Kathy explains her role as Director of Security at the startup, GitLab. She's responsible for securing the company, which involves setting guidelines on how to store customer data and other sensitive data within the company infrastructure. She works with other teams in the organization to ensure that the product that is rolled out is as secure as possible. Kathy says that security teams at companies often do security research while discovering vulnerabilities. Kathy advises companies who make security products. Having spent much of her career evaluating security products, she is able to advise them on what are good products, and what is good business strategy. She says many security products are already commoditized today, such as firewalls, antivirus software, and VPN software. So these wouldn't be good businesses today, and doesn't move the industry forward. Kathy was raised in Michigan. She studied electrical engineering in college and graduate school, and worked in hardware early in her career. She eventually moved into software, and in particular, did Unix administration work at the beginning of her software security career. At the MITRE Corporation, Kathy learned a broad background in security. MITRE was already also promoting women and diversity back then in the early 2000s. Kathy says security has lower numbers of women compared to other technical fields. She mentors women in security at the middle-level stage of their careers. Visit stemdiversitypodcast.com.