A Story of One Cybersecurity Professional Parenting Two Neurodivergent Youngsters

I have been a researcher in the cybersecurity space for almost 20 years. My career began at a startup, where I was employee number 16 and the only female engineer for a long while but managed to earn the long-lasting title of the Rules Mistress (anyone here familiar with Forify?) by the end of my first year there. Having survived the startup years and multiple acquisitions and spin-merges, I became accustomed to wearing multiple hats (mostly white): that of a researcher, developer, sales and customer support engineer, tester, build engineer, conference presenter, blogger, team lead - you name it. But 14 years ago, another hat (and, arguably, the most important one) was added to my collection - that of a parent. On top of everything that comes with becoming a parent, 7 years ago my husband and I discovered that both of our children were neurodivergent, and in different ways - autism and dyslexia.
In this session, I would like to share our story in hopes of providing a glimpse of what it’s like to be a working professional parenting two differently wired individuals. I’d like to talk about my transformation from the “let’s fix this deficit” engineer-driven mindset to seeing and accepting my kids for who they are, from stressing out about the end result to valuing and enjoying the process. I want to talk about how much I had to educate myself - heck, I am pursuing a doctoral degree in cognitive diversity - and how much my view of education has changed as a result of my nearly transcendental transformation. In these short 30 minutes, I will go over the challenges we’ve faced, the solutions we’ve chosen, the things my kids have taught me, and the ways my company, and especially my manager and colleagues, have shown their support.
Neurodiversity, just like gender, racial, mental health, and harassment issues, deserves to be talked about. So, here I am, putting on another hat - that of a neurodiversity ambassador - in hopes of spreading awareness and acceptance of differently wired individuals at home, at school, and in the workplace.
View upcoming Summits: www.sans.org/u/DuS
SANS Neurodiversity in Cybersecurity Summit 2024
Wearing Multiple Hats: A Story of One Cybersecurity Professional Parenting Two Neurodivergent Youngsters
Speaker: Yekaterina O’Neil, Principal Security Researcher, OpenText