Black CIOs on the path to IT leadership

“I had to take a moment and reflect on ‘how did I end up here?’ — I ended up here because I allowed people who didn’t know me as well as I know me make decisions for me,” she said during the panel. “And I trusted them. The piece that was missing in that entire equation is that my own intentionality was not there. I didn’t know what I wanted, and I wasn’t very intentional about how to get what I want it. I just thought ‘I’ll show up every day do a great job. Someone will see me and believe in me, and all will be great from there.’”

During those next 12 months in the role, Allen says she began working on a career roadmap to ensure she never had to go through that experience again. The roadmap helped give her a clear picture of what she did — and did not — want from her career.

“That was the biggest moment I had early in my career — it’s okay for people to believe in you. You can have sponsors and mentors, but make sure you know what you want so you know what to say yes to and what to say no to,” Allen advised.

Venice Goodwine, of the Air Force and Space Force, added that it’s important to ask questions early in your career and get to the ‘why’ if you want to break down barriers. In fact, she said the main reason she decided to become a CIO was because someone early in her career told her that she couldn’t.

Goodwine also developed a career roadmap, in Excel, tracking the skills she currently had, the skills she needed to advance to the next step of her career, and the skills that were becoming outdated on her resume. This gave her a “pictorial view” of her career, she said, enabling her to better understand what she needed to accomplish to move toward the C-suite.

As for understanding your strengths as a worker, Northrop Grumman’s John Russell said it’s important to “bet on yourself.”

About Author

AndyC

Andy Curtis is an award-winning security consultant, researcher and public speaker. He has been working in the computer security industry since the early 1990s, having been employed by state and federal government, leading healthcare and banking providers across three continents. He has given talks about computer security for some of the world’s largest companies, worked with law enforcement agencies on investigations into hacking groups, and is a regular voice on TV and radio explaining IT security threats.

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