# Chantelle: The value of diversity in cybersecurity

My name is Chantelle.

I'm a Security Engineer here at Google, and I am part of

the security and implement, and scaling team.

We secure and monitor systems that contain sensitive information.

My background, initially I was going to be a heart surgeon and then I took chemistry, I took chem 1, and I was like,

no that's not happening.

My interest in cybersecurity came from a TV show called Mr.

Robot. It's about a vigilante hacker trying to save the world.

And from there, that kind of piqued my interest in security, and so that's a great foundation.

Valuing diversity in security is important because we're exposed to a broad range of thinking.

That helps to inspire a lot of creative ideas and different perspectives and different ways of tackling a problem and that kind of leads us forward into being better security engineers.

Our Manager, Laureen always steps in to tell us, "Don't be so quick to find a solution.

Don't be so quick to solve the problems yourselves."

We have a wide range of security engineers and connections to our disposal, and she encourages us to go out and seek them out,

and then to come back and then have us settle in and brainstorm all of these ideas that we've collected after we've went out and tried to find it.

We've ultimately almost always come up with the best possible outcome that we can ever come up with.

My advice for people to get into the industry is get out there and be proactive.

I definitely recommend joining up the security community on Twitter.

There's a huge security community on Twitter right now.

That shares a bunch of resources,

opportunities, job positions, and are definitely open to talking to anyone that's interested in getting into the field but just don't know how. I recommend security as a career.

Definitely, I think that for me personally, I was able to tap into my rebel side a lot in security.

I found I was able to express myself a bit more in security.

It's just a whole ball of goodness.