In this episode of Seidea Spotlight, host Stephanie Itimi sits down with Maria Macaloney, Executive Director of Talent Acquisition at Teradata, to discuss the key elements of leadership, career transitions, and the power of mentorship.
Maria shares her journey from an ambitious young professional to an international leader, navigating diverse work environments across Europe, Asia, and beyond. She opens up about overcoming challenges, building resilience, and why believing in yourself is essential for success.
🌟 Key topics include:
Maria also shares her personal mantra: "I know I am great." A reminder to all women striving for leadership—you belong at the table!
🔗 Connect with us at Seidea on LinkedIn and Seideasi on Instagram for more inspiring career stories!
🎧 Listen now and step into your greatness! 🚀✨
The cyberthreats facing electric-power and gas companies include the typical threats that plague other industries: data theft, billing fraud, and ransomware. However, several characteristics of the energy sector heighten the risk and impact of cyberthreats against utilities. In this episode, we are joined with Sherifah Lahan, a Government Policy Adviser with a background in national security policy to discuss the regulatory perspective of this space.
About Speaker:
Sherifah Lahan is a Government Policy Adviser with a background in national security policy. She is currently a cyber security policy Adviser with a focus on ensuring the cyber resilience of the UK energy supply. She focuses on ensuring that risks to critical infrastructure are scoped and appropriate mitigations are established by the supply sector and Government.
You connect with Sherifah via LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mayowa-sherifah-lahan-2613571b8
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About Seidea:
Seidea is a career development platform with a social mission to diversify the cybersecurity industry. Our goal is to break down barriers for Black and Minority Ethnic women and help them start their cybersecurity careers through industry events and coaching. We also work with employers to provide work experience programs.
Company Website: https://www.seidea.org/
Follow Seidea on socials:
A resilient enterprise is able to recover its key business services from a significant unplanned disruption, protecting its customers, shareholders and ultimately the integrity of the financial system. Avoiding disruption to a particular system that supports a business service contributes to operational resilience.
Speaker Profile:
Pranathi is an experienced technology risk and cyber consultant with demonstrated experience serving global financial services organizations. She works to support her clients navigate technology and operational risks, while helping clients create long-term value and achieve resilience. She is also heavily involved in the corporate sustainability and Diversity and Inclusion agendas.
Within the industry, Pranathi has been recognized as a TechWomen100 Winner (2019) by WeAreTechWomen and internally, as the EY Race & Ethnicity Network Rising Star (2020). Pranathi earned a BSc (Hons) in Biomedical Science from King’s College London. She is a Certified ISO 27001 Lead Implementor and holds the Certificate of Business Accounting from the Chartered Institute of Management Accountants (CIMA).
Globally, women are 27 times more likely to be harassed online. The online world is an extension or, in some ways, a mirror of offline realities and therefore violations of human rights and threats to our democracy also happen online. Over a third (34%) of Black, Asian or minority ethnic people (BAME) witnessed or experienced racial abuse in the seven months following the Brexit vote in June 2016, a TUC poll has found (1). Online abuse not only violates an individual’s right to live free from violence and to participate online but also undermines democratic exercises and good governance and, as such, creates a democratic deficit. In this episode we explore where the responsibility lies with online harms and where the future of research lies within this topic.
Speaker Profile:
Seyi Akiwowo (Shay-ee Aki-wo-wo)is the Founder and Executive Director of Glitch, a young not-for-profit organisation determined to end online abuse through education, campaigns and advocacy. Using her lived experienced and expertise Seyi travels the globe developing practical solutions with Governments, NGOs and companies to protect our online public spaces from hate and abuse. Seyi was named UK's Digital Leader of the Year and in 2018, she was name Stylist Magazine’s Woman of the Week. Her many achievements have been captured in books such as Slay in Your Lane and Misogynation. Seyi is Amnesty International’s Human Rights Defender and is part of the #ToxicTwitter campaign to end online abuse against women.
Seyi was elected as the youngest black female Councillor in East London at age 23 and has had nine successful years working in politics and the charity and policy sectors both in the UK and Europe. She is also an expert facilitator in skills, political leadership and inclusion and delivers workshops around the world including London, Montenegro Kuwait and UAE. Seyi is also an inspirational speaker and writer and has written several critical pieces including for the Guardian and gives talks on widening the participation and representation of diverse groups in public life. She is a graduate from the London School of Economics, a Fellow of the Royal Society of the Arts and recently became a Fellow of the Institute for Canadian Citizenship.
Technology can be very helpful to survivors of domestic violence, sexual violence, and stalking, but is also often misused by abusers to harass, threaten, coerce, monitor, exploit, and violate their victims. The resources below explore the extent and nature of technology-facilitated abuse. In this podcast we discuss with Julia Slupska to discuss how smart home devices can be a tool for domestic violence and ways we can improve the security around it.
Speaker Profile:
Julia Slupska is a doctoral student at the Centre for Doctoral Training in Cybersecurity and the Oxford Internet Institute. Her research focuses on how cybersecurity concepts and practices can address the technologically-mediated abuse. She is also exploring how feminist theories and methodology—such as participatory action research and the ethics of care—can improve cybersecurity. Previously, she completed the MSc in Social Science of the Internet on the role of metaphors in international cybersecurity policy. Before joining the OII, Julia worked on an LSE Law project on comparative regional integration and coordinated a course on Economics in Foreign Policy for the Foreign and Commonwealth Office. She also works as a freelance photographer.
Useful Links:
DIY Guide to Feminist Cybersecurity: https://hackblossom.org/cybersecurity/ (An easily accessible guide with free tools for improving digital security)
Gender and IoT Lab: https://www.ucl.ac.uk/steapp/research/digital-technologies-policy-laboratory/gender-and-iot (Research team looking at smart home devices and domestic abuse)
IPV Tech Research Lab: https://www.ipvtechresearch.org/ (Research team looking at computer security and intimate partner abuse)
Intimate partner abuse and domestic violence support services:
Reconfigure: https://medium.com/@reconfigure2020/reconfigure-introducing-feminist-digital-privacy-workshops-31710b704c47
Data protection is unlikely to be foremost in people’s minds when considering the impact of Brexit, whether it be soft or hard, deal or no deal. The UK Government has, however, recently issued papers about various topics in a ‘no deal’ situation and one of these entitled: Data protection if there’s no Brexit deal. In this podcast we speak with Harry Boje, a Data Privacy expert.
Speaker Profile:
Harry Boje is a Certified Data Protection Officer and GDPR certified data protection specialist, with an exemplary career spanning across the public and private sector for NHS hospitals, leasing companies, digital media specialists, global pharmaceuticals, charities, universities and multi-billion global manufacturing businesses. He has experience in global organisation in world as Group Data Protection Officer & present a Chief Privacy officer for large Non For-Profit organisation.
Prior to these role Harry has work on GDPR project across different sector for the past 3 years ranging from GDPR Business Analyst, GDPR SME and GDPR Consultant His skills are in business analysis, IT inclusive of Prince2, ITIL and Agile. Most recently has led up to 40 DPOs, data Champions in a global data privacy programme, and supported GPDR process improvement and policy creation in multiple businesses to futureproof against the ever-changing landscape of regulations. Offers additional expertise having managed the life cycle of IT projects to support service transition, system implementations and capability. I have a master’s degree in computer and Network Security, ISO 27001 Lead Implementer, ITIL. In last 4years my passion has been around privacy and data protection during this time I have helped organisation implement GDPR
Over the past few years, we have seen an unprecedented number of data breaches and a huge amount of personal information exposed. This has resulted in an increase in Identity Theft. According to Breach Level Index, identity theft accounted for 64% of data breaches between January and June 2016. We got to speak to Yoti about Identity theft, it's size, impact and ways in which we can secure our Digital Identity.
Speaker Profile:
Julie Dawson, Director of Regulatory & Policy, Yoti Julie leads regulatory and government relations, steers our ethics framework development liaising closely with the Yoti Guardians Council, and prepares Yoti for external accreditations - such as ISO 27001, BCorps for ethics and transparency and the SOC2 security accreditation.
About Yoti:
Yoti is an identity checking system that allows organisations to verify who people are, online and in person. Yoti has a team of 250 based in London, with offices in Mumbai and present in the US, Canada and Australia. We count over 6 million installs of the Yoti app, following our launch in November 2017. For consumers, it’s an app that helps them prove who they are and confirm the identities of others. We distinguish ourselves with our approach to privacy and security; the system has been architected so that it's impossible for us to monetise users personal data.
Useful Links:
A hacked WordPress site can cause serious damage to your business revenue and reputation. Hackers can steal user information, passwords, install malicious software, and can even distribute malware to your users. In this episode we talk about the security risks involved with Self-Hosting WordPress Site websites and daily tips you can use to protect their websites.
Speaker Profile:
Yejide Adeoye is an indispensable WordPress Security Specialist. She is a thought provoker who specialises in supporting SMEs on thinking about the best ways to protect their business activities online. Having developed Self hosted WordPress websites since 2012, Yejide is well versed on the key security issues business owners, who use this platform, face on a day to day basis.
In this podcast episode we are joined by Cybersecurity Expert Ibukun on Emmanuel-Adebayo to dicuss the WhatsApp Hack and how we can protect our phones.
Speaker Profile:
Ibukun Emmanuel-Adebayo is a mum of five, and a long-standing Fellow of the British Computer Society plus a Vice-President and Senior Cybersecurity Expert for a global investment bank.
As an experienced CIO/CISO and GRC leader, she has led and worked with many exceptional individuals within various sectors including as IT Chief at the Royal Albert Hall in the UK.
Often recommended as an IT leadership and Cybersecurity Summit Speaker, by her CIO/CISO peers, Ibukun holds multiple leadership qualifications, including from the Institute of Directors. Having served as a Judge at the Guardian Public Sector Awards 2012, and a BCS ELITE Committee Member, Ibukun has addressed her CIO and CISO peers at summits including the Guardian Healthcare Leadership summit, the UK’s CIO Summit, Computing Magazine’s Enterprise Security and Risk Management Summit, the WCIT’s Boardroom Briefing on the Economics of Cybersecurity, the ISC2 Secure Summit EMA and at CAMSS Canada. Ibukun was one of 300 elected C-Level executives from the U.S. and UK invited to participate in a research study conducted by EY into ‘The DNA of the CIO’.
Ibukun has led IT, DevOps and Cybersecurity teams to deliver secure enterprise solutions; and personally, designed and implemented IT and security strategies and policies, leading in the prevention, detection and investigation of IT security incidents; including civil and criminal breaches. Since obtaining IT and program leadership skills, and subsequently board director qualifications from the IoD, she has continued to learn. Her 2011 - 2018 study program with the Chartered Institutes for Securities and Investments (CISI), focused on Operational Risks, Global Financial Compliance plus Combating Cyber related financial crime - to complement an MBA in Finance, completed in 2016.
An unfortunate number of women are become victims of cyber crimes. This podcast looks at why women need to be protect online as well as tips on digital safety.
Speaker Profile:
Stephanie Itimi is a social entrepreneur who is enthusiastic about internet education and security. She founder of Seidea, a social enterprise focused on helping BAME women build cyber-security careers and Seinfo, a digital library tackling unemployment by empowering African women and youth with the skills needed for remote working.
Stephanie has a track record of supporting global initiatives and was part of the BBC World Service team that developed the world's first public health information service on the WhatsApp platform. Tackling false Ebola news, Stephanie led a data restructuring project which supplied text, pictures and audio to over 16,000 consumers in West Africa, as well as through partners such as UNICEF, the World Health Organisation, the World Food Program and the Centre for Disease Control.
She has also played a significant role in the development and manufacturing of high-profile initiatives in Slovakia, Morocco, the United Kingdom and several West and East African nations through her diverse consultative experience with Culture Fez, Balloon Ventures, UN Women and the European Commission, promoting freedom of data, digital literacy, financial empowerment and gender equality. She is a consultant at Africa Business Portal and a guest lecturer at Coventry University London's MBA Global Business program concentrating on the informal economy, multi-domestic strategy and poverty. She is the author of two academic books entitled "The informal sector in Nigeria and its effect on development” and “ Postmodern Nigeria: A Socio-Economic Analysis: A collection of academic essays”.