As we review your application, what more would you like us to know as we consider your candidacy for the Harvard Business School MBA program?

As we review your application, what more would you like us to know as we consider your candidacy for the Harvard Business School MBA program?

I was always fascinated with James Bond films. But it was not the cars, the action, or the exotic travel locations that attracted me; rather, it was the gadgets. Before each mission that Bond was sent on, he would meet with Q Branch, a fictional unit in the British Secret Service that provided advanced technology to give their agents a competitive advantage in the field. The contraptions that they came up with were often unassuming tools with a hidden secondary usage – a wristwatch with a metal-cutting laser, a cigarette case with an X-ray emitter used for safecracking, even a bit of pocket lint with a radioactive tracker. Without these futuristic gadgets, Bond was just a man with a gun, but with them, he was a superhero that saved the world.

The idea that technology can enable otherwise normal people to engage in harrowing acts of bravery to aid their country is powerful. As I went through my teenage years, taking apart and building all sorts of electronics, I would fantasize that I was in Q’s lab, putting the finishing touches on a calculator, lighter, or some knickknack to defeat a megalomaniacal villain. I knew that one day I would engineer solutions to contribute to a cause greater than my own. I would get that opportunity much sooner than expected. Early into my senior year of high school, I received a recruiting envelope from one of our nation’s most important intelligence agencies, X. They were offering to pay for my full college tuition in exchange for me dedicating the next seven years of my life to X. While I could not have imagined the course that this would set me on in my career, the prospect that I, at only age 18, had an opportunity to serve in our country’s equivalent to Q Branch was too exciting to pass up.

From the day I raised my right hand and took an oath to the Constitution, I knew I would not be content just treating this opportunity as a generic summer internship program between school years. My mission at X was my top priority and I, without the usual collegiate pressures of needing to find a job, geared my education entirely toward learning skills that I could translate to my new career. I focused on X and X, spending many hours a week in college on a X leading an effort to design ways for a Xt to securely be commanded from the ground. I even became a licensed amateur radio operator in order to learn the fundamental concepts of X critical to X communications. My dedication paid dividends immediately, facilitating opportunities to design creative solutions and travel throughout the country and the world helping national policymakers meet their most critical intelligence priorities.

When I matriculated into full-time employment at X, I was prepared for a lifelong career in X Intelligence – designing software and hardware to X against our nation’s adversaries. I excelled, earning multiple awards and an advanced promotion a year ahead of schedule. However, as I developed a greater understanding of the global X war, I began to see how vulnerable much of this country’s industry is. The wars of the future will not solely be fought on the battlefield, and the layers of government bureaucracy are not designed for a quickly moving X war where our power grid can be shut off at any moment and our companies’ X can be stolen in the blink of an eye. I concluded that in order to make a lasting impact, I would need to design the shield, not the sword.

As my term of obligation to X neared completion, I knew that I would need to step outside of government into a fast-paced entrepreneurial environment. I decided to join a small startup that was designing X solutions with the potential to protect some of the most important, but vulnerable, systems powering the US economy. At X, I have led efforts to not only advance the state-of-the-art in X technology, but also to bring these technologies to market so that our country’s aircraft carriers, biological research facilities, automobiles, and pharmaceutical labs can defend themselves against the most sophisticated X adversaries.

However, throughout my endeavor in the private sector, I have been exposed to more than a few inefficiencies in how information security technology is evaluated, transitioned, and used. As the media talks about a future “cyber 9/11” and the financial risk of computer intrusions is becoming increasingly salient, the cybersecurity issues of the future will not be solved by just using longer passwords or installing another antivirus program. I plan to use my time at Harvard Business School to learn the organizational and strategic skills that underpin successful decision-making in order to drive change in the way the private and public sectors allocate resources and make decisions about cybersecurity.

With an MBA and a foundation in the HBS Case Method accompanying my unique technical background in the cybersecurity industry, I’m confident that I can cut through red tape and find new ways to quantitatively evaluate future information technologies, quickly transition advanced research to the private sector, and advise companies and government on effectively mitigating their operational risks.