What does a trauma ICU nurse have in common with an Information Security Officer? More than you'd think. This talk charts one nurse's unconventional path into cybersecurity, and the moment she realised the skills she'd spent years building were exactly what the industry needed. Beyond the personal story, it makes the case that the cybersecurity skills shortage won't be solved by fishing in the same pond. The people we need are already out there: in hospitals, in classrooms, in labs. This talk is for leaders who want teams that think differently, for hiring managers ready to consider cross-sector skill sets, and for anyone standing at a career crossroads wondering if security is even for them.
Trauma ICU nursing delivers intensity, clinical mastery, and constant challenge. It is also hard to let go of outside the hospital walls, and that nagging awareness of imbalance eventually becomes hard to ignore. This talk follows one nurse’s honest pivot into information security, and makes the case that the through-line from clinical care to GRC is shorter than it looks. Risk assessments, compliance frameworks, and stakeholder communication are activities nurses do every single shift. The same skills that keep you calm when everything around you is not, that help you make fast decisions with incomplete information and hold difficult conversations with executives and frontline staff alike, turn out to be exactly what good GRC work demands. Beyond the career shift, this talk covers what it means to enter a male-dominated field as a woman today, what family-friendly workplace culture actually looks like in practice, and why reducing external stressors is not a perk but a performance strategy. This talk also makes the broader case that cyber keeps recruiting from the same pipelines while the skills gap widens, and that teachers, nurses, and other professionals are already doing this work under a different name. Attendees will leave with an understanding of the value that non-traditional backgrounds bring to security teams. Whether you are considering a change, or building a team, this talk is for you.
Sam is an Information Security Officer, former trauma ICU nurse, and mum of two who discovered on a holiday that she was burnt out, and that the skills keeping patients alive were exactly what cybersecurity needed. She speaks on non-traditional pathways into security, why potential is a powerful factor alongside credentials, and why learning a new technical domain is just a matter of mastering new concepts and new tools; something nurses often do. When she is not in front of a screen, you will find her on the water learning to sail, out camping with her family, or nose deep in a good book.
