a little bit about Hacker in Heels.
Stacey Champagne: 1:15
Yeah, absolutely so. I'm the founder and CEO of Hacker in Heels. I established that company about five years ago based off of my experience of going from being a graphic designer pivoting into cybersecurity. I've been working in cybersecurity myself for nearly a decade, focused on insider threat and incident response, and I found that bringing my skills from being a designer into this industry actually was such a value add and boost to my effectiveness that I can imagine if I just you know, came straight into the industry through a traditional academic upbringing, through computer science or something right. It's because I started as a graphic designer that I learned how to communicate really complex, you know, pieces of information.
Stacey Champagne: 2:11
In that world it was around intelligence and here in cybersecurity, obviously we deal with a lot of things that are really can be really difficult to conceptualize and we need to be able to conceptualize not just to each other but to our stakeholders, to the business and the people that we support.
Stacey Champagne: 2:29
So found a lot of value in that Definitely changed my life from a personal trajectory of greater income and opportunities and all that kind of stuff and really wanted to lean into my overall entrepreneurship type interest in bringing that opportunity and realization to more women.
Stacey Champagne: 2:51
And so since then, the company's evolved. Today we really focus on helping women get into positions of power in cybersecurity and I specifically phrase it that way because I don't believe that and I think many people would agree with me that it's not just about becoming a CISO. We tend to hold that role to really high acclaim and accord, but at the same time, we really would benefit from having women present in all levels of cybersecurity and even those leading cybersecurity companies. You know, going beyond that, that particular C-suite role, that CISA role, into even bigger, impactful roles in building companies that are diverse and inclusive for us, is really where I think we're experiencing it. Now more than ever, we have to start building communities and workplaces designed by women and underrepresented identities and for us, and so that's where we're really charging towards today and focused on.
Jess Vachon: 4:09
That's great. I agree with so much of what you just said. I want to go back to something you said at the beginning, though, which is that you entered cybersecurity from what would be considered maybe a non-traditional pathway, and that you found value in that path. A lot of the times when I talk to mentees, they're coming from different industries Sometimes it's healthcare, sometimes it's law enforcement, the hotel industry and I talk to them about a concept that I have, which is intrinsic value.
Jess Vachon: 4:44
What do you bring to the table in your experiences that adds to or enhances your role in cybersecurity, and it's important that we look at that value. A lot of times, when people are struggling to get into the industry, we tell them well, you haven't had experience, so you can't be in cybersecurity, but we're failing to look at do they have good customer service skills? They worked in stressful situations. Those two items, in my opinion, are two of the most critical items for building your success in your cybersecurity career, and I appreciate that you mentioned that value that you had. That you brought to the field, you know, sans having any outside experience or growing up in the profession, so to speak, when someone comes to you and joins or partakes in some of the programs offered by Hacker in Heels. What can they expect from that experience?
Stacey Champagne: 5:46
Yeah, so we offer a variety of things. We're structured around a monthly membership type community currently, but within that you get access to different programs that we've developed. Like Changemakers, which is focused on exactly those career pivoters, has a ton of really great material. I had built it out at the time before I was a certified professional coach. I actually worked with certified professional coaches in developing the curriculum from that, because it's not just about you know whether or not you want to be in cybersecurity, but it's really whether or not making a career pivot is the right move for you. So we were really intentional about making sure that, like, yes, you're going to learn a little bit about what it takes to transition into the field, but also like you're going to learn about yourself throughout the process. So that way, even if you get to the end of our program and you decide that cybersecurity isn't for you, it's not like you wasted money or you wasted your time or whatnot. You still got to benefit from doing that career exploration. So that's one of the programs that you get access to.
Stacey Champagne: 6:58
We also do monthly connection calls and with that I invite people who are both in cybersecurity and also in tangential fields and specializations. I mean, we've had like like we had a wonderful woman at one point, amy, who came and did like somatic exercises with us, which really, really helps at the end of a very stressful day working in incident response to be able to do some of that like body, mind, movement and kind of separate and disconnect and and kind of heal from that. You know the stress of the day right. So we have people like that. But then we also have like really awesome you know people, leaders that you know in the industry, like we just had Mel Reyes, who you know has been a you know just tons of years of experience and influence across the cybersecurity industry. He came and talked with us last month and so that provides opportunity for all of us to get together once a month, learn and also be able to support one another.
Stacey Champagne: 8:09
And then, lastly, one of our biggest draws that we have and we have one going on right now is our study squads.
Stacey Champagne: 8:17
Right now we have about a dozen women who are studying for the CISSP and the way that we do it is that we really lean on peer teaching and so everybody gets assigned partners and over the 10-week experience they are responsible for basically going through the study guide and teaching each other some of the key concepts from it, and so then you get the benefit of not just reading the study guide but also like having to be able to validate your understanding by explaining it to other people. And I think it's such a steal because you know it comes with being a member of our community. The only extra cost is buying the study guide, and then you also get the opportunity to win prizes and everything you know, get access to our resources and sharing people, sharing resources on our platform and all that kind of stuff throughout the entire time. So you get that incentives and accountability and everything through it as well. So, yes, so much that we do.
Jess Vachon: 9:26
And what's so? I assume, as a business owner, as a leader, as a teacher, in this endeavor that you've pursued, that you want to measure the satisfaction and the accomplishments of those that go through the program. What has been the feedback that you've received from your participants?
Stacey Champagne: 9:47
It has been so great. I mean, the feedback is really in the actions that people take thereafter participating in our programs, right Like. We have people who went through Changemakers and literally went from being like. We have Sarah, who is a fashion designer. She has been working as a pen tester now for several years in cybersecurity, you know. We have Jamie, who retired from the military and worked on making her way through that transition into a cybersecurity position and she's been working successfully now for a couple of years.
Stacey Champagne: 10:27
We had a wonderful woman from Singapore, cj, who participated in our CISSP study sprint, which is something that we're going to be offering again later in the fall. Just that 30 days, really, like you know, accountable, structured, you know incentivized period to study for the CISSP, and she went on and passed and she's she's a CISSP now, you know, and so I'm excited to see what she's been able to do with that. So so, yeah, like the yes, everyone says really wonderful kind things about their experience and their appreciation of our programs and everything. But what I really lean into and really take as proof of impact the most are those kinds of stories. It's not what they're telling me, it's what I'm seeing in them.
Jess Vachon: 11:25
Sure, I love that. You know it's clear that you're asking for a commitment from participants. Right, you're asking for a financial commitment, but you're also asking for a time commitment, and then hearing the results should speak to the point that having a fee-based service makes sense. It took me a long time to come to this place of agreeing with you on this, but I got there by watching what you were doing and listening to the people you were working with and I think I mentioned this to you previously, but I'll say it again if I didn't you completely changed my idea of the model that I wanted for my own business.
Jess Vachon: 12:07
It makes sense that if you're going to be spending your time and your own capital because I know you're doing that that at the least you break even, but that there's an expectation that people are going to give everything to the experience, because when they go out in the field, as you and I know, there's a tremendous expectation that you're going to commit your time to learning on your own, investing sometimes in your own training, so you can be successful to whatever end you want to get to, whether you want to stay as an individual contributor, or you want to move into a management role, or maybe you want to go out and be a coach on your own. So I want to just give you thanks for at least changing my mind on that. I'm sure you probably changed a lot of other minds on the model that you've chosen, but I think, in my own small opinion, I think it was a brilliant decision on your part.
Stacey Champagne: 13:00
Thank you, I appreciate that. And yeah, thank you, I appreciate that. And yeah, you know, we, as women especially, spend a lot of time investing in gathering other. We do ourselves a disservice. We basically devalue ourselves and each other through that, and so there are ways to, you know, recognize that, you know people have, you know, certain socioeconomic constraints but, at the same time, enable fair access.
Stacey Champagne: 13:52
Some of the strategies that I do in my business that enable this are the sliding scale for a Hacker in Heels salon.
Stacey Champagne: 14:00
We charge a different amount for people who are new to cyber versus people who have been in it for 10, 15 years, because, you know, the assumption and experience is that when you're higher up in the industry, it's actually more likely that your business is going to pay on your behalf to attend something like that, versus someone at the beginning of their career, potentially at a lower salary, may not have the opportunity to have it paid for and therefore will be paying for it themselves.
Stacey Champagne: 14:26
We still want to be able to enable that equitable access and, at the same time, too, make sure that this business continues to exist. At the end of the day, we all have to make money to have roofs over our head, food on our table and the reality is is all of the, the, the, the little details that go into pulling something like like the, the salons or even our online community off. I mean even just the online community, the. The flat cost of operating that on a month to month is over a thousand dollars, so a thousand dollars to have that space exists. Where does that money come from if you are not paying for it in some way, shape or form? Right, so it's important, right, like women should not have to incur debt to be of service, if that makes sense.
Jess Vachon: 15:20
No, it's an interesting point, right, because we're expected to do all the things that men do, but we have a little bit higher of a challenge to get there and we don't. I don't think we have a choice in it, do we? I mean, we have to do these things and, to the point you made, these courses are extremely expensive and people starting out in their career probably for their first 10 years in cybersecurity those courses are completely out of reach. When I look at what Hacker in Heels does, you're putting it within reach your organization right With someone who can find a way to make it work for you, rather than to have to go into debt to take all these courses that might not pay off for you. We can look across the industry. We can look across LinkedIn right now and see all the posts from people who said you know, I got my master's degree in cybersecurity or I invested in eight courses at $8,000 a piece to get all these certifications and I can't find a job. We have to think about that right. So some of us who are pursuing our passion projects and I really do believe that what you have is a passion project are trying to find a way to do that to contribute our time to help others but at the end of the day, to at least break even.
Jess Vachon: 16:49
I don't think people understand the challenge of pursuing a dream that pays off for other people in terms of how much it costs. I look at how much I've spent just to get Vigilant Violet to this point of having the podcast and everything. I make zero money right now on it. As you pointed out, there's expenses every month. There's a lot of work you have to do outside of this. I know that you probably have some partnerships you've built to help you with that, but you've got to pay for those too every time you have one of those partnerships. So when we consider costs, relatively speaking, it sounds like Hacker in Heels is a value, like a huge savings for people and something that they should be pursuing. Just my own diatribe on that for your edification.
Stacey Champagne: 17:38
Yeah, I mean literally the whole point of change. Makers. A big aspect of it is helping people discern between going and doing a degree program or doing one of these boot camps or something else, and recognizing the potential cost of it. I mean, you know, if someone just launches them out in, launches himself into cybersecurity, without doing some of that reflection and coaching and review first, I mean they could waste thousands of dollars versus just spending the twenty five dollars a month to access the platform, to get access to change makers, to go through the material and and realize that like, oh wait, I might not actually have to go get a college degree to get into cybersecurity.
Stacey Champagne: 18:29
I could actually take one of these other approaches, you know, and so there's so much value there and and and also, too, I kind of want to go back to like you know, you, you made a comment about how, like you're not making money at this right now, I'm not making money at this right now, but but we need women to run companies making massive amounts of money, because when you run a company, and when I run a company, we run it with our values first, and our values are very different from the values that we currently see from some of our you know monolith companies out there in regards to how they treat employees, how they pay all that kind of stuff, Hacker in Heels like. From the very start, we offer to pay anyone and everybody who is willing to come be a guest mentor. We offer them at least something. If they you A lot of them will decide that they want to pay that money forward to being able to fund subsidized memberships, which is great.
Stacey Champagne: 19:31
But even just offering that and not expecting free labor of people know an important message to have out there Um, and you know I, as I'm building my company, I'm looking at companies like um. A great one out there is like Shani Nicholas she has a astrology app and the way that she runs her business is like making sure that everyone's making at least like $80,000 a year. Or like Tori Dunlap with Financial Feminist she has like week long breaks every quarter for her entire staff, you know. And so all of these kinds of you know benefits that really recognize and uplift people versus exploiting them. Those will only come about for people when we have individuals building companies based on those values, which I know you will do and I will do.
Jess Vachon: 20:34
Yeah, I hate to say this, but money is power, and we see that right now in the US, right, we see those with the money have a tremendous amount of power. And if those of living in a capitalistic society, right, um, those of us that don't carry full privilege and full privilege by what? By that I mean? Those are those folks that are born and don't ever have to think about their color or their gender or their religion, and they navigate life just fine without that overhead noise in the background. That's privilege. It's not necessarily a bad thing. We're not saying privilege is a bad thing, but what I want people to understand and I think you do too is there's a lot of us, a good majority of us, that don't sit at the table with that, and I say that as someone who knows that, even as the person that I am, that I still have privilege over certain other people. So it is important to me and I hear that it's important to you that we affect that change, and so charging a fee, trying to make a little bit of a profit so we can gain some of that power, is important. It's definitely important.
Jess Vachon: 22:07
You mentioned something earlier that made me think about a post that you had recently. I think it was a couple of weeks ago, and I'm just going to go off the cuff here. I think the post was about the amount of effort you had put in during the year for certifications or training to advance your career and the fact that you looked at your spouse who had done none of that and was still doing just fine in their career. That post I think it went viral had a lot of comments on it. Talk about that post. Talk about what made you write that and what you had for feedback after that post.
Stacey Champagne: 22:48
I love all of the stories that people have come up with about where I was when I wrote that post, what happened that, you know, inspired that post, what the scene was, what our relationship is. All of that it has been truly entertaining to read. The fact is that we are, you know. So the post was exactly as what you said, right. It was a reflection of how women often have to lay out a 10-point achievement plan for every year performance and hit on those things or risk an excuse. And what I mean by an excuse it's that then you get to the conversations about pay and promotion and whatnot, and you're going to hear you can't get promoted, you can't get paid, you can't have the opportunity because you didn't do X, y, z right, and so a lot of times, for women specifically, it's about not having the certification, it's about not having spoken at events or, you know, done things that get you external validation of your competence, because apparently what we do in our organizations, you know, is not part of the measurement of performance. Sometimes it seems, seems um and so. So that was an illustration of how, like we have such stress put on us, to the point where it almost becomes like a fear that if we don't do those things, something bad is going to happen to us, and and I mean it has happened to us right Like we have been passed up for promotion, we have been paid less. This isn't hypothetical, this is reality for many women out there. Versus looking at the experience of my husband, who very clearly has what he needs to achieve spelled out for him in the military and, you know, if he's done those things, he doesn't have to worry about what else because it's all clearly defined. Versus with us, They'll just say they want these five things and once you complete them, they'll pull five more things out of the out of thin air that they never told you about and say well, these are the reasons why. This is why you're losing your job, this is why you're getting passive for promotion, this is why you're being laid off, whatever it might be, and so it's such a difference of experience being a man versus a woman, or an underrepresented identity in the workplace and in in how you can just go through life on the day to day and and and have that in the back of your mind as something that you like, worry about and get stressed out about and live with. Right.
Stacey Champagne: 26:02
For him it was just like no, I don't have anything to share and I'm okay with that. And I think that is where so many people were inserting themselves was in the idea of being okay with having done nothing, like so many people were not okay on his behalf of him having done nothing. The ability to do nothing in our capitalist society is such an privilege and and and gift, and um, almost like a middle finger to to capitalism. Um, that like yeah, like we should, that's something to celebrate. That's not something that we should look at as a negative. We should look at that as, like man, you escaped the system. Kudos to you, right.
Stacey Champagne: 27:06
And so, so, yeah, that that that post and and everybody's, so many people's response there was such a if you look at it closely, I'm sure you observed this is that the people who were having such a negative uproar about it how do they look? Like they identify Versus, like all the people they're mixed in there they got it right and those, ultimately, are my target audience, right, like those are the people I want to connect with, or the people who get it, who read it and immediately understood what we were going for with that kind of post, and many people said they saw themselves in it. Right, and those people were majority women, right? The people who were really upset and made it go viral, they were men.
Jess Vachon: 28:01
So we don't have a choice. That was that's the point, right. We don't have a choice. I say that we do. We have a choice. Where we don't do it and we don't get promoted, we don't get the opportunities, we lose our jobs.
Jess Vachon: 28:18
I've had that happen to me. I'm sure you've had it happen to you. I'm sure a lot of people that are going to listen to this have had it happen to them as well. That is a lot, and we hear it from all different communities. Well, I'm not the first one to say this.
Jess Vachon: 28:32
We hear it all the time and people are vocal about it because we are expected to do more, to sit at the same table as people who are not required to do more. That's why we're vocal about it. I believe that people who don't have to do that and they still get reap the benefits of what society provides them. They're so vocal in opposition to it because they know deep down that they have that privilege, that they have something that someone else doesn't and they're afraid of losing that. You're not going to lose it. There's plenty of room at the table.
Jess Vachon: 29:11
We're asking you to listen, to understand, to be compassionate and to be fair Relative to the US. We're all supposed to have the same rights and privileges under the Constitution. When we demand changes to allow that to happen, that is not asking for something we're not due. That's asking for something we are supposed to have that has been taken away. Asking for something we are supposed to have that has been taken away.
Jess Vachon: 29:50
So I appreciate that you have found a way to have your voice heard and engage people so that they think about what they're saying and how they live their lives. If you live your life in extreme comfort and relaxation, look around. Extreme comfort and relaxation. Look around. Help those that are not living that way, because there are hundreds of millions, if not billions, of people on this planet that don't have the luxury of waking up relaxed in the morning and going to bed relaxed at night. All right, I went down a little path there, but I'm, I'm, I'm very passionate about it. I know you're very passionate about it and, because I have this platform, we're going to talk about it, and you know, I know you and I you have to talk about it.
Stacey Champagne: 30:33
I mean, we just saw, like, we saw firsthand, like the, the fact that so many people don't realize that this is the system we're all in.
Stacey Champagne: 30:46
You know, so many people demonstrated in their comments that lack of recognition of the different experiences between men and women, or men and underrepresented identities, or white men and underrepresented whatever it might be right, or even just how, how our workplaces are set up right, like, like in our private sector workplaces, a lot, of a lot of them don't have very clear requirements around measurement of performance.
Stacey Champagne: 31:14
Right Versus in the military, they have a very clear it's very well spelled out expectations of you know what they need to accomplish at any given time. Right and so recognizing, like having having the absence of that leads to so much stress and trauma and and and a door for exploitation of people right, like we could. We could sit here and debate, as many people did in those comments, about how I wrote it and what you know what I might have been insinuating about my husband, who I love very dearly about you know his accomplishments and what they mean relative to mine, but like that, that is tone policing, right that is focusing so much on the minutia of how I said a certain thing versus the very message that you know was intended and has very significant value in, in, in, in talking about as a society, um, and yes, a lot of people missed that, but at the same time, through missing that, they proved the point that was being made of the post, and so it just shows that we have to have more of these conversations.
Jess Vachon: 32:50
Absolutely, and I want to be clear. We're not trying to be divisive. We're not trying to take anything away. No one's trying to take anything away. You said at the beginning you appreciated that your husband didn't have to do that, you just would like to be in the same boat right.
Stacey Champagne: 33:06
How can I do that? Please show me your way.
Jess Vachon: 33:12
Absolutely, so we know who you are today. We're getting a sense of who you are, but if you're comfortable with it, tell us a little bit about your experiences growing up influence of parents or relatives or, you know, mentors that you had that helped shape who you are today.
Stacey Champagne: 33:30
Yeah, oh gosh, maybe I should go swap out my my water here. So so, such a loaded question, how am I the person I am today?
Jess Vachon: 33:46
Um, if I didn't ask loaded questions?
Stacey Champagne: 33:49
uh, but such a such a powerful question, right, um, because it's kind of like you know, what I've learned from becoming a certified professional coach is that, like, none of this is siloed, everything is interconnected. Who I am as a, you know, efficient and effective cyber security practitioner is directly related to my upbringing and the other facets of my life, right, um, and so there's so much value in exploring that. I also think it confuses people sometimes when they, you know, do coaching with me and they're expecting we're going to talk about I don't know certs or, or you know trainings or conferences or whatever, and I'm asking them about, like you know, different facets of their life and their level of satisfaction and how that all plays in and stuff like that. So, um, so, yeah, so with me, I was very fortunate to be a, to have accessibility to technology at a very young age. I had a grandfather who was a pilot and he was also very and I say he was a pilot because you can imagine being a pilot in like I don't know the 80s and the 90s Financially. That helped, right, and so he, he was able to, and he would always buy the latest and greatest thing. He would buy a computer and then, like you know, six months later he'd buy another computer. He would also like download just terrible things onto it like um, like oh my gosh, wasn't there like a monkey that contained malware or something. At one point, like you know, he would have like it would look cute and you could ask him questions or whatever, but it was totally just spyware. So he would get like those kinds of things in his computer wouldn't work and then he would just go buy another one, right? So? So he kept buying all these computers and at one point we started to like take them out of the closet and like I got one, my brother got one at very young ages and and I think that helped out a lot with me just feeling comfortable with tech early on and then here forward right Another aspect of my upbringing was being involved in the FIRST Robotics Program.
Stacey Champagne: 36:12
So FIRST was founded by Dean Kamen. He invented the Segway, which then people tend to ask oh, is he the one who drove off the cliff on the Segway? No, that was the different person. And also Dean invented a lot of other really important inventions, like kidney dialysis machines, artificial heart stents, so like really just a sharp, you know person. But he created this robotics competition program and it starts like I think they even go as young as like pre-K, but like K through 12, where you go and specifically for the robotics the high school robotics program they give you a challenge, you have several weeks, a kit of parts, you basically go and play a form of like a sports game with robots, and so my brother was actually on the founding team at our high school and so I saw him doing that, which got me to do it at the middle school level, and then I moved up into the high school level and I was always involved and I even went and worked at first for a little bit, because I had lived in New Hampshire and that's where their their headquarters is, and and it was through that yeah, woo, new Hampshire.
Stacey Champagne: 37:25
And it was through that experience that I I realized, looking back on it, that I never had those negative experiences that other people mentioned sometimes about how they were discouraged from tech. I mean, like I was actively encouraged all through my upbringing that to, to you know, put my hands on tech, to be involved in tech, to build robots, like all that kind of stuff. So when it came time to you know, go off to school and I ultimately went and did graphic design, but then realized that that wasn't going to get me to where I wanted to be, you know, personally, financially and all that kind of stuff. There wasn't much hesitation in making that, that transition over to then focus on cybersecurity, because it was almost like well, why didn't you start here, right? Like well, what's with the detour? Right, with graphic design. But, you know, even in regards to spending some time in graphic design, that was just a recognition of like, yeah, I love tech, but also I love these other things too. Right, and so I, you know, had two ways to go and I just chose the left path instead of the right path. Right, and again, we just we talked about at the beginning about how that, you know, brought me around, back to tech and made the journey that much more valuable, right, and so I think all of that really contributed to where I am today.
Stacey Champagne: 39:04
But also, because this is a show about rebels by rebels for rebels, we should mention a couple of things on that pristine path, which are that when I was on that robotics team, the school didn't fund the robotics team. They spent many, many thousands of dollars on the high school band. However, they would not contribute to the robotics team. Our mentors were paying out of pocket to help us afford our $5,000 kit of parts and registration fees and stuff like that. And so, year after year, parents would beg, students would beg, would be like can you please just guarantee us some funds so every year we don't have to waste all of our time scraping for money instead of being focused on learning and building the robot right?
Stacey Champagne: 39:53
And so, senior year, I was like I'm sick of this, like this, this doesn't make sense at all. Um, we should be guaranteed funds. And if and like, if you're not going to just give it to us, then we're going to let the town vote on it. And so I went through the actual process of figuring out how does something get on the school board budget, like how does something get on the ballot? And I went and, like, collected signatures and neighborhoods, I packed the school board like town hall events and ultimately got it on the ballot and got it to pass for again. It was like it was $5,000. Like I wasn't asking for anything crazy. I was like just make sure this team can exist each and every year, we don't have to worry about it. Like we'll fundraise above and beyond if we want to go to competitions that are farther away or whatever, like we'll take care of that, but like we should be able to compete at least once here locally. And so I think it was that experience.
Stacey Champagne: 40:49
And through that experience, I had people threaten me, like as a high schooler, I had people on the school board threaten me about like, well, you know, if you do this and it doesn't pass, we can't give you any money at all. And I'm like you're not giving us money to begin with, so how does how does that matter, right? And I remember it was, it was actually like a phone call conversation and I, like I was like, well, we'll let the town decide that. And I like hung up, I think, and so, and so I think that that experience and that win, right, that win of like going after something like that, having that resistance and and and overcoming it, enabled me to be resilient in the unfortunately many other situations that I have found myself in as I've progressed through my cybersecurity career.
Stacey Champagne: 41:43
So, like I have been wrongfully terminated, I have been laid off, and like, when you go through those experiences, if you, if you haven't survived something of that like caliber of, of, you know, pushback to your character. They can be really, really tough to overcome. And and I, you know, I, I wonder, you know, like, if it weren't for again, that experience growing up and just having to, you know, overcome things a lot in my upbringing, if I, you know, potentially would have left cybersecurity the first time that happened, or the second time it happened, or whatever right, the second time it happened or whatever Right. And so I, I don't wish that on anybody, but at the same time, I think it's just such a a valuable way of looking at experiences of adversity as being, you know, so immensely valuable to your life story and to your future success than staying too long in the grief and victim stage of it, right.
Jess Vachon: 43:11
Yeah, thank you for sharing that, because I think it's important for everyone to hear that right. That's why I asked the question. Because I think it's important for everyone to hear that right. That's why I asked the question, because I want listeners to understand that we all arrive here in this present moment from different paths, and it's great to hear that you weren't restricted in what you could do based on gender roles. You were allowed to just go and explore and learn. You were allowed to just go and explore and learn and in having that model for your life, you were empowered to go and challenge a school board, to challenge authority and to go and seek more, and that message of resilience is hugely important as well. So we just looked back. I have an empowering question I'd like to ask, and it actually looks forward, so I will pose it to you what is your instinct telling you to do right now?
Jess Vachon: 44:15
Ooh. I love this question For those who aren't watching the video. Stacey's thinking deeply right at this moment.
Stacey Champagne: 44:25
My instinct right now as I think is the same for many of us is to scream, first and foremost, given all that is going on, but at the same time, my instinct constantly brings me back to focusing on what you can control, being mindful of the fact that there are people trying to take your power and and not just in direct ways, but like also in indirect ways right Of, like flooding the media, um, you know, putting stress upon the, the workforce and and all that kind of stuff, and people, um, and and and trying to, in those moments, recognize where they're siphoning from you and putting a stop to that.
Stacey Champagne: 45:28
And so what this looks like in action is like. Even today, I was thinking to myself I should really just remove Reddit from my phone, like if I want to see catch up on what's going on, like I can do that later, but like when it's on my phone and it's more accessible, like they're pulling me into a world that I, I it does not benefit me to be part of right now, and there is privilege in saying something like that. But I also look at it another way is that, like, when they are distracting me, I can't do and stay focused on the work that that matters in supporting you know, the people around me who matter right now, right, um, and so finding that balance between, like, having healthy boundaries and staying informed, um is is something that I feel like my, my instinct is kind of um, uh, tuning into right now to try to figure out a solution for yeah.
Jess Vachon: 46:38
Thank you, thank you. So we're getting ready to wrap up the podcast. I want to leave you an opportunity to tell people where they can find you and what you're working on and how to engage with you. So the floor is yours.
Stacey Champagne: 46:53
Sure. So where we're at right now with Hacker in Heels a couple of really great things going so the floor is yours. That's CISSP study sprint in September. So if you want to stay informed on when that's going to be launching, definitely make sure you're signed up for our emails. You can go to hackerinheels.com and get signed up that way. We also, on the website, have a really fun quiz. It's your cybersecurity career archetype and it's, you know, thoughtfully put together but not, so, you know, super scientific could be fun to just give you ideas of where you might take your career, and so you could do that as well and provide your email that way.
Stacey Champagne: 47:47
I really am going to start focusing on getting some salons on the books for this year. So last year, we held two Hacker in Heels salons. One was in Nashville alongside Women in Cybersecurity. One was in Las Vegas alongside Black Hat, def CON and all those conferences that go on during that week in August, and so we definitely want to bring that back, but we're looking at decoupling them from the conferences. That being said, the Las Vegas venue was really great, and so I might actually just repeat that one again, because it was so great, so much fun and obviously so many people are around during that time, but I would love to be able to hold them in other cities, and so what I need from everybody is really, if you are part of a company or know of a company that would want to partner on an event like that, I mean, those events like at cost are, go try to rent a private dining room and see for yourself. It is thousands upon thousands of dollars, right. And so we need partnership with companies in order to make them, um, you know, make them happen, right, um, and so we're going to be working on those.
Stacey Champagne: 49:01
And then um also to one thing that's not um very well known about, but I have been offering is what I'm on coaching, um, and I do it on a uh pay, what you can type scale, right.
Stacey Champagne: 49:15
So I do have like a minimum, like there's a minimum amount that I do require in order to meet with me because of everything that we've talked about in this call today. So hopefully that makes sense, but otherwise you can name your price and there's no commitment to it. So if you wanna do just one session, then that's fine. I really leave it open because, at the end of the day, I'm like well, if I'm providing value to you, you'll come back, right, and if I'm not like, then I don't want to hold you hostage to coaching with me, right? And so, under this model, I can tell you that, yes, people have been coming back for many months. They're finding a lot of value out of it, and so, if you are interested in one-on-one coaching, feel free to reach out to me, and I'd be happy to share the information about that with you.
Jess Vachon: 50:05
Well, thank you so much, Stacey, for joining me today. And folks, if you're listening, go check out Hacker in Heels. Check out Stacey on LinkedIn. Show Stacey some love! She definitely has worked hard for it. Stacey, thank you.
