Meet Congressional Innovation Fellow Adina Wollner! Adina will be working in the office of Senator Jacky Rosen (D-NV) for the duration of her fellowship. While there, Adina’s work will focus on cybersecurity issues across national security, workforce and healthcare portfolios, and AI & emerging technologies.
Retrace Adina’s path from working at Apple to working in a Congressional office in her blog below:
Steve Jobs once said “You can't connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backward.” As I reflect on my journey thus far, I would certainly agree. If someone told me when I was beginning my college career that I was going to graduate with a bachelors in computer science, work at Apple and then transition to working in a Congressional office, I would have been entirely shocked. Now, it makes sense.
When thinking about the trajectory of my professional career, I realize it was unsuspecting, serendipitous moments that opened the doors to incredible opportunities: the chance conversation with a recruiter who happened to work on the Apple security team, or the karaoke friend who encouraged me to switch from studying international relations to computer security, to name a few.
I heard about the TechCongress fellowship for the first time on a national security podcast, and I could consider that yet another “lucky chance” that I’d been listening to that particular episode. I realize now, however, that to point to these as mere fortuitous moments discounts the considerable effort and intention it took to be at that exact moment and to be prepared to do something with opportunities once they appeared.
After spending a few years living abroad, I returned to the United States to study international relations with a focus on international security and counter-terrorism. A few of my friends happened to be computer science majors and were interested in computer security. Many of them told me that if I was serious about international security, I should look into computer security. After joining them at DefCon, an annual hacker conference, I could see the reasoning behind their advice. After another year of study I switched my major and directed my endeavors towards opportunities in the information security field, hoping that I would eventually return for a masters in international relations.
While working at Apple I held a variety of roles on the information security team, with my responsibilities varying from pentesting applications, to building a vulnerability management program for Apple’s services organizations, and supporting Apple’s suppliers in improving their security programs. Throughout these roles I kept an eye towards projects that could bring me back to working in the policy space. In one of my roles, I was responsible for cultivating the relationship between Apple and the Cyber Readiness Institute and curating security resources for small and medium sized suppliers. Shortly after President Biden convened private sector leaders to bolster cybersecurity within the United States’ supply chain, I became responsible for the first organization-wide initiatives to uphold Apple’s promises to the White House.
In this work, I saw that many of our nation’s businesses are unprepared to face cyber threat actors and are succumbing to rampant ransomware attacks. Many small IT teams are tasked with information security roles but lack the personnel or resources to adequately protect their own infrastructure. I interned for a large national advocacy organization in DC in 2014, when the Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act was introduced, and became curious as to what had happened to the goal of public/private sector initiatives working together to share information about threats and indicators of compromise. It was clear that far more support was needed for businesses to be able to properly protect themselves and that I wanted to help facilitate change at this public/private nexus of interdisciplinary challenges.
TechCongress provides the opportunity to leverage my knowledge and expertise on national security and cybersecurity issues to be of service in improving our national cybersecurity posture. I am looking forward to learning more about policymaking and creating intersections between the public and private sector to collaborate on security issues. While each opportunity may have felt serendipitous in the moment, looking back I can certainly see how the dots connect.