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Hello, my name is Monica Ruiz and I am the fellow for the Cyber Initiative and

Special Projects Program at the Hewlett Foundation.

Early on I wanted to be a weather woman and I think that's because in my fifth grade class I was the person that would give the morning announcements and so for some reason

I had an interest in weather and I had an interest in TV and so that's what I I wanted to be but things have certainly changed since then.

You know early on my parents really encouraged both my two brothers and sister to be curious and they also

never really pushed any gender roles on us.

And so as the youngest in the family I also tended to have my brothers and

sisters hand me downs. And so I, you know, growing up had a blue bike, which I loved and I never really associated like blue bike with boys bike or pink bike, girls bike.

I just had my blue bike and I loved it.

And, you know, fast forward to college college I developed an interest in international relations and so I really

moved from you know TV and giving the morning announcements in fifth grade to more of a broader international relations

context.

And I studied abroad in China during my bachelor's degree.

And that really played a big role in what I did afterwards because it

gave me access to a culture in a language that was so different than my own and so you know

returning from China to complete my bachelor's degree, I was fascinated with having been, you know, outside of my comfort zone that I graduated and wanted to go right back to Asia.

And so lived in South Korea for a year where I taught English.

And there I lived very close to a U.S. Air Force Base

where I started learning about security policy issues more broadly.

And I think that's what started getting me into security, not cyber security at that point, but security more brought me in the context of

international relations and so you know returning from Korea I got back to Miami which is where I grew up, and I started interning and later became a contractor at US Southern Command.

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