Rick is the former VP and NC Healthplan CISO for Centene. He now focuses on AI Governance and Ethics research and advising venture capital firms and numerous cybersecurity startups. He is an award-winning CISO, frequent speaker, podcast guest, and writer of papers for topics ranging from cybersecurity, neurodiversity, and AI governance and security. In a prior role, Rick was a Virtual CISO supporting international companies. During that time, he educated corporate boards, developed and matured security programs, built a SOC, and created the curriculum for a Cybersecurity Master’s degree program for an International University. Rick has spoken at cybersecurity conferences such as RSAC, SecureWorld, and FutureCon, and as a guest on podcasts such as The CyberWire Hashtable, CISO Series, Google Cloud, Elevate Your Career, and The Rsnake Show. He is on the Cloud Security Alliance (CSA) CXO Trust Advisory Council and the Boards of his local Charlotte ISC2, BSides, and CSA Chapters. Rick is a member of the CIS Critical Security Controls editorial panel and was a large contributor to Version 8 of the Controls. He has a Cybersecurity YouTube channel where he recorded an overview of changes to each of the 18 new CIS CSC v8 Controls, and has recent keynotes and other videos on cybersecurity and neurodiversity topics. Rick has alternated between being a cybersecurity management consultant and CISO throughout his more than 25-year cybersecurity career, and has led many ethical hacking, incident response and forensics, and risk management teams.