Tarah Wheeler

Today, every single person at an organization must feel confident in their ability to protect themselves against a minefield of risks. The new challenges of Artificial Intelligence, password hacking, email phishing, ransomware attacks—these emerging threats against every business have only been made more terrifying by the global move towards remote and hybrid work. And while it might be easy to fault someone who unwittingly clicks on a link—what people don’t realize is how vast and systematic this issue really is. Fortunately, Tarah Wheeler does.

A veteran in the realm of digital security, Tarah’s resume includes working with organizations like Symantec, Splunk, and Microsoft, as well as revered institutions from Harvard to Oxford.  A white hat hacker, she knows how to proactively find security weaknesses and fix them before they can be exploited. And as a cybersecurity CEO, she shows leaders how to do the same. Tarah’s on-the-ground technical expertise is combined with such a clear, compelling, and humorous presentation style that it’s easy to understand even the most complex concepts.

“Tarah Wheeler is a brilliant role model.”Elissa Shevinsky, editor of Lean Out

Named the top female cybersecurity influencer in the world, Tarah is also the author of Women in Tech: Take Your Career to The Next Level with Practical Advice and Inspiring Stories, which details her experience in the male-dominated space of cybersecurity. A #1 Amazon career guide bestseller, it topped both the women in business and technology nonfiction lists. In addition to her technical know-how, she can expertly advise on how to improve the industry to include, support, and uplift women based on her own personal experience.

Tarah is the CEO of Red Queen Dynamics, a US cybersecurity company. She serves as the Senior Fellow for Global Cyber Policy at Council on Foreign Relations and was elected to Life Membership at CFR in 2023. She is an Electronic Frontier Foundation advisory board member, an inaugural contributing cybersecurity expert for The Washington Post, and a Foreign Policy contributor on cyber warfare.

She has been a US/UK Fulbright Scholar in Cyber Security and Fulbright Visiting Scholar at the Centre for the Resolution of Intractable Conflict at the University of Oxford, the Brookings Institution’s contributing cybersecurity editor, a Cyber Project Fellow at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard University‘s Kennedy School of Government, and an International Security Fellow at New America leading a new international cybersecurity capacity building project with the Hewlett Foundation’s Cyber Initiative.

She has been Head of Offensive Security & Technical Data Privacy at Splunk & Senior Director of Engineering and Principal Security Advocate at Symantec Website Security. She has led projects at Microsoft Game Studios (Halo and Lips) and architected systems at encrypted mobile communications firm Silent Circle. She has spoken on information security at the European Union, at the Malaysian Securities Commission, for Foreign Policy, the OECD and FTC, at universities such as Stanford, American, West Point, and Oxford, and multiple governmental and industry conferences. She has cashed multiple times in the World Series of Poker.