Quiessence Phillips
Quiessence is a transformational leader, who’s strategies and execution has helped build impactful and innovating teams in the Cybersecurity industry. With over 12 years of experience spanning private and public sector, she brings a wealth of knowledge and experience to her work. She also brings her experience and unique teaching style to a large body of students through her role as an adjunct professor at New York University. Quiessence’s leadership has yielded the first of its kind centralized threat management program for a municipality - the City of New York, serving over 100 agencies, entities, and organizations. She currently holds the position of Deputy CISO for the City of New York and Head of Threat Management for New York City Cyber Command. Her teams span across Security Operations, Computer Emergency Response, Cyber Threat Intelligence, and Counter Threat Automation. Quiessence has been recognized as “Best of New York” by City Tech Foundation, published in “Women Know Cyber: 100 Fascinating Females Fighting Cybercrime”, and awarded Security Team of the Year for public sector by FireEye. Additionally, her philanthropic efforts can be seen through her non-profit EdTech, JOURNi, where she and her co-founders are building an authentically inclusive tech ecosystem in the heart of Detroit. In effort to assist women forging their path in Cybersecurity, Quiessence also started ‘Securing Your Path.' For more information about her, visit https://itsquiessence.com Twitter: @itsquiessenceLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/quiessencephillips
Yolonda Smith
Yolonda Smith is the Head of Cybersecurity for sweetgreen, a fast-casual salad restaurant chain with over 100 locations across North America. In this role, she is responsible for the development and operationalization of security policy; building high-performing teams which instantiate security practices throughout core business functions and; assuring an exemplary, trustworthy, customer experience for sweetgreen's two million guests.
A security professional herself, she spent 8 years in the United States Air Force as a Cyberspace Operations Officer with duties and responsibilities varying from Mission Commander, where her team planned and executed the first DoD Cyber Threat Hunting Missions to Flight Commander, where her team developed and fielded the first and only malware neutralization tool for the Predator Drone Weapon System in addition to numerous deployments in support of Operations Iraqi and Enduring Freedom. Yolonda holds B.S., Computer Science (University Notre Dame); M.S., Information Technology (c. Information Assurance, University of Maryland); GSEC, GCIH, & CISSP certifications.
Find her at https://www.yolondasmith.com and @ysmithnd on Twitter
Ashley Tolbert
Ashley Tolbert is the Senior Security Engineer at Netflix and a Cyber Fellow at the Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University. After earning her Bachelor of Engineering from Auburn University, during which she completed four different computer science internships, Ashley got her Master of Science in Cyber and Information Security from Carnegie Mellon.
Fascinated by her early experiences in cybersecurity and believing it to be “one of the biggest challenges to our nation’s security,” Ashley began working as an engineer and researcher at SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, a U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Office of Science laboratory operated by Stanford University. Over the next four years, she spent the majority of her time at Stanford learning about computer forensics and cyber incident response.
Find her at https://www.ashleytolbert.com @ashleytolb on Twitter
