Service, Security & Humanity: How Cordell Robinson Is Changing Lives Worldwide #legacybuilding

Welcome to the Legacy All Stars podcast. We feature inspirational stories from people who dedicate themselves to helping others. Here is your host, Alan Pavloski. All right, welcome everybody to the Legacy All Stars podcast where we speak to inspirational people who make a difference in the lives of others. Today's guest, Cordell Robinson brings a rare blend of military intelligence, cybersecurity mastery, legal expertise and heart driven philanthropy. My favorite part. A decorated US Navy veteran, Cordell transitioned from serving as a senior intelligence analyst to earning his JD and becoming one of the most innovative leaders in cybersecurity, AI governance and compliance. As CEO of Brownstone Consulting Firm, he has built a global service disabled veteran owned firm known for its ability to streamline complex cybersecurity processes into practical systems executives and engineers can actually use. Cordell is the founder of Shaping Futures foundation, reflecting his deep commitment to service and impact. Welcome to Legacy All Stars. Cordell, it's great to have you. How have you been?

I've been great, Alan. Thank you for having me.

All right, let's jump right into the questions. You have one of the most unique professional combinations out there. Computer science, electrical engineering, law, military intelligence. Might as well just run the whole thing out there and just say what you haven't done is probably more easy to suggest. Take us back to that journey and how it unfolded and what shaped you early on.

Sure. So after undergrad I wasn't sure exactly what I wanted to do, so I decided to serve my country and join the military. And so what I did was go into military as an intelligence analyst. It was great. I started Diego Garcia and moved on to a Road of Spain as my final duty station doing military intelligence. It was fun. But then after a few years, I wanted to move on to back to the civilian world and figure out what was the next step. So I started off as a software engineer. And while I was a software engineer, I enrolled into law school. And once I graduated, I want to figure out, okay, do I want to be an attorney or do I want to continue in the technical field? Well, I was doing lots of research in the technical field and information security came up, which is now called cybersecurity. So I jumped into that arena. And so my second technical job was in compliance, doing cybersecurity for National Weather Service. I moved on from there throughout several different agencies. Department of Commerce, Office of the Secretary, noaa, Office of Satellite Operations, Department of the Air force, AbbVie pharmaceutical company. I was at Hewlett Packard for a little while as a senior manager there. I'm traveling all over the country doing compliance. And then I decided to start my own firm because I wanted to have more freedom to what I was doing and do it the way that I wanted to do it, without all of the corporate roadblocks that comes with, like, a big corporation. HP was great, no complaints about that. But I wanted to do something where I can have more of an impact in the industry. While doing that, I created so many different processes. I wrote the help write the initial policies and procedures at Department of Commerce. I wrote so many different programs, re architected many cybersecurity programs across the federal space and the civilian space. And during that time, I learned so much. And at some point I wanted to give back as well. So I started my foundation during COVID I was very, like, heartbroken about what was going on and how people were reacting. So I was like, well, let me take my mind off the depression of us being locked down and in Covid. So I started my foundation and I want to figure out where in the world. So I started in Tanzania and I officially opened my orphanage. I started by giving back to different orphanages and I Then I decided to open my orphanage in Arusha, Tanzania, about three years ago. And I have three kids there so far. We're gonna continue growing. The goal is to open up a school. But right now, the kids go to school seven days a week. Regular school Monday through Friday during the day. Evening, they have real life skills training, plumbing, electrical, home economics with cooking and gardening, but also, of course, cyber security. And then on the weekends, it's cyber security all day. But we make it fun. It's not like they're sitting in the class, but it's fun for them. So using my professional acumen to help kids grow into professionals has really helped. And also reshaping the future has really helped, especially now with AI and AI governance. That's really one of the hot button items. So I really been focused on that quite a bit, along with all of compliance as the full umbrella.

Yeah, we're going to get into a lot more granular detail on the foundation because I really want to hear more about it. I want to go into more detail also about your choice of going into the cybersecurity path instead of the traditional legal path. Can you kind of give me the idea of what was behind that choice?

Yes. So I did not want to either work for a law firm or bounce between law firms and go through the partner track and with all of the politics that goes with that. And it was just not my thing to do. That and also the culture of a law firm didn't fit my personality. My personality is more so. I'm very artistic when it comes to things. I'm very creative, and I don't think I could have been as creative. So I thought marrying my technical and my legal and cyber security would be advantageous to the field because not many people on the planet has my background. And so I thought that I would really help out more so by doing cyber.

I would imagine that this is off the subject, but I would imagine the creativity side of your personality really contributes to being able to look and see things outside of the box when it comes to cyber security instead of being really hyper focused on technical only.

Exactly. I definitely can see things out of the box. And it helps me reshape environments. It helps me write policies that fit organizations, that tailor fits them. Because every organization is different, all systems are different, their processes are different. And so you really have to think outside the box, have lots of thought leadership as well, because it's really important and have very strong critical thinking skills to be successful and to really help organizations reshape or revamp or upgrade their cyber resilience.

Got it. Got it. You're known for simplifying extremely complex governance and compliance processes. What's your philosophy about making cybersecurity approachable for executives?

So my thing with making it approachable for executives is not looking at cyber as a hindrance or looking at it as stopgaps, but looking at it as a collaborative effort. When I first began in the field, it was the cybersecurity people that always said no, no, no to all of the technical people and executives. You can't do this, you can't do that. And my approach has always been different. Instead of saying no is how can we get there? How can we secure your environment without too many roadblocks? How can we make your environment secure where you are going to save money, where you're going to be more proactive? Let's look at it from that lens instead of, well, let's put up all of these roadblocks and now you can barely function. You should be able to function, but there's limitations. And so understanding that and then also bring an awareness because executives, especially executives, need to have that awareness on the importance.

You probably just answered my next question, but let's talk about Brownstone Consulting firm. What are you building there and what makes your approach different from others in the field?

Sure. So what I'm building at Brownstone is a global leader in compliance. A lot of technical Personnel always say that compliance is not real security, when in reality, either they haven't been in the field long enough or they haven't really delved deep into compliance to understand what compliance actually really is. Because there's a lot of people in compliance that do not know what they're doing. They have skated by. And so they believe that, oh, well, everybody you know is stupid. But compliance is actually the umbrella to all of cyber security. Without compliance, the rest of it doesn't exist. The rest of it doesn't really even matter because if you don't have those policies, processes and procedures, or people, technology and processes in place, then all of nothing really exists. And you start with the people, people first. And once you get through the barrier of people making sure that they're properly aware and educated, which is Brownstone's philosophy, then everybody is happier and everybody understands more and they can basically implement this in their workplace and in a personal life.

Yeah. AI governance is becoming a huge topic, as we all know. Where do you see organizations struggling most and what solutions are you developing?

The biggest struggle that I see is awareness. So I have spoken to many CEOs, especially recently, and they don't even realize that they should implement AI governance or put any guardrails around their AI that they're putting into their environments. So my approach is let's start with training. Let's train your personnel on the basics, and then let's go step by step and get deeper and deeper and delve into AI. The good, the bad, the ugly. So how can you utilize it as a tool to really help your organization? But what do you need to do to put the proper guardrails on it, and what information should you put in it, and what information should you not put in it? So you really have to think and use your critical thinking skills to make sure that you're implementing it and putting processes and guardrails around it to ensure that you're going to have an AI environment that's secure and is not going to be taken over by bad actors.

Yeah, makes sense. Tell us about the automation tools you're creating and how they're shifting the future of cyber assessments.

Yes. So actually just recently, it was just approved on Friday. So it's available on the Google App Store and the Apple App Store. I created an app for cybersecurity professionals to be able to do compliance work, or basically assessments, both assessors and ISOs much faster. It provides them the baseline frameworks, it provides simplified language, and it provides questions and implementation statements so that when they're doing assessments. They can basically cut their time in half by doing it that way. So that's one of the things what we're also working on, Magentic AI penetration testing, where you don't need a full penetration testing team. You just need a couple people that's going to be ready within about a year or so, hopefully less. So we're working really hard on that. So we're trying to create tools that are going to automate a lot of things, but it's still going to need that human touch and that human interaction, because my goal is not to get rid of humans, because that doesn't make any sense. You're going to have to have human oversight, because AI is only going to be as smart as what input the humans put into it. So I always want to make sure that humans are involved in all of our products and processes and tools that we put out there and recreate. One, it makes everyone smarter, and two, it pushes everyone into the future on utilizing these tools.

Well, let's plug the app. What's the app called?

It's called Compliance Aid.

Nice. Okay. All right, everybody. Compliance Aid available on Apple App Store and Google App Store, right?

Yes.

All right, we'll check it out. Let's go back into your philanthropic work, because I'm super excited to talk to you about that. You've created Shaping Futures, super powerful. What inspired you to build it, and what impact are you aiming for? Is that on the orphanage side or. Tell me more about that foundation.

Sure. So it started off, I have to tell you this, it's a crazy story. So I've been very philanthropic all my life. Even as a kid, I used to sometimes give my allowance to other kids so that they can get a haircut or get food. And so as an adult, I always wanted to do something major. So I was speaking with a friend of mine, and she said, you know, you should think about a foundation. And I said, well, where? What would I do? You know, I don't know. I really am into education because I think education, knowledge is so powerful, especially when you apply it. So she said, well, look at Zanzibar or Tanzania. So I flew over to check it out. And just so happened, the first time I flew over, I met the chief of staff to the incoming president, which was just by chance. And then I met with the health minister, which would be equivalent to our Secretary of health. So I thought that was a big sign that, okay, this most likely is the geographic place for me to get this started. Well, things didn't Work out currently to plan in Zanzibar, but it will in the future. But in mainland Tanzania, it was easier to set up shop and get started with an orphanage. My ultimate goal is a school, but you have to start small and then grow from there. I always have big dreams, but, you know, reality kicked in and I had to like scale it back. But I said, I still want to have an impact. So I started by renting a house, a small house, Got a few kids that were displaced by their parents. Either their parents passed away or, you know, an abusive household. So I said, well, let me create a program for them. And I have someone on the ground there 24 7, I have a team there. And I said, let me create something that one is going to help these kids, but with the philosophy of teach a man the fish, not give them a fish. So I say, okay, yes, you know, I want people to donate, but understand that their donations are going to go toward these kids learning and training so they're getting something out of it so that they could be productive adults once they get to adult age. And I started at young age, between 5 years old to 8 years old. And so we, you know, make sure that they have their proper uniforms, they have food, and we make sure that we have a curriculum for them after school and on the weekends, which I think is wonderful. And of course, I throw in cyber, because cyber, it will not go anywhere, especially with AI but also life skills, how to iron, how to cook food, how to even grow your own food. You can grow fruits and vegetables. They have great soil, like all over the place, especially on the continent of Africa. And then different other skills. Plumbing and electric is very important. These are some trades that are very needed actually here in the United States. So I said, well, let's implement these different types of curriculum for these kids in stages as time go along, because, you know, they're young, but you know, the younger they are, the faster they learn and the more information that they can input. And so that was my philosophy, is to teach a man the fishing and give them that. And I want to grow from that and then eventually build a school there and build a state of the art school where I would have many kids. And it will be like a boarding school where they'll be there 24, 7, so there's no distractions from outside. And part of that is travel, get them, make sure they have passports and visas and have them travel the world so they have exposure, because exposure is so important to kids to actually grow mentally and physically so that they understand the world better and it makes the world a better place once you have that exposure. So, you know, part of my mission and so I've been working on it for years and I'm going to continue pressing forward.

Nice. I love that. That's what's wonderful.

Thank you.

This is going to be a mouthful, but you're a veteran, a technologist, a lawyer, a founder. What personal values tie all of these worlds together for you?

My personal values is to always give back in some form or fashion. So I give back when it comes to cyber by helping organizations out. Like I go in to make sure that I leave with their programs being in a much better place, in a much more secure place, lowering their security risk. On the giving side, you know, philanthropically, I want to always teach, and that's really inside. Well, I always want to teach and educate. Like I continue to educate myself by taking classes all the time, especially AI Now I expect all my staff to take classes in AI so that we are, you know, ready for the future and we can continue to teach. And so with the philanthropic side, I want to continue to teach and elevate so that there's a brighter future for the youth. And of course, I want to do that here in the United States as well, which I will at some point. And that's in the works as well. And so I like to do that. And I also am into food as well. So I've cooked a lot all over the world, cook for many, you know, high profile people because I love to feed people and who doesn't like to eat, right. And so I think it's really important to tie the aspect of giving in as many ways as you can. And that's just part of my personality is, is giving.

Let's talk about your passion for cooking for a minute. What's your favorite cuisine to prepare?

My favorite cuisine is Jamaican cuisine. Like my jerk chicken is legendary. And then also my crab cakes are legendary. I live in a D.C. metro area and so the Maryland crab cake is, reigns supreme, of course. And so I love cooking those and marrying those two together. Like I make jerk crab cakes. I love like making those items. But I also like to do the fusion of Jamaican cuisine with any other cuisine with like Spanish cuisine or with Chinese cuisine or Japanese cuisine or Italian. So I just love doing different fusions so that it introduces people to a variety of flavors. And I also have all my spices shipped from the continent of Africa so that you get these fresh spices and flavors that you can't get anywhere else.

Nice. Well, besides Cooking. You also have a passion for traveling and staying fit. How do these practices keep you grounded as a leader?

It keeps me grounded because it's all about discipline. So staying fit, working out is hard. There are some days I do not want to do it, but, you know, keeping that discipline really helps. And also when you are healthy, working out and you feel good, you're able to perform and function a lot better. And also eating well, I make sure that I eat a proper diet. You know, take care of that as well. Because what you put into your body is what comes out right, what shows and, like your personality and how you feel and how you're going to interact and react to things. So it's really important to stay fit because for me to have the energy to be a leader and to do all the different things that I do, I can't be lazy and just, like, lay around. I have to, like, keep it together and keep fit.

Yeah, for sure. Well, this comes to my favorite question that I always ask everybody, and it's all about legacy. What legacy do you hope your work, both in cyber security and in philanthropy will leave for the next generation?

My legacy would be while you're on this earth, to gain and apply, not just gain, but gain and apply as much knowledge as you can and to give back and pay it forward to as many people as you can, because that is the lasting legacy that people will most remember you by.

Yeah, that's great.

Well, Cordell, this has been great. We've come to the end of the show, sadly. I really want to thank you for being here and for your service, first of all, and for making.

Thank you.

Continued commitments to making a difference. Your philanthropic work is inspirational. Your variety of skill sets that you have is inspirational. I always love to see people that are broad in their approach and have a lot of skills and they're really good at a lot of things. Things rather than being great at one thing, I think of myself in that way. So I really admire that about you. Again, thank you for being here. It's been wonderful.

Awesome. Thank you for having me. It's been great.

Yeah. For all of you listening, please do your best to try to make a difference every day of your lives. It will pay you back in so many ways. Maybe not just financially, maybe not just from a standpoint of self satisfaction, but the giving back to others is what brings you meaning. I'm Alan Pavloski signing off for Legacy All Stars.