Episode 05: Tech-Savvy

Hello and welcome to the Hardcore Soft Skills Podcast. This is Gaby Caro, and after each episode you will learn more about a new skill with the help of an expert, with practical lessons about essential non-technical skills. Today, however, the topic, as you saw, is Tech savviness. You, like many of my listeners, are probably in a highly technical job, either software development, IT, logistics, or others. So you may consider yourself tech savvy, but being tech savvy is not just about knowing a how-to, but about cultivating the desire to always be learning more. And this is what we will talk about today with my guest, Bob Fabien Zinga. Bob Fabien Zinga is a cybersecurity executive and a US Navy Reserves commander with 23 years of experience in information technology and areas such as leadership, business operations, and project management. He's also part of the Forbes Technology Council of Experts panel, and I invited him because he's always sharing great information, both to the tech experts about the latest trends and about the fields we must learn more about.. We talked about his fascinating life story and his views on why we should educate ourselves more on business. Let's listen. Thank you so much, Fabien, for joining me in the podcast today.

I am glad to be here.

I have a lot to ask you. I have been reading what you have written throughout, um, in Forbes magazine, and also, should I congratulate you as well because you were recently promoted?

Yes, yes, thank you.

So, could you talk a little bit about your promotion? It's to commander, right? You're a Navy commander in the US military?

Yes, I joined the US Navy back in 2004 as a seaman recruit, which is the lowest rank possible, and in 17 years I went from an E-1 to an O5. So basically, when I went to boot camp, I think it was in 2005, right? I made up my mind I was either going to become a Senior Enlisted Leader, which is like E7, or a Senior Officer, which is O5. So that dream finally, finally became reality this month. So thank you.

Wow, congratulations. Awesome. So, and I wanted to talk a lot today about your career in tech and your career in the military, as well as those lessons lessons that you can provide in the roles of— in the realm of leadership. Our topic today is tech savvy or being tech savvy, but there's a lot to talk about today. And I want to know first, because I saw in one of your writings that you had mentioned that at the age of 17, you realized that you wanted to kind of cultivate your leadership skills. Could you talk about that? What made you realize that at such a young age that you wanted to do that?

Well, I guess it is kind of young with It seems like a lot of things starting to happen for me at 17. Now basically what happened is I migrated from the Congo to the US, right? So at 17 years old, I started living completely alone. Actually, my mother was so scared, she actually flew with me to the US. She stayed for maybe about a month or so, and then I was like, "Hey, Mom, it's time for you to go back. I've got this." So I was pretty much completely emancipated. I was an adult living by myself. So That's where I kind of decided, you know, what do I want to do with my life? What impact do I want to have? Not just live my life to please my mom, which I loved her very much, and my parents and so forth, but what do I, Bob Fabien Zinga, what do I want? And that's really where I started to get very, very serious about kind of, in a way, setting my own destiny. I started reading a whole bunch of books. By now, I probably read more than 1,000 books now. But most of the books I've been Reading, I read a lot, but it's kind of strange. Maybe I shouldn't say this loud because I was a trained scientist, but science fiction is not something I'm very interested in. There may be a couple of exceptions, but like novel and things like that, to me it's like a waste of my time. I want to read books that are actually very practical, books that I can study and read and actually apply in my life like now and kind of start seeing the impact and improvement, like business leadership or whatever. So anyway, so when I came to America at 17 years old, I kind of knew originally my first dream was to become a medical doctor. Obviously, I'm not a medical doctor today, so I had this second dream. But no matter what my primary goal was as a career, I just felt it that you had to have 3 things no matter what you do. One was be a good leader. Number 2, you have to have some type of business skills. And then number 3, you also have to know something about technology. No matter what you do today, I felt like in the 21st century, those would be like the 3 most crucial skills, no matter what you do. It doesn't matter if you're a lawyer, a doctor, a teacher, tech technologies. You can't really live life today without having to deal with tech technology, right? I have two daughters, they're like Gen Zers, right? And they pretty much were born in the midst of social media, tech technology, and so forth, and couldn't even imagine life, no, without their iPhone. So it is just imperative for everybody everywhere to really be computer literate, right? 'Cause when I was growing up in the Congo, in Central Africa, one of the biggest problem back then, I was very fortunate to go to school and so forth, but a lot of the kids in my country of origin, they were completely illiterate. They couldn't read and they couldn't understand French, and that was a real problem. But I felt like in the 21st century, including in American developed countries, it's possible to be computer illiterate. And that's part of the reason why I just decided to kind of get into technology, and it ended up being my career of choice. Wow. But yeah, yeah, that is, that is really how I felt, because I even felt like if I, at the time when I wanted to become a medical doctor, I was like, okay, maybe I will have my own clinic, so I need to learn about business, right? Because it's not just about helping people, it's about profitable and running a business too, right? And I need to be a leader. I will have a bunch of people working for me. I will be leading in this vision. And then I also need to learn about technology because you can't really be a doctor today without having some type of computer system, right? To keep all of the data from your patient. And on top of that, we have HIPAA rules and so forth. It has to be secure. So again, you don't have to be an expert in that, but you need to know. Something about it.

Yeah, certainly, and it's so important, as you mentioned, to have that skill today that regardless of the field that you're in, to become— to have some sort of tech savviness in, uh, or being tech savvy, I should say. Now, why did you decide to focus on the area of cybersecurity?

Okay, uh, very long story, but to make it short, basically, uh, the only job I could find on campus as an international student at the time, was working for the university library in their computer department system. That was the only job I could find. I feel like I applied for like 1,000 jobs, nobody wanted to hire me. I was like, I guess they call it catch-22, right? It's like, okay, we only want to hire people who already have experience. I'm like, okay, I don't have experience, but for me to get the experience so you can hire me, you need to give me a chance, you need to open the door, give me the opportunity, and then I will gain the experience. So it's like, okay, we can tell you you don't have experience, but I can't have the experience unless you hire me. So anyway, It felt like it was impossible, and this has happened quite a few times in my life, but I just had to find a way, find an opening, and then really, really, really work for it. So that's exactly what happened. So I was doing that job part-time, and then later on when I went to graduate school, I was a PhD candidate in microbiology and I got married and we had a kid on the way and I felt like I needed to work full-time, so I kind of went back to that job. It was very easy for them to hire me because they already knew me, they had trained me and they knew how hard I worked. And from there on, I guess it was destiny. I was studying for the Microsoft Certified Systems Engineer certification and part of the MCSE MCSE, and part of the track, it was brand, brand new, it was security.

Yeah.

So I got into it and I really, really felt in love with it. I like, okay, this is what I was born for. And then I think it was in 2005, I had the opportunity to actually do security full-time. And like they say, the rest is history.

Yes. And also now you're part of the Forbes Technology Council. Could you talk about that and how do you first become part of that one? What does it involved?

Yeah, so it's invitation only, and I had received an email. I think her name was Amanda, and if I was interested in joining. I don't know, but I feel like they probably go around social media, LinkedIn and stuff, and look for tech executives who would be a good fit. And once I received the invitation, I told my supervisor at work, I'm like, yeah, I will definitely accept this. That was in 2020, so it's been almost 2 years now. Yeah, it is, it is, I really feel privileged to be among them because you really network a lot with all of the movers and shakers in technology, not just in the US but really across the world, right? And you also get an opportunity to be a thought leader and share your passion, your vision, and contribute to the global knowledge of technology. So it has been a very rewarding experience.

Yes, and I like the fact that when you also contribute to Forbes and in your writings, you address both, both sides of like the technology side for those people who are working in the more tech savvy and those on the business side as well. And, um, and I want you to talk a little bit about that because I, in regards of, um Advice for people who are actually in the tech field, you have suggested some of the skills that they should develop as being— it's not just about being tech savvy, but also knowing about some of other skills. What are some other skills that you suggest for those people that are in the field of technology?

Yes, and again, I think it's technology, but it really is any field whatsoever, kind of like what we talked about at the beginning. Leadership and business, right? Leadership, business and technology to me are really the 3 most critical skills for anybody anywhere. I worked for a company called Pivotal in 2014. That's when I moved to the San Francisco Bay Area. It was a different type of company. When I joined the company, I realized we didn't have any servers or data center on premises, nothing at all. Everything was completely in the cloud, 100% in the cloud. I've never been in a company quite like that before. We used to say, you know, the internet is our network. But another thing Pivotal did is we really taught how to deploy and develop modern software. That was part, part of our mission. And of course, me being in the security team, my mission was to develop software but do it in a secure way. But one thing I kind of realized is pretty much all of the companies out there are technology companies, whether they realize it or not. For example, Walmart, right? Great— I guess it's a grocery store or a supermarket where you can go and buy pretty much whatever you want. It's really a technology company. They just happen to have some type of inventory, but they are a tech company. Pretty much car rental company, Hertz or Avis, all of them, they really are technology companies, they just happen to have an inventory of cars. But Uber, definitely a technology company for sure, and they don't have any inventory whatsoever. They have people in the gig economy who bring their own car, pay for their own insurance, and then do all of the work for them, and they just get to be in profit. So pretty much every company today is a tech company, whether they realize it or not. So Technology is definitely crucial, and I think it's just going to get more and more and more important as we go forward. But in addition to that, I think you really have to understand business. No matter what you do, what your industry is, even as a cybersecurity executive, I need to understand the business of my organization. How do we make money? Why do I get paid? How— what am I— how can I impact the bottom line for my organization, right? Even if you are like in a nonprofit organization, I've worked for quite a few and I sit on a couple of boards of nonprofits, they don't make money, cash there, but what is the impact of their mission? How do they track what they are doing and kind of what their return on investment is on that in their community and making the world a better place, whatever their mission is. So I think you have to add the a businessman. And that's part of the reason why, while I was at Pivotal in 2014, I decided to enroll in an MBA program at the University of Maryland. And I really, really highly encourage anybody who's kind of moving up the ladder of the technology industry to seriously think about getting a business degree also, because it's not just about this cool technology software that, no, the company may be able to develop, but it's also the business behind that. How do you take an idea from a concept into reality and get paying customers who are going to be able to give you enough money to pay all of your employees and profit? One thing that kind of drove most of us at Pivotal back then was the idea that we would eventually go public, and we did. I made a small fortune out of that, but this is all business. So that's why I think business skills are very, very important for any tech professional. And then in addition to that, I believe leadership, being able to influence people, working with teams, and because I always feel like the synergy between a team is much, much greater than the individual contribution of each individual combined, right? So I think in the 21st century we need new types of leaders, people who are going to be able to work with teams and be able to focus on the mission and accomplish so much more than management would even allow, right? The science of management might say, okay, for a team this size, if everybody gives 100%, the most you can do is 100%. But I think with leadership, you can go all the way up to 120, 150% because you are leading people from the inside in and inspiring them to do even more and working for a cause that is much, much greater than themselves. And again, that is a skill. Like I say in one of the articles I wrote for Strixers, you know, in the Navy we believe everybody is born, but leaders are made. And I think those are definitely skills that anybody can learn.

Great. I really like that advice of having, really learning how things work, of having that business acumen and learning that, as well as cultivating the leadership that, as you mentioned, is something that we all have, but we just need to learn how to cultivate. I really like that. And now for those people that are— we work, we're all surrounded by technology, by everything else, and what are some of the good ways that you consider that we could learn what's the latest? Because technology is always shifting and threats are always out there as well. So what are some good ways that you recommend that we could continue to cultivate on that as well?

Yeah, and I think another characteristic or skill that is extremely important for tech leaders today is just being curious, right? And the desire to want to be, I guess, a continual student. Back in the days when my parents went to school, you pretty much went to school, you learned a job, and then you did that for the rest of your life and you didn't need to update your knowledge at all. But today, that is just not true, especially in tech, right? Pretty much, especially in Silicon Valley, We come up with new product, new idea, new software almost like every 3 to 6 months or so. So it looks like by the time you purchase a computer, like within 6 months or so, it's completely obsolete. You need to get like a new one. So the knowledge and the technology is really increasing exponentially, and it's very, very, very difficult to keep up. Like, for example, one big shift that happened in my career when I moved from Alabama, where I used to work, to California. I realized that was about 2010, 2011. I realized that this cloud thing was really trending pretty significantly, right? People more and more are going through their digital transformation journey, moving away from having everything on-premises and data center and so forth, and now having everything on the cloud— AWS or Microsoft Azure or Google Cloud or something. So that was quite a significant shift. And when that happened, all of the security knowledge I had, all of those principles would still be applicable, but the way you apply them would be completely different, right? So it is forcing us to think of new ways, kind of outside of the box. How do I protect the data that used to be in a very secure physical location in my enterprise or the headquarters of my organization? But now that data is on people's computer, their laptop, their mobile device, their iPhone, their Google smart devices, all over in the cloud. How do I keep that data secure. So I think you really have to be flexible. Things are going to change, they're going to change some more. For example, right now, one thing that kind of keeps me awake at night is the deployment of quantum computing, right? With quantum computer trending the way it is, I am guessing the next couple of years, 2 to 3 to 5 years, encryption is going to be completely obsolete. Most people today use AES-256 to encrypt their data and keep it secure, but if I'm using quantum computer, I will be able to break it with no, with no sweat. Instead of taking like thousands or billions of years to crack encryption, it would only take a few minutes or hours. So what are we going to do? So that's kind of what I like about security in general, meaning that you always have to be learning and also you have to be comfortable making a decision when you are in an environment where things are ambiguous, where you don't always know what the right answer is, but being able to lead again, make a decision, stand by it, but still be flexible so that you can learn with the data as things progress. So I guess to go back to your original question, I really believe that people in the tech field today need to have a nimble mind, they need to be agile. Agility is very, very important. That's again another lesson I really learned when I moved to Silicon Valley because prior to that, working for the University of Alabama and the US military, we used to use like the waterfall model to develop software. It would take us like 6 months or a year to actually deploy a new version of a software. In Silicon Valley, almost every company I've worked for and I was a consultant to is like every 2 weeks they deploy brand new software. Like every 2 weeks, it's like It's incredible. It's almost like deploying software at the speed of thought. It's like, wow. And then you try to think about, okay, how do I secure this software? And how do I fix and mitigate any vulnerabilities that might be in the software before the bad guys, sorry, exploit the vulnerability and take advantage of it? So I feel like you really have to be flexible and be willing to learn and just pay attention to what is happening around you. That's again another reason why I do read a lot of books and even LinkedIn is my number one social media platform. I think I am connected to more than 32,000 people there, most of the people in my field, anyone who's anything in cybersecurity, I am either connected to them directly I am only one person away from them. But I think this idea that I am curious and I want to learn, kind of like what Socrates was saying, the more I know, the more I know I don't know. Because knowledge is really exponential today and you just have to be able to keep up. Reading magazine again, I really loved LinkedIn because they even have special groups where you can be a member of about a specific topic and follow a couple of thought leaders like me, for example. I pretty much post something on LinkedIn pretty much every single day. So I pretty much have, you know, I am very, very curious about the industry. I follow a lot of people who have a lot of things to say. I read a lot. I am on some of those Slack meetup groups too about technology or cybersecurity in general. Like I said earlier, I was very privileged to become a member, for example, of the Forbes Technology Council. But just having an open mind and knowing that, no, what I know today might be obsolete tomorrow, or there might be a better way of doing things than I have done it. Just because that's the way we've always done it doesn't mean it is the right way to do anything. Like another thing I also do, for example, last week I was On a tech executive roundtable, we talked about cybersecurity incidents, right? What kind of things can we do to prevent them before they happen? It was really an illustrious set of panel executives, and I was able to see what some of those people are doing in their industry to combat cyberattacks. Crime and kind of prevent data breaches. I mean, I could share my knowledge also and kind of see what works, what doesn't work. And maybe there is a better way of doing things. So yeah, so the simple answer is be curious and kind of know to find the information wherever it might be found.

Yeah, and as you mentioned there, you mentioned several examples there of there's so much either through social media or through groups that people can go to and We just have to seek that knowledge that's already available. And also, I like that you mentioned that, yes, there are agile frameworks, how that software is released constantly, but thinking about how to get caught up with those security possible threats. That's certainly something to think about. You mentioned a few times that now you're in California, you're in the Silicon Valley area. You're still also— well, you were just recently promoted to commander in the US Navy. Could you talk a little bit about what you do on the day-to-day, uh, as you're there in your career in the military and also outside of the military?

Yes, so I really feel fortunate to be in the US Navy Reserve where I am an information warfare officer. So basically I do the same thing for the Navy that I do for my civilian employer, which is cyber security, computer network defense. So generally speaking, that's another thing I love about cybersecurity. It is really, I think, a career of the future. It is definitely here to stay, and not every day is the same, right? It's— sometimes I used to tend to get bored with things, and I want to be challenged, and cybersecurity is really the perfect career for somebody like me. There is always something, something new, right? It's kind of like a mouse and cat type of game. Once the bad guys do something, eventually we're gonna find a control to stop it. But they don't just say, okay, we quit, we are going to give up. No, they think and think and think, and they come up with new, new ways. I mean, that forces us again to keep coming up with new ways to combat that. Like the one thing I said, I'm very, very concerned about quantum computing. Well, when that happens, I bet you we are gonna find a way to stop that and improve our algorithm and do something. I don't know what the answer is, but I know there is an answer. So eventually we are going to get to it. So that's really what I love about what I do. We have all types of threats. We never really see the same incident twice, and there is a lot of things to consider, right? Cybersecurity and technology, one thing I really love about it is It's one of those few functions in a business that really interact and impact every other function in the enterprise. Very, very few functions do that because as a cybersecurity professional, I have to work with HR, I have to work with legal, I have to privacy, I have to work with engineering, I have to work with our product management team, I have to work with IT. So I'm pretty much working with everybody. I have to work with physical security as well. So pretty much I have a relationship with everybody, every single department in the enterprise. So that really makes things very, very interesting. And there is really so much. I am also on the voluntary group that helps set the security questionnaire for one that I believe is the gold standard for security professional certification, CISSP. One thing that is really great about that, it used to be 10 domains, now it's been reduced to 8 domains, but there is just so much to do in the cybersecurity industry. The cybersecurity spectrum is really good, and we need people from different backgrounds. They really bring different things, right? If you love math, that's a great area for you to be. If you like working with spreadsheets, There's a bunch of things you can do. And then if you also like to just set the strategy and policies and governance, those type of things, there's definitely room for you there. And if you are very technical and you like engineering, security engineering is definitely an option. So what I really love is the richness, I guess, of the profession and not doing the same thing every single day. And in the Navy, I pretty much do the same thing, except there it's one weekend a month and two weeks out of the year. But another big difference I've seen between what I do for the Navy and what I do for the civilian side is, for most corporations, the bottom line is they want to be profitable, right? We want to make money, and we want to spend as little as we can on cybersecurity and still be secure enough so we can sell our product. But in the military, security is really as the primary place because if we are not secure, people are going to die. So it is definitely a completely different paradigm, and being able to work in both environments I think has been a great privilege.

Yeah, seems great. It's like a great variety, very fun and challenging, the work that you do. And I truly appreciate what you do in the Navy as well. So thank Thank you for helping the security of our country. So before we go, I want to know, since you have read over 1,000 books, as you have mentioned, could you mention a couple of the books that you really have enjoyed or that you would recommend for the listeners?

Yeah, there are two books that I read pretty much every single year. One is Think and Grow Rich. That book pretty much changed My Life. I think the way you think will determine what happens to you or your reality. It is a great, great book and I read it every single year. Another book I read every year is The Richest Man in Babylon. But I also read a lot of books that have to do with business, leadership, and technology. Really, one thing I have found, and you don't have to be a believer, but of course my number one favorite book of all is the Bible. I feel like a lot of the knowledge or the wisdom or even most of the sciences we have today, you can really find their roots somewhere in that old book. But yeah, but really, if you read I don't think you can go wrong. And again, you don't have to agree with the author or what they say, but at least it gets you thinking or at least seeing things from a different perspective and hopefully getting a little bit wiser.

Yes, certainly. Great advice. Thank you so much, Fabien, for being with me today in the show. And this was a great, fascinating conversation. I'm sure we'll listen to this episode because there's a lot to learn from what you have mentioned today. Thank you so much.

Thank you so much, Yadi. Good to be here.

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