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March 25, 2021 by LCDI

Alex Mckenna On The Importance Of Women In Bussiness

Our final Women’s History Month worker spotlight is Alex McKenna! McKenna is a fourth-year Marketing major, with a minor in Digital Marketing. She is from New York City, New York, and she currently works on the Marketing Team for the Leahy Center. Her other experiences outside of this position include work with the Champlain Marketing Department, the Clemmons Family Farm, Books Ireland, and Champlain’s Office of International Education.

What made you choose to major within the business field?

I came into college as a Business Administration major, but during an introductory marketing course I realized how much of marketing is learning about different people, and that’s something I strive to do in my personal life. So, bringing together something that interests me with a career field was almost like a perfect match.

Are there any females in business that you look up to?

I’ve actually only had women as my bosses at all of my positions before the Leahy Center, so I’d have to say all of them! They are all amazing people and inspiring to me within marketing—definitely role models that I hope to emulate one day.

What was your first experience with your major?

At Champlain, actually! The class that inspired me to switch to marketing was Marketing & The Organizational Mindset, and the live-client project I did with Northern Stage Theatre in White River Junction, VT.

What are the pros and cons of being a woman in business?

It really depends on the area you’re going into, and how male-dominated the place you’re working is. The higher-up positions for bigger companies are still almost entirely male, which makes it harder for women to reach that level. Also, there are still instances where I get talked over, interrupted, or assumed to be the note-taker instead of taken seriously. But the pros are that interpersonal relationships between coworkers become stronger bonds and therefore more effective teams, and that there’s more honest and effective communication between myself and other women I work with.

What advice would you give to younger women who are interested in getting into Marketing/Business?

I’d definitely suggest simply trying it out! What I’ve learned is that until you try something new, you’re not going to be sure whether or not you enjoy it. That was the main reason I started college with a pretty adaptable major and then found something more specific that fit my personality and interests better.

Why is it important to have women in business?

For marketing specifically, it has been pretty well proven that older (typically white) men don’t really understand much about women as a target audience. So the most obvious way to fix this is having women’s opinions on how to market something to their own demographic. However, women are also statistically more attuned to people’s attitudes and emotions than men—and when they are in leadership positions their employees are more likely to be happier and more productive due to the increase in understanding.

What would you like to achieve in the marketing field in the future?

I definitely have goals to be in a leadership role within my field so that I can bring in more diverse perspectives and provide opportunities for people and women of color who are usually underrepresented in many business settings and decisions. Additionally, I aim to use my work to shift marketing away from the “sex sells” narrative for products that have nothing to do with sex. The concept has been around for too long and generally sexualizes female bodies, which then translates into violence and discrimination against women.

STAY UP TO DATE WITH TWITTER, INSTAGRAM, FACEBOOK, AND LINKEDIN SO YOU ALWAYS KNOW WHAT WE’RE UP TO!

The post Alex Mckenna On The Importance Of Women In Bussiness appeared first on The Leahy Center for Digital Forensics & Cybersecurity.

Read the original at: The Leahy Center for Digital Forensics & CybersecurityFiled Under: Digital Forensics, Uncategorized Tagged With: Blog Post, Interview, Women In Business

March 25, 2021 by LCDI

Katie Hopkins On Getting Into Tech And Advice To Other Women Interested In Cybersecurity

For Women’s History Month, we wanted to highlight some of the wonderful women working at the Leahy Center! First up is Katie Hopkins, a second-year Computer Networking and Cybersecurity major, with a minor in Business Administration. She is from Pembroke, New Hampshire, and is currently working on the Vermont Privacy Project at the Leahy Center. In the past, she has worked on the NMap Scanner team for the Leahy Center as well.

What made you choose to major within the information technology field?

I originally wanted to be a criminal justice or computer science major, but then after some research my junior year of high school, I learned that cybersecurity was a major and then ultimately chose to pursue a career in cybersecurity.

What was your first experience with technology?

One of my very first experiences with technology was playing around in the settings of my family’s shared computer and helping my family with a lot of their small daily tech troubles.

Are there any females in tech that you look up to?

I look up to and respect all of the women currently at Champlain and any alumni in tech majors that have ultimately carved the way for me to be where I am today.

What are the pros and cons of being a woman in tech?

The best part about being a woman in tech is that other women in tech are very supportive of one another, but the con of being a woman in tech is that you always have to work way harder than your male colleagues to work for the goals you have.

What advice would you give to younger women who are interested in getting into the tech field?

Simply put, don’t underestimate yourself.

Why is it important to have women in the tech field?

Representation of women is essential in the tech field. The more women that are making the often tough decision to try and get a job in the tech field will create a domino effect that will ultimately shrink the huge disproportion of women to men that currently exists.

What would you like to achieve in the tech field in the future?

My current goal is to become a cybersecurity consultant.

STAY UP TO DATE WITH TWITTER, INSTAGRAM, FACEBOOK, AND LINKEDIN SO YOU ALWAYS KNOW WHAT WE’RE UP TO!

The post Katie Hopkins On Getting Into Tech And Advice To Other Women Interested In Cybersecurity appeared first on The Leahy Center for Digital Forensics & Cybersecurity.

Read the original at: The Leahy Center for Digital Forensics & CybersecurityFiled Under: Digital Forensics, Uncategorized Tagged With: Cybersecurity, Interview, Uncategorized, Women In Tech

February 25, 2021 by LCDI

Interview with Champlain Adjunct Professor Kevin Eaton

Our students here at the Leahy Center work hard in their field and do amazing things. We decided to follow up with Kevin Eaton, who now teaches at Champlain College as an Adjunct Professor, on his experiences.

Editor: We’re here with Champlain graduate Kevin Eaton. How are you today? Can you tell us a little about yourself?

Eaton: Hey, I’m doing alright, thanks for asking! Yeah, I graduated from Champlain last year, right now I’m working as an Associate Software Engineer at DealerPolicy down in Williston, VT, but I’m also teaching classes here as an Adjunct Professor.

Tell me a bit about that. How are your experiences teaching here at Champlain?

Yeah, so far I’ve been able to teach one course, a one-credit course on React, which is a front-end framework to build web applications. Honestly, it was a great experience. Since it was a one-credit course, I didn’t have the biggest class in the world, only about five or six students. Because of that, I got to work closely with each of them. I was able to answer all the questions they had, which was awesome.

One of the cool things about teaching a one-credit course was that it was full of people that wanted to be there. They’re going out of their way to take that course. A lot of them were very self-motivated, I didn’t really have to speak with any of them about not handing in assignments. It was a very fast-paced, exciting environment to be in.

How long have you thought about teaching? Has it always been a part of your plan going forwards through your work at the Leahy Center?

My idea of teaching started way back in High School. I was a basketball coach for a little bit, where I helped some of the younger kids learn how to play. I didn’t really realize that I wanted to become a professor until I became a supervisor at the Leahy Center. I realized my favorite aspect of that job wasn’t so much all the additional roles that thrown on top of it. It was working with the interns to try and make sure they get the best experience out of the Leahy Center, and that they learn the most up-to-date information possible about programming and the fields they want to go into. I got to help them realize “Hmm, maybe web application development isn’t for me,” or “Maybe I want to go more into cybersecurity than programming.”

All of that stuff is what a professor helps you understand. I had a few game students in my class. Programming in React is much different than programming in Unity or something like that. It was a much different experience for them. I think they got a lot out of it, and it really helped reinforce their visions for their future plans.

What were some of your responsibilities at the Leahy Center while you were working there? Tell us a bit about the environment and your experiences.

So, I spent just about four years at the Leahy Center, and I wore a lot of different hats during that time. I started out as an intern, working my way up, slowly gaining more responsibility as I went. When I first started, it was a lot of just writing code for various projects, like the seating chart, inventory, and all of the other websites that needed to be managed. Slowly as the years went by, my responsibilities escalated. I took on a group of interns, working on seating chart. Then I became supervisor of the programming team, which brought with it more decisions that needed to be made. I had to handle things like infrastructure and deployment, things that wouldn’t be left to interns.

You talked about how your experience as a supervisor helped fuel your interest in teaching. How have some of the more technical skills you picked up and honed at the Leahy Center worked into your position now?

The Leahy Center gave me a lot of space to grow as a software engineer. Once I was running the team myself, I was able to make more decisions that kept us up to date with the latest practices. Part of that was switching to a React framework instead of using PHP, which kept me up to date and helped me experiment with React. Ultimately, that ended up helping me land my current job, as well as giving me a unique opportunity to teach it to other students. It was the doorway I needed to get a foothold into the industry. From maintaining applications and Trello boards to simply checking in on Slack messages, it seems mundane but these are all the things that make you successful.

What would you say to somebody currently at the Leahy Center that’s looking to go down the same path that you are now?

I would say to keep experimenting. Just because its been done one way in the past doesn’t mean you don’t work to implement a better way. It may seem that however things are when you get there is the way it has always been, but it probably hasn’t. The truth is, someone came along and said “There’s a better way to do this, and we’re gonna do it this way instead.” That’s what I did, and that’s what I hope that every team at the Leahy Center does. I hope they’re as innovative as possible and try and find the best solution for the problems that they’re facing.

Thanks for talking with us! Is there anything else you’d like to add?

I would say being a professor is definitely a lot harder than sometimes students give the professors credit for. I do have a full-time job on top of being an adjunct, so it made it a bit harder to make lesson plans and grade, but it is a great undertaking that these professors going through each semester try and keep up to date with the latest information and material. I’d like to just take my hat off for the professors that do this day in and day out, it’s really impressive what they do.

STAY UP TO DATE WITH TWITTER, INSTAGRAM, FACEBOOK, AND LINKEDIN SO YOU ALWAYS KNOW WHAT WE’RE UP TO!

The post Interview with Champlain Adjunct Professor Kevin Eaton appeared first on The Leahy Center for Digital Forensics & Cybersecurity.

Read the original at: The Leahy Center for Digital Forensics & CybersecurityFiled Under: Digital Forensics, Uncategorized Tagged With: alumni, faculty, Graduation, Interview

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