Author: Andy Ellis
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Sorry Seems to Be the Hardest Word
Leadership Moment: Fickle Elmo If you weren’t paying attention, you might have missed the brief window last week when Elmo’s Twitter account posted vile, antisemitic content. It was ostensibly an account hack, and in one sense, Sesame Street is also a victim here. But they’re a victim who then victimized a lot of people. Usually,…
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Dead Serious Leadership
Lessons from Media: Bad Shabbos First off, a quick review: amazing movie. If you’re Jewish, or know Jews, this should have you in tears of joy. I strongly recommend it; if you’re in Boston, it’s currently playing at The Coolidge. Now, on to some leadership lessons, without giving away the plot entirely. The movie is…
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What’s Next, and What Not to Do
Update: Departed YL Ventures I’ve now officially left YL Ventures. Technically, I was done on June 27th, but I wanted to wait until after July 1st (the company’s annual vesting date for carry, in case there was a change of heart on the other side) to give the update about what I’ll be doing next.…
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Leadership’s Trolley Problem: Choices and Consequences
Leadership Moment: Don’t Re-Blame the Victims As hostages are (finally) being released from Gaza, a friend noted the terms of the deal (30-50 convicted terrorists freed from prison for each hostage), and asked, “But won’t the hostages feel guilty about that exchange rate?” Let me first lay my bias out: I dislike almost everything about…
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Leaping from one horse to another
Leadership Moment: Switching Leaders The New England Patriots ended their season, and within hours had terminated their first-year head coach, Jerod Mayo. Days later, they’d hired Mike Vrabel, the former head coach of the Tennessee Titans. While there are a lot of nuances to this transition, today we’ll simply focus on the dangers of setting…
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Security Leadership
This talk delves into the intersection between security–helping make wiser risk choices–and leadership–getting more done with a lower energy cost. It draws on the lessons of the Six Leadership Disciplines and Humans are Awesome at Risk Management talks, providing a handful of examples of specific leadership skills to practice. The 24 skills in the matrix…
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MIT CSAIL Alliance
I had the opportunity to delve into the evolving landscape of cybersecurity alongside Amy Herzog, CISO for Amazon Ads & Devices, as we were hosted by Kara Miller on the MIT CSAIL Alliance podcast. Our conversation traversed the multifaceted challenges and opportunities that the corporate world faces in the wake of AI advancements. Despite the…
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Guardians of the Cyberspace
I was on the Guardians of the Cyberspace podcast with Menny Barzilay, and we had a blast. Below is ChatGPT’s summary of what we talked about. In the latest episode of the Blavatnik School of Computer Science, Tel Aviv University ICRC Podcast, “Guardians of the Cyberspace,” host Manny welcomed Andy Ellis, an influential figure in the cybersecurity industry…
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Trainwrecks and Universities
Leadership Moment: Overlawyering It feels like I’ve been commenting on university leadership a lot lately, and maybe that’s because MIT, Harvard, and Penn have been providing a masterclass in how not to lead large organizations. Those three university presidents were in front of Congress last week (which is always a circus), and were repeatedly asked…
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9 CISO Questions
Summary Everybody sells, right? Wrong. Unless you’re taking an order and retiring your quota, you don’t sell – instead, you market. If you’re selling to a CISO, you need to understand the organizational dynamics that surround a CISO’s decision-making process. This talk walks through nine critical questions that CISOs need to understand the answers to…