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In episode #183, I sit down with Errika Celsy, Aaron Jones, and Sandeep Desai to uncover Arizona’s untold story of creating a cybersecurity leadership pipeline—a playbook for shaping the workforce of tomorrow.
Featuring:
- Errika Celsy, Director of Educational Technology at Cave Creek Unified School District
- Aaron Jones, Analyst at Chandler Police Department
- Sandeep Desai, Information Security Officer at Arizona Department of Education
In this episode, you'll learn:
- How Cave Creek School District reduced phishing rates from 15% to 5% through security awareness training and creative incentives
- Why cybersecurity risk should be viewed through a business lens rather than just a technical perspective
- How law enforcement can leverage open-source intelligence (OSINT) to assist investigations
- The importance of the "60/40 Rule" when hiring cybersecurity talent
- Strategies for empowering women in technology through programs like "Cyber Squad" and "Girls Get IT"
This isn’t just a conversation—it’s a playbook for building tomorrow’s cybersecurity workforce. Don’t miss these actionable insights from Arizona’s top minds.
TIMESTAMPS
(00:54) Guest Introductions & Personal Backgrounds
(04:00) TechTales Newsletter: Gamifying Security Awareness
(07:00) Last Bell's Security Corner & Business Risk Alignment
(11:30) Digital Safety Best Practices
(12:00) Digital Citizenship Education at Cave Creek
(14:45) Building the Cybersecurity Talent Pipeline
(18:00) OSINT & Modern Law Enforcement
(23:00) Power of Mentorship in Career Development
(28:45) Girls in Cyber & Women in Technology
(31:45) Final Advice: The 60/40 Rule & Career Growth
RECOMMENDED NEXT EPISODES - FROM THE 2024 PHOENIX LIVE PODCAST TOUR
→ #180: J.R. Sloan, Ryan Murray & Doug Lange – Arizona State CIO, CISO & Former CSO Talk AI
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Joe Toste: [00:00:00] Today we're thrilled to have Erica Selce, Director of Educational Technology at Cave Creek Unified School District, Sandeep Desai, Information Security Officer for the Arizona Department of Education, and Aaron Jones, Analyst at the Chandler Police Department. Welcome to the Public Sector Show by TechTables.
Joe Toste: Excited to have you all on. Erica, for those who don't know you, give us a quick intro and brag about your sister's macarons so that we can put a link in the show notes for the pod.
Errika Celsy: Okay, right on. So hi, I'm Erica Selsey and I have had Quite the trek through education and into technology. I started off as a classroom teacher, became a, an instructional coach, and a site administrator.
Errika Celsy: I'm currently serving as a director. I'm also the happy mom of three, and wife to another large child. Love him. But we we are super thrilled to have been given the opportunities we have to Carve a path into technology, and Amanda's Macs is the little plug I think you're looking for.
Errika Celsy: She makes some pretty [00:01:00] incredible macarons. If you haven't tasted them, they're out in the hallway.
Joe Toste: I love that. Aaron?
Aaron Jones: Hi, I'm Aaron Jones. I work for the Chandler Police Department, and so people are probably wondering what I'm doing on an education panel, but I'll get to that in a second. I have a master's degree in intelligence analysis with the focus of cybersecurity.
Aaron Jones: I'm currently working on a PhD in counterterrorism. I'm a TLO, which is a Terrorism or Threat Liaison Officer. In addition to that, I'm a Defensive Cyber Operations Engineer. I'm also trained in Tactical Home Defense and Security, and then Security Leadership Strategic Cyber Security Management Basic Dignitary Protection, et cetera, et cetera.
Aaron Jones: I am also the program champion at the University of Advancing Technology for our Cybersecurity and Network Engineering group. And so I teach and create classes and work in the education side as well.
Joe Toste: Fantastic. Sandeep.
Sandeep D: Yeah. Hi Sandeep Desai. I just joined the Department of Education probably about eight months ago.
Sandeep D: My job Story kind of started [00:02:00] outside of US. I was born in India moved into US I would say probably in sixth grade. Very tough transition having to learn English and then being in Texas, a small town in Texas. Moving on from there, I actually, I think we have a Southern Cal connection.
Sandeep D: So from Texas, we moved, I moved over to Southern Cal. That's where I did my computer science degree. Then actually, I don't think I was ever in my plans to come to Arizona, but there was a startup opportunity that came about and we took it. I had just gotten married. I'm married and have three beautiful kids who are in college.
Sandeep D: One is a junior in high school, so almost empty nesters, kidding there. And yeah, it was supposed to be a three year tour. Here we are 23 years later. Arizona is just growing on us. Lots of opportunities from the startup, I moved over to Intel, Wells Fargo. And here I am taking on the opportunity at,
Joe Toste: Department of Education.
Joe Toste: And you regret not buying a house in Southern California [00:03:00] 20 years ago. Thanks, Joe, for
Sandeep D: reminding me of that. Yes, I absolutely do regret that. My boss at that time in California said, Here's a key. Go take a look at it. It's a starter home. But, yes, thank you, Joe, for that reminder.
Joe Toste: Erica let's kick off with your story about the TechTales newsletter, not to be confused with TechTables, y'all, TechTales talk about the origin story of TechTales and the story behind gamifying cybersecurity education and its impact on your team's awareness and behavior at Cape Creek.
Errika Celsy: Full transparency up until very recently, we did not have a whole lot of cybersecurity posture in any way, shape, or form in Cave Creek Unified. It was really the bare minimum, and we were just meeting compliance needs for insurance. And even in some cases, we were pushing the envelope there.
Errika Celsy: So we were trying to really shore up everything that we could, and through the grace of the cybersecurity from the state, we were able to bring in some solutions to [00:04:00] really help us with that. And so one of them was our security awareness training platform. And so I thought, okay, I'm going to start putting little tidbits of information out to our staff and kind of by way of word of mouth with our leadership, why this is so important.
Errika Celsy: And I noticed that the word of mouth wasn't catching very well. I thought, what if I put together just a really quick newsletter, monthly? And then, what if I take it a step further and I incentivize it? I thought, instead of just making it about security awareness and The cyber security components of that also integrating my ed tech components.
Errika Celsy: So looking at the solutions that we're already adopting and saying, Hey, there's this really great training you can do with New Zella or Hey, have you checked out this digit lesson on near pod? And also, by the way, if something looks fishy, it might be take a look at the latest fishing attempts. And so really having conversations around Okay.
Errika Celsy: making it part of our everyday discussion. And then when I said that I incentivized [00:05:00] it I would hide an icon in each of my TechTables and the first person to find this icon, it was a little cactus, would win a prize. And the first time I put TechTables out was The Friday before fall break, and it was at like 3.
Errika Celsy: 30, and we had early release that day, so I'm like, there's nobody here. No one's going to see this. In the first hour, I had 40 responses of people that hadn't seen it. I'm like, okay, so there's something to this. This works. And so then I took it a step further, and with our security awareness training platform, and I have numbers here, so I'm just going to pull it up because The results have been amazing.
Errika Celsy: I also have borrowed some great tidbits from my friends at the Department of Homeland for ideas of how to incentivize those that identify fishing campaigns. And they either get goldfish in their interoffice mail or they get Swedish fish in their interoffice mail once a month, depending on if they were able to identify the fish.
Errika Celsy: And so initially when we rolled out the platform, our opening rate [00:06:00] was 70 percent. Our fishing rate was 15 percent. I just checked it before we came in here. We are down to a 19 percent open rate and a 5 percent fishing rate. So we've seen massive improvements. So it's doing something good.
Joe Toste: I love that.
Joe Toste: And I connected on the education side, my wife taught at a a city college, and now she's. But you created these newsletters in Canva, which I absolutely love. Fun fact, every design is made on Canva. So if you're not using Canva it's, you could totally use it. Yeah, totally use it. But I actually love that.
Joe Toste: And I love that you mentioned the Swedish Fish. Tim and I I think on our very first, Romer, on our very first podcast talked about talked about that too. And I love Swedish Fish. This is like totally great. I love the the ingenuity and like the levity and the fun with TechTables.
Joe Toste: And in the show notes and you can't visually see it, but she sent over in advance the the newsletter. And so what I'll link to the screenshots so everyone will be able to see it. But I think it's really great at capturing attention in a very fun way. Sandeep, [00:07:00] on our intro call, we talked about the need to bridge the gap between the technical side, The business side, that's Beth, but the cameras can't see her.
Joe Toste: With less than a year into your new role at the Arizona Department of Education, how are you leveraging your experience? To help evangelize and communicate the value of cyber security to the leadership team. Also, do you have a TechTales newsletter that you send out to?
Sandeep D: I don't have a TechTales newsletter, but we do have in our agency Last Bell, which is a weekly newsletter that goes out to our agency.
Sandeep D: And, in fact, just last month, We started a it said give me a little corner, we'll start with that. So we're calling it Security Corner. And one of the first articles that we started out with was actually phishing. How to recognize phishing and we're gonna try to keep it going as a monthly awareness and education piece of it, right?
Sandeep D: And then coming into I think Beth said it, try to keep it at third grade level. For us to [00:08:00] understand. I, as a technologist coming in, it's very easy for me to just start digging into the solutions and problems, and I think I'm trying to bring myself out of that.
Sandeep D: One of my great mentors when I was back in Intel, he mentioned that something, there's no such thing as technology risk. Everything is business risk, right? So I'm trying to bring that private sector of risk management and that into our agency. Looking at, painting pictures, creating stories.
Sandeep D: And as a technologist, that is the hardest thing because you want to You know, the problem is right there. You solve it with creating matrix. You don't know how that's going to be received. You don't know if you're resonating with the executives or not. Trying to figure out what are the business risks, right?
Sandeep D: So I'm right now currently in a lot of assessment mode. Although that is don't want to assess Beth with death with assessments, but [00:09:00] I had a rhyme, but I think it didn't work out. Then going from there, figuring out the business risk aligning the cybersecurity risk with that business risk and how, Best to communicate that to the leadership.
Sandeep D: I think that's the challenge that I'm facing right now. And trying to figure that out. And Swedish Fish was, I think, one of the ideas that we had. I might not have to try to get original on that. One of the things that we also we do have is, if you leave your Computer unlocked.
Sandeep D: We have a little note that goes and, signed by the ISO that says, you have to put a dollar into our donut jar. We're working, maybe that might be, I don't know if that's a pen penalizing or reward, but we'll try to go the reward route.
Joe Toste: You're a carrot or stick kind of guy.
Joe Toste: I'd probably say, a
Sandeep D: little bit of both is needed.
Joe Toste: You mentioned the piece in the email what are some of those phishing tips from the last couple months that you've put in there?
Sandeep D: I think one of the, one of the things is in, in, this is something that I even tell that as a as a [00:10:00] digital learning that, if you think it's too good to be true, it is, okay?
Sandeep D: If you wouldn't do that in real life, then don't do it on, web, right? I think the other part is Know, are you the right audience for it? If it's not meant for you, then try to avoid those. Yeah, and so I think those are a couple of the
Joe Toste: If you get an email that says Free iPad.
Joe Toste: Don't have to pay any money to Apple.
Sandeep D: No,
Joe Toste: You don't. Got it. So is it that you teach at a community college, is that right? Do I remember that correctly? I do, yes. So on our call you'd mentioned the importance of educating not just the students, which is actually a great pipeline for the Arizona Department of Education on the cybersecurity front but also adults on digital safety and cybersecurity best practices there are, two to three best practices that you would like to share around digital safety.
Sandeep D: Yeah, I think one of them is, if it's too good to be true, it probably is, right? And I think [00:11:00] one of the main ones right now is be careful what you put out. into the social media, into web, especially with the AI and things that are coming in. What you put in is getting ingested, and you don't know where and how it's going to show up.
Sandeep D: On TechTables. com. On TechTables. com it could. So I think those are a couple of things that, and I think Erica and I, we were talking about it, some of the other ones are like passwords, and those are, your basic, don't have the same passwords. I put.
Sandeep D: Maybe I shouldn't have my wedding anniversary as my password, I'm thinking I won't forget it, but maybe that's not the right thing.
Joe Toste: Don't do that, don't do that. Erica, you talked about the importance of equipping students with skills to navigate the digital world safely and responsibly. How are you integrating digital citizenship education into the curriculum at Cave Creek, and what impact have you seen with the students?
Errika Celsy: We have a few things that we're currently leveraging from a curricular standpoint. Common Sense Media is great and it also crosses over [00:12:00] into the home realm. It really helps to equip parents with what they should know and what they should be aware of. But we also this year invested in Nearpod.
Errika Celsy: It's an online engagement system that essentially has a whole plethora of curricula in multiple libraries. One of their libraries is 21st Century Skills, with a really heavy focus on DigiCit. And while that's great, I love that there's some canned opportunities for our teachers that maybe aren't super versed in DigiCit, to lean into those and have something.
Errika Celsy: Ready to shoot from the hip. The bigger things that we've tried to put out there are just like your everyday practices, your behavior. So we're enforcing password resets. We're talking about why we don't subscribe to free websites and free resources and free tools. And so one of the biggest messages that I've put across to our teachers, to our students, is that if it's free, You're the one being monetized.
Errika Celsy: Your information is the one that's being monetized. And so we've really had to take a step back and really relearn what it [00:13:00] means to, keep our PII safe and protected and why that's so important. And for our teachers it's been harder learning for them actually than I think for our kiddos.
Errika Celsy: Teachers are their heart is in the right place. They're so gung ho with wanting to put the next and greatest in front of their students, but sometimes it comes with the cost of if I'm getting this for free because I saw it in my social media feed and it looks so great for my students, what's the harm?
Errika Celsy: And I've had to really pause and say there is harm because if you're going to put our students data on the line, that's something that they're going to have ramifications for down, down the road. And so our students have become very cognizant of that as well. So it's more of those Things that are learned in practice and in everyday behaviors more than even just like the canned curriculum that we've subscribed to.
Joe Toste: Yeah, no, those are super important conversations. I even subtly have those conversations in the locker room during the season when the kids take out their iPads that they have. And I'm like, ah, maybe you shouldn't be putting that out there. Also, that's on the SB Unified School District network.
Joe Toste: Yeah. Those are some funny [00:14:00] conversations we end up having. Aaron, on our intro call, you had mentioned the importance of producing more qualified cyber security professionals to create a force multiplier effect. I really like that. Talk about partnering with higher ed institutions to develop curriculum, provide hands on learning opportunities, and really just inspire.
Joe Toste: The next generation to think about public sector, think about cyber security as even an option. So I want to
Aaron Jones: say thank you for asking that question because education is that first step and you spend so much time in the education pipeline as a young adult trying to move into industry. And when I talk to my students, I let them know.
Aaron Jones: You are attempting, for the most part, almost every student that I have there wants a job, and they want to get into industry, and they want to start working in cyber security, and they want these positions, and they look up to the individuals that are involved. I was at a meeting several years ago at the Arizona Counterterrorism Information Center, and this was pre COVID, and one of the big [00:15:00] discussions or talking points was, we don't have the ability to hire, we don't have the pipeline, we don't have the people that we can bring in.
Aaron Jones: And I stood up and I hope this doesn't sound terrible, but please edit this out if it does. But I told them, I can build you cyber warriors. If you want trained killers, I'll make you trained killers. That's a little army joke, right? If you want these people, I can bring them to the table. However, if you do not give them a job, and we do not have a pipeline for them to move from education into a career, then we are building the next set of bad guys.
Aaron Jones: Because they will have nowhere to go, but they will have the skills. And do we want to take that risk? And one of the things that I also encourage every single member of the cyber security community, every member of government, everyone, is get involved in mentorship. Get involved in being a force multiplier.
Aaron Jones: Everybody here is. When we have Sandeep going to [00:16:00] a, School and working and teaching those students. He is within that force multiplication Pipeline where he is taking these students and he is showing them. Hey, here is how you should behave These are the skill sets that you need to develop. Here is an example of somebody who is successful within this environment and demonstrating the proper etiquette and This is where you can end up, but then ultimately with all of that said, if I bring you these people and I say hey you want me to train them on open source intelligence, you want them trained on network engineering, you want me to make them have a greater understanding of tools like Shodan and Metasploit and all of these tools that can be potentially weaponized, are you going to bring them under your wing, and are you going to guide them towards doing positive, or are we going to send them out into the world and hope that they land?
Aaron Jones: And ultimately, we're responsible for the next generation. We really are. My son is five years old, and I'm responsible for his future. But I [00:17:00] also take responsibility for all of the students that need to have that future set. And it's every person in this room and every person who's watching this, it's your job and it really truly is your job to reach out to those students, to do your mentorship, to help these students.
Aaron Jones: I work with the high schools. I work with middle school students. I work with college. And then I also mentorship adults who are in industry or trying to break into industry. And I would encourage everybody to also take that responsibility.
Joe Toste: Yeah, we're gonna later in this podcast dive more into mentorship.
Joe Toste: There's a great story that you shared with me when we first met And that was really powerful about tracking down a murderer using open source intelligence while working at the Chandler Police Department You have this unique blend at the intersection of physical and cyber. Could you maybe talk about that unique blend of expertise in law enforcement that helps you solve crimes in innovative ways?
Aaron Jones: Sure, absolutely. The first thing that I would tell you is, there really is [00:18:00] no separation anymore between people's rights. Physical and their cyber footprint. It is almost impossible to move away 100 percent from a cyber presence. People use social media, they use phones, they have devices that they carry with them every single day that is a Perfect method for developing a picture about who you are, what you do.
Aaron Jones: I actually do a talk on personal privacy, and during that talk on personal privacy, one of the things that I bring up is the fact that researchers can, using just information from your cell phone effectively Make a very well educated guess on where you will be located at any particular point in time with something like 98 percent accuracy.
Aaron Jones: And really what this comes from is if we boil it down where do we go? We go to our jobs. We go to A basketball game. We have very certain things that we do, and then if you deviate from that there's typically a reason for it. But even making [00:19:00] a simple decision like, where am I going to go grocery shopping, is affected by time how often you drive past that location places that you like to shop etc.
Aaron Jones: So all of that information can be built into a specific profile for people. And I don't want to go too deep into that, but ultimately what it turns into is Law enforcement in general, across the nation, has to start that process of better understanding the technology, better understanding what people are doing, and they have to.
Aaron Jones: If they don't, if they are not able to pivot then they're not going to keep up. How many people are still using MySpace? There's probably a small percentage.
Joe Toste: There
Aaron Jones: we go. Sorry for calling you out. But the truth of the matter is, People move between different technologies and the technology moves very quickly.
Aaron Jones: I think somebody said it very well when they said that government needs to move at the speed of business. So does the law enforcement. Law enforcement has to move at the speed of business because they need to know where are children, where are [00:20:00] adults, where are people congregating, what technologies are they using, and how are they using those both on the positive side, which there are many positive benefits to technology, But there are many dangers as well, and there are many negative ways for using that technology, so how do we navigate that?
Joe Toste: Yeah I think a great example on the positive side, especially like talking about collaboration, would be Agencies willing to share, maybe it's just like a simple API call, that there's a bad guy that shouldn't be in a house that's taking in kids, right? There's number, like numerous examples that I've heard in the public sector, but I love what you said there.
Joe Toste: How, something I'm thinking about right now is, how do you deal with being at the Chandler Police Department, I think the legacy mindset is hey, you're just the back office IT guy, is what it might come off as. How do you have those conversations where you're elevating the importance of cyber security within the police station?
Aaron Jones: What law enforcement, I feel, personally, reacts best to is results. It's a very results [00:21:00] driven organization. When I first, and I'm going to share this story, I would come in every single day and I would look off to my left as I walk into the building, and they have a little board, and they would have pictures of individuals that were being sought for various crimes.
Aaron Jones: And we talked about the individual who committed a murder, and They were looking for this individual. And I would look at this week after week. And finally, I went to one of our investigators and I said, listen, you don't know me and you don't know my background and things that I have done previous to this job, but would you allow me to do some poking around and looking for this person?
Aaron Jones: I promise I won't do anything that will harm your investigation, but if you give me the opportunity to do this, I think that I can find some results. And they looked at me funny. And they were like, oh, yeah, sure, whatever you want to do, okay shying me on. And I went to my boss, and I told my boss what I, the conversation that I'd had, and I said, hey, I'm going to do this on my own time, you don't have to worry about it, it's not going to be during work, I'll just do it at night.
Aaron Jones: And he gave me a funny look too, and he was like, [00:22:00] okay, sure, whatever. And it was a couple of days later I came in and I was like, this is where I believe the person is, this is the reason for it, here's all of the evidence that I have of what I found and their posts and all the information that I can put together for you.
Aaron Jones: And I got pulled into a room and they sat me down and we compared notes and I was essentially on target, right? And at that moment, that's when many things changed in terms of Individuals who would come to me and say, Hey, how did you do that? What are the things that we're missing and what can we start empowering our officers with so that they have this skillset and they understand also the dangers.
Aaron Jones: I like to refer to this 'cause I also train other organizations. I train individuals involved in traveling overseas and executive protection groups and all of that. We empower the protectors so that they understand the dangers of an environment that many of them find very foreign.
Joe Toste: Yeah, I know that.
Joe Toste: I love that. So I want to circle back to mentorship. [00:23:00] Sandeep mentorships often cited as a crucial factor, especially in your own development over the years. And and I love the stories that you told me offline. Can you just talk about a transformative moment in your own career? Where a mentor made a profound impact on you and two to three lessons that you took from that experience that shaped you.
Sandeep D: Yeah. I think anything in our conversation that we had, mentorship isn't just at work, right? Mentorship could be at home with your family, your, you, someone that you admire, someone that you trust. So getting into the technology space was actually through a mentor in my family who was actually in the same industry.
Sandeep D: Moving forward, the reason I came to California, once again, was mentor who said, Hey, there are better opportunities rather than you being in a small town in Texas. Once again, a mentor who was like, hey, let's, why don't you come over here and try this out. Moving away from technology and into the risk [00:24:00] technology risk area.
Sandeep D: Once again, another mentor. I think mentorship and networking, keeping that connection, I think are very crucial. Finding next job, even for students, when I'm when I go and talk to the students, I'm like, okay, are you part of this organization? Are you part of ISACA, which is one of the organizations that I'm part of?
Sandeep D: Like, why don't you come to the meetings? The, if you can't afford it, let me know, we'll make it free, right? So some of those things is what I had. I had someone who was guiding me, directing me. One of the things that, you know that, is still fresh in my mind is, you know what, don't be fearful and don't be afraid of falling forward and don't be afraid of failure, right?
Sandeep D: Don't always think that if you're going to fall, you're going to fall backwards, right? You could fall forward, which is a lot of times that has happened in my career. Sometimes you choose, sometimes you don't [00:25:00] choose. And each time, I go back to that and saying, Okay, you know what, how can I fall forward, not be afraid of the unknowns, or, don't be afraid.
Sandeep D: So I think it's important to have that mentorship in various parts of your life. It just doesn't have to be in school, it just doesn't have to be in, at your workplace. I think, and having that, village around you to help you lift.
Joe Toste: Yeah, I love that. Cue up. Aaron, leveraging relationships and connections within the cybersecurity community has been instrumental in creating growth opportunities for you.
Joe Toste: I love the story about how you met Tim Romer and just how all that came together, how those connections, and you can even tell that story if you want have influenced your career trajectory and ability to really drive change in Arizona.
Aaron Jones: I think that you cannot accomplish anything without working with your partners.
Aaron Jones: It is physically impossible for one person to carry the weight. It's never gonna happen, and there's not gonna ever be a single point where there is one person that holds it all. [00:26:00] And I would say to anybody who has even a Remote desire to make a change within the cybersecurity community.
Aaron Jones: Start the process of networking. I tell my students that it is important to network. I tell my high school kids it is important to network. When I go out, the conversation is always about networking. And when I was afforded the opportunity to go speak with Tim I had been teaching people. I had been educating.
Aaron Jones: I had been doing as much mentorship as I could. And the next thing I know, I'm tapped to go have a conversation about a cybersecurity topic. And I started building those relationships with individuals like Ryan Murray and Tim Romer and all of the people here within the state of Arizona who are making a difference.
Aaron Jones: And one of the conversations that I have always tried to have is, What can I do? What do you need? What's a thing that we can provide? Is there a service or a way that we can help? And even with my students in school, so just another [00:27:00] example, if I may I have my students use a product called Shodan, and so we sit down, and using Shodan, we look for vulnerable critical infrastructure within the state of Arizona, and then I teach them.
Aaron Jones: How to identify problems or things that we suspect are problems. How to create a proper report, because reporting correctly is more important than just reporting. Because what you don't want to do is go in and make yourself a headache, or be offensive, or to hurt somebody's feelings. toes by stepping on them, right?
Aaron Jones: You want to be able to go in and you want to be able to provide that information in a way that it becomes actionable intelligence that they can use but you're uplifting. You're not tearing somebody down. So we work through that and then ultimately we report to groups like the Arizona Counterterrorism Information Center and that gives them an opportunity that even just coming out of school they have made a difference within our community.
Aaron Jones: And once you get people motivated and you start networking and they start working with other people, it's like just pushing a rock right off the [00:28:00] mountain. It just keeps rolling.
Joe Toste: I love that. Erica, you mentioned that you would need a Xanax to come on the podcast. I almost popped one before the governor, Ducey.
Joe Toste: Let me tell you, I was very close. I was thinking the same thing. But I love that you stepped outside of your comfort zone. It was, it's, because we were originally going to do this virtually. And I was like, live? And she's no. I'm like so I love that you said yes. So that kind of courage is exactly what we need to inspire more women and girls to take the leap.
Joe Toste: into coding and cyber security. Can you talk about a few examples of what you're involved in to help empower and encourage women and girls to pursue careers in technology?
Errika Celsy: So I actually almost wore my cyber squad bracelet today, but I forgot it at home. So shame on me. This past October in celebration of Cybersecurity Awareness Month, we were actually able to participate in the inaugural Cyber Squad.
Errika Celsy: Oh, my lanta. My The Girls in Cyber activity, or Girls in Cyber event. Sorry, now you've got me really needing a Xanax. What did you do to me? Look at
Joe Toste: that camera. It's right there. We got [00:29:00] two cameras.
Errika Celsy: So the Girls in Cyber event at the State Capitol, and it was It's beautifully orchestrated by the Department of Homeland Security as well as GCU.
Errika Celsy: We were able to bring four of our middle school students who created the Cyber Squad and are now actually doing that as a weekly club. We're planning to try to grow that and have it spread off into the high school as well just so that we can build some traction, especially on the CTE track.
Errika Celsy: So that's been one step in that direction and really that's been huge because they're in the theater club. So they will play this up and ham it up. And I've watched them firsthand. It's amazing. I just can't wait to see where that goes. But I also was able to be a part of the Girls Get IT event at Glendale Community College, where I'm an adjunct professor this past week.
Errika Celsy: And that was exceptional. So we got to interact with girls and women that have either changed their career course into. The tech realm or are aspiring to enter the tech realm. And lots of girls seeking mentorship and it just, it [00:30:00] was really inspiring. There were some tears. I just really think that holding space and really participating in those opportunities and giving a voice to women so that they can be empowered to do these things is huge.
Joe Toste: I love that. And with your education background and time at Cape Creek, What do you think are some of the biggest barriers holding girls back today?
Errika Celsy: So a lot of it is representation I know I don't usually fit the traditional mold of the IT director, so I think that kind of catches people off guard, but I really do think that again, holding space and bringing women to the table and bringing them into the conversation and giving them opportunities to actually be the voice leading the conversation as opposed to just a contributor or a, quiet bystander is something that we really need to embrace.
Errika Celsy: I think opportunities like this, like you reaching out to me and having people in your corner and kind of building your tribe and having people to speak for you, I think one of the biggest things is what are people saying about you when you're not in the room? And if I know that the people that I've brought into my circle, [00:31:00] men, women alike, are willing to go to bat for me when I'm not there, that's huge.
Errika Celsy: So I try to lead by example and be a voice for others when they're not in the room. I just think continuously opening those doors and opening the ability for someone to sit at the table and say, Hey, have you thought of this is what I can contribute to the progression of that.
Joe Toste: I love that. So as we wrap up, I want to hear from each of you, one key piece of advice that you'd like to share with our listeners who are looking to make a positive impact on their agency or organization or community through technology, cybersecurity or leadership.
Joe Toste: And we'll go, we'll start with Sandeep and work our way down.
Sandeep D: I'll think one thing if I were to tell someone who's willing, trying to make a change is a rule 60 40. I think Beth and I, we were talking about it and we're trying to put together a position that we're trying to hire a cyber security analyst.
Sandeep D: And when we started to look at the requirements and, I started, she goes, Sandy, that's a [00:32:00] unicorn. I don't think that there's, I don't know if a real. Analysts exist with this types of information that you're talking about. So I think we as a managers need to be leaders. We need to be aware of what it is that we're asking.
Sandeep D: And on the flip side, whenever I'm talking mentoring students, what I tell them is guys, 60 percent of the experience you have. Why are you saying no? Let them say no. So I think that's one advice. Because that is what gets you going. That's your starting point. If you don't try, you're going nowhere.
Joe Toste: Aaron?
Aaron Jones: You know what? I'm gonna make a comment on the hiring process. And what I would say to anybody who is looking to improve their processes for hiring, for building their workforce, for bringing the people in. Talk to your schools. Talk to your educational departments. Go in there and set a meeting.
Aaron Jones: I would be [00:33:00] absolutely shocked if anybody told you no. And once you have that meeting set, start talking to them about what you're looking for. I would also say that it is entirely possible for you to get on a board. And you can start telling the schools themselves, Hey, this is what I need, this is what I'm looking for, and this is what we want.
Aaron Jones: And they will start that process of developing that for you. There has never been a day that I have not had a conversation with somebody and then taken that back and improved processes through the school, through the education department. If I can do it, everybody can do it. And so what I would say is get involved.
Aaron Jones: If you're worried about the workforce of the future, and you're worried about your business, and you're worried about the government, the only way that you're going to make those improvements is if you yourself get involved.
Joe Toste: Yeah, no, I really like that. I Oh, I've talked to so many people in the public sector across the United States.
Joe Toste: We're like closing in on episode 200 recorded. [00:34:00] And workforce challenges and opportunities are, is a big topic. But one of the things I see, I definitely see as like a big opportunity. And some of the folks are taking it is looking at their own applications, their own job applications of what they're asking for.
Joe Toste: Because honestly going back to the unicorn, I couldn't get a marketing job at some public sector agencies. I don't have 10 years of experience, but Hey, you're all here, right? And so some of those things we just need to take a hard look at and whether that's, marketing or whether it's cybersecurity or whatever and not trying to look for a unicorn, but but still got to throw it in the hat.
Joe Toste: Erica, let's let's wrap up with you.
Errika Celsy: So I'm gonna dovetail on everything you guys are saying and really do the plug of, all the young people that are considering a pathway. This is something that I really landed on in my own personal ventures, professional ventures, what have you.
Errika Celsy: If it's not scary, it's not big enough. If you're not a little bit apprehensive about the move that you're going to make, then it's too easy of a move for you to be making. It should be something that you're If it doesn't make you get butterflies in your stomach a [00:35:00] little bit, then you probably are already way too equipped to do the role.
Errika Celsy: And that whole 60 40 approach, like That 40 percent is an opportunity for growth. It's an opportunity for learning. It's an opportunity to be an even better person or a bigger asset as a result. I would say, if it's not scary, it's not for you.
Joe Toste: Oh, I love that. Okay, we're going to end that. Thank you for coming on the Public Sector Show by TechTables.
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