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Tennisha Martin on bridging the cyber talent gap through diversity
Guest:
Tennisha Martin
Published:
Updated:
Duration:
31 min
Episode summary
Cybersecurity organizations tend to have unrealistic hiring expectations, according to Tennisha Martin, founder and executive director of the training-focused nonprofit BlackGirlsHack. That can make it hard for would-be candidates to stand out and contribute to solving urgent cybersecurity challenges.
In the latest episode of WE’RE IN!, Tennisha unpacks the important work of The BlackGirlsHack Foundation, which provides training resources and cybersecurity education to underserved communities. That includes giving Black children avenues to complete cybersecurity certifications and snag their first jobs in the industry.
“Part of the reason why I started BlackGirlsHack was because I was a black girl that was trying to get into cyber security and I was like, hey, I’ve got a whole bunch of degrees and years of experience and certifications, and if I’m having a hard time, I know that the people who are fresh out of high school, for example, may be having a hard time as well,” she said.
Listen to hear more about:
How recently reported corporate cutbacks in DEI initiatives are impacting the work of organizations like BlackGirlsHack
How Tennisha came to be nicknamed “mother of hackers”
Why gamifying cybersecurity can be key to building the next generation of cyber talent
Listen to the episode
S3 E10 · Tennisha Martin on bridging the cyber talent gap through diversityWE'RE IN! Podcast · 31 min
Key takeaways
Training goes from zero to certification Black Girls Hack cohorts start with foundation certificates and meet weekly for 12 to 18 months with hands-on labs, ending with resume reviews, LinkedIn updates, and mock interviews.
Certifications set a floor, not a ceiling Tennisha says certifications show a baseline of knowledge and help candidates stand out, and while degree requirements are loosening, she does not expect certification requirements to go away.
Hiring expectations are unrealistic Employers look for hacking unicorns, asking for credentials like a CISSP for entry-level roles while hundreds of laid-off workers apply to each opening.
Diverse researchers reduce AI bias Tennisha points to biased training data in facial recognition, healthcare, and image generators, and argues that getting underrepresented groups into AI research early is how the data and algorithms improve.
DEI cuts reach training nonprofits Since corporate sponsors are the largest donors, cutbacks in DEI programs reduce funding for groups like Black Girls Hack, and Tennisha cites the closure of Women Who Code as an example.
Topics covered
AI & LLMs
Talent Gap
Notable quotes
…it's usually the people who are impacted by issues that are choosing to fight on behalf of those issues.
I've seen people who have, you know, like certain certifications that can't, you know, hack their way out of a paper bag.
Everyone is literally looking for hacking unicorns.
Our goal is to put the word out about what it is that we're doing so that we can train more people, and I can birth some more hackers.
Questions this episode answers
How does Black Girls Hack prepare people for cybersecurity jobs?
Participants start at a foundation level, meet weekly with cohorts and instructors over a year to 18 months, build a portfolio with hands-on labs, and earn certifications. The program then provides resume reviews, LinkedIn updates, and mock interviews. Read this section
Do you need certifications for a cybersecurity career?
Tennisha said people can succeed without degrees, and certifications do not prove someone knows everything, but they show a baseline level of skill and help candidates stand out. Government jobs and many clients still require them. Read this section
Will AI replace penetration testers?
Tennisha does not think so, because research shows AI stops being effective at critical thinking and problem solving and needs a human in the loop. She expects AI to take over repeatable tasks like recon, scanning, enumeration, and some code work. Read this section
What are the biggest AI-specific vulnerabilities?
She highlighted prompt injection and data poisoning, where attackers insert false information the model learns from. She also stressed that biased training data leads to harmful outcomes. Read this section
What is the Black Kids Hack program?
It aims to expose fifth through eighth grade students to cybersecurity and technology careers through capture the flag games and gamification, before they settle on what they want to be. Read this section
About the guest
Tennisha Martin is the founder and, at the time of recording, executive director of Black Girls Hack, a training-focused cybersecurity nonprofit with more than 2,000 members that provides training resources and certifications to underserved communities. She has worked as a pentester, holds a cybersecurity master's degree from Johns Hopkins among several master's degrees, and was working on a doctorate related to AI and penetration testing. Her community calls her the mother of hackers.
Hello, and welcome to WE'RE IN, a podcast that gets inside the brightest minds in cybersecurity. I'm your host, Blake Thompson-Heuer. And joining me today is none other than Tennisha Martin, executive director and founder of the training focused cyber nonprofit Black Girls Hack. Tennisha's work building Black Girls Hack into a bustling community of over 2,000 global members has earned her the nickname mother of hackers. I'll ask Tennisha about her varied career as a pentester, author, and influencer, and we'll touch on how organizations can hope to bridge the cybersecurity talent gap. We'll also talk about diversity in tech and what skills are needed to launch a successful career in cyber. But first, here's a quick word from our sponsor, Synack.
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It came about as a joke because I was saying, like, you know, we're certifying so many hackers, you know, they they might as well just start calling me the mother of hackers. And then it kinda, like, stuck. We had our conference last year, and my team actually got me, like, a little sash that said, mother of hackers during like the the end of our conference. And and I was like sitting there all blubbering and like, oh, this is so sweet. But it it's it's kinda stuck because as a training organization, we've put out a whole lot of certified hackers over the past five years. So I'm embracing it.
I... Hey. Why not? It's a great nickname. And and to to your point about getting some of these folks outfitted with certs, it it can still be quite difficult to find some of these entry level positions in the cybersecurity field despite what I hear is almost constant warnings about, oh, we have this talent shortage. We don't have enough cybersecurity workers in the field. So tell me a little bit. How does Black Girls Hack prepare its participants for the reality of entering this quite competitive job market with with really high barriers to entry?
Absolutely. As you mentioned, like, there are a lot of barriers to entry. Some of those are financial, which is what we try to address, and then the other ones are, you know, basically time related. So, you know, we'll say, you know, hey, you need to get these certifications depending on where your your ultimate goal is. You know, what... Depending on what you're working for. So let's take a Red Teamer. Right? If if they're trying to become a penetration tester, we'll take them from, you know, zero to OSEP. So we'll train them, you know, our programs start off with like either a Grow with Google cybersecurity certificate or certified in cybersecurity, just a foundation level because we assume that they're actually starting at zero. And then we provide them with basically the training. They meet once a week with their cohorts and help them get the certification. Over the course of, you know, most of those programs are like a year to eighteen months. Over the course of that period of time, you know, they'll get both hands on labs to help build a portfolio and get experience, but then they'll also get the certification.
And then they're, you know, once a week training with their instructors if they have any questions about the labs or, you know, any of the stuff that they're working on. But they start together. They spend, you know, basically the eighteen months. And then once done, we provide resume reviews, LinkedIn updates, and then also help them do mock interviews to prepare so that they can, you know, understand what's about to come for them. And then the other thing that we'll let them know is like, this job market is crazy, despite the fact that they say, hey, there's a huge skills gap. There's 4.5 or 3,500,000 jobs out here.
it's It does. You know, and I think... But that... Where at the same time, you have the fact that there's probably been 300 plus thousand people who've been laid off over the course of the last quarter in the technology and cybersecurity sector. We try to also make them realize that they need to stand out, and they need to be competitive in terms of what's literally thousands of other people that are probably applying for jobs, hundreds if not thousands. Because we literally will put a job up and it will, I think, have hundreds of people who've applied to it within a very short period of time. So I think just the job market right now is such that there's a lot of people that are available. And companies are... They've always been a little bit, I think, unrealistic in terms of what they're looking for. Because, know, they'll be like, oh, this is an entry level job that you need a CISSP for. Right. Right.
I I always say that we're building high for uniforms, but we we wanna make sure that we basically help them to be able to stand out amongst what is probably a very wide array of applicants for jobs. That's how we basically approach all of our training programs is we give them a hands on skills because I think that's very much so lacking in a lot of cybersecurity education today. We give them the certifications, and the only thing that we cannot actually give them is the experience, right? So I don't have a job to actually give them. We talk to them about, hey, you can either volunteer, you can do an internship, you know, whatever it is to help you to, you know, stand out amongst other people who may have also started at, you know, what may actually be zero.
Right. I hear you on the job descriptions front. I feel like it's particularly comical when you have ones that list requirements for, like, ten years of experience in GPT four, and it's like, wait a minute.
That's just... Yeah. How are you gonna find somebody with that? And speaking of certs, so what's your take on the necessity of certs for a successful technical career in cyber? Is is pursuing the cert generally a good strategy for for getting off the ground in this field? Are there other paths? Or what what are you what are your thoughts there?
I I actually had a professor, I think it was at Johns Hopkins, when I did my cybersecurity master's degree, and he did not have a degree himself. But he had, you know, x number of years of experience. He had a whole bunch of certifications. He'd been in the industry doing all of the things for twenty years, I think, that point in time. And that was probably like ten years ago at this point. And I say all that to say that there are a lot of cases where people are able to do extremely well within the industry without having any education, right? Like as far as like, hey, I've got a bachelor's degree or I've got a master's degree or whatever, right? The certifications, I think, serve a specific purpose in terms of making sure that it shows that you've got, you know, at least some level of skill knowledge, right? I've seen people who have, you know, like certain certifications that can't, you know, hack their way out of a paper bag.
The certification doesn't necessarily say, hey, you know all the things, but it says, like, hey, I've at least mastered this subject enough to be able to get these certifications. Right?
Absolutely. And I think what it what what happens is that when we have people applying for for jobs and, know, they'll say, hey, this is our wish list. This is what we want. You know, and as long as you have one of these, our thought is, you know, if you have these certifications, it helps you stand out among other people that may be at the same level as you. So I think that it helps in that way. I think there has been a movement over the past, you know, probably couple of years or so to remove the requirements for education. But I don't think that we're gonna get away from the certifications. Like at least having like a certification that says, if you work in the government sector, of course, you know, they have requirements for them in order for you to even have a job, right? But outside of it, you know, there's still, hey, want you to have an OSE or I want you to have a OSWE or whatever the case may be. They want you to have those certifications to basically show their customers like, we can do these things because these certifications represent that I've got certain skills or that I've achieved a certain level.
That makes sense. And I I I have to say I've been very impressed witnessing both the alumni of of some of your programs and even some contributors to our, you know, Synack Red Team. The the age with which some people are able to get these certs is really impressive nowadays. And as I understand it, in addition to Black Girls Hack, your foundation runs something called the the We Got Next cyber program, which It does. Quote from the site here, you know, targets underserved students and aims to introduce ethical hacking and careers in cybersecurity with the opportunity to test and pass an entry level cyber certification while in high school. I... I'm thinking back to what I was doing in high school. I certainly wasn't doing cybersecurity certs. So why did you start that program, and and what's the experience been of running it so far?
Yeah. We started the program because, you know, we we realized that if we're going to see downstream impacts and improvements in cybersecurity, we need to get people who haven't yet decided what they want to be when they grow up, right? This is going to require, I think, people who major in mathematics or people who major in computer science with a focus on specific areas in order for us to start seeing more diverse spaces in those areas. Because what we've been seeing thus far, with the lack of diversity in, like, data, for example, and in curriculums, what we end up seeing is that, you know, there are a lot of biases, like when we look at things like AI, for example, machine learning. And the way that we get rid of those biases is that we have to get more people of color, more underrepresented communities, more women into those homes where those research are being done, because it's usually the people who are impacted by issues that are choosing to fight on behalf of those issues.
Right? That's part of the reason why I started Black Girls Hack, because I was a black girl that was trying to get into cybersecurity. And I was like, hey, I've got a whole bunch of degrees and and years of experience and certifications. And if I'm having a hard time, I know that the people who are, you know, fresh out of high school, for example, may be having a hard time as well.
Now, that gets to our next question, which is, you know, what are some of the biggest challenges to the work you do at at Black Girls Hack? You flicked at this with, you know, even in your own experience, some of the challenges of of securing position with the expertise that you bring to bear. What are some of those challenges?
I think that some of the challenges are, like, unrealistic job descriptions as we've mentioned before, unrealistic hiring expectations. Everyone is literally looking for hacking unicorns. They want, you know, basically, when you talk about dating, sometimes they say, hey, you're batting way out of your league, right? And realistically, think that's what a lot of jobs are looking for. They're looking for a really well educated, well experienced person, but they wanna pay, you know, like entry level money for them, right? I think over the past, maybe let's call it two or three years, we'd seen like a whole lot of hiring in the tech and cybersecurity industries as people were working remotely. But I think that as people are going back towards like the office and they're seeing the downstream impacts of, you know, not having people in actual buildings, folks have started laying folks off. I mentioned there's been 300,000 plus folks that have laid off over the past quarter or so.
Right. Right. And I I wanted to circle back on a point you made about AI and the need to get more individuals of color, women, people from diverse backgrounds into the room when decisions are being made. I feel like you hear these terms bandied around responsible AI, AI safety, AI security. How is AI changing the work you do, and which areas do you... Where do you see the larger largest impact coming from all this hype around AI?
I think that when most of the research that I've been doing and seeing in this space, a lot of the applications for AI have been around defensive security. So if you do a search on any of your, like, Google Scholar or any of the databases, you'll see that there's a lot of research that's been done on defensive blue team applications for AI. If you look for red teams, you'll see that there are one or two articles, but for the most part, it's very much so lacking in terms of the availability of research and people looking at the potential applications. People say, when you're talking about AI, they'll say, Hey, AI is going to one point take all of our jobs. I think that penetration testing, ethical hacking is one of those things where we don't have to worry about that taking because a lot of the research that they've done thus far shows that there has to be some sort of like, they call it human in the loop, where it's basically, there's a certain demarcation point where, at which AI stops being effective when it comes to doing things like critical thinking, problem solving.
At what point do you have a human take a look at this, right? And I've seen research where folks have come up with different models where they'll say, hey, we'll have basically two or three streams of analysis, and if all three of these streams come up with the same response in terms of whether or not it needs to be escalated, we'll disregard it as, you know, false positive. But if they don't agree, then a human needs to take a look at it. I think that what the future's going end up looking like, we'll have at least some of the low level repeatable, automatable tasks that we do as a part of, like, for example, reconnaissance and scanning and enumeration. You know, a lot of those things I think could be taken over by AI. We can also have AI take over things like exploit development, code development, for example, and code reviews. So those types of things we don't necessarily need a human in today's day and age to take a look at, maybe supervise.
But when it comes to, at some point, there's a level at which, you know, a human needs to basically take a look at that because, you need to consider what the impact is going to be, requires more than what a lot of AI systems today can be able to give us reliably. Like, for example, healthcare or financial impacts, right, where the cost of being wrong is substantial.
Yeah. That makes a lot of sense. And I've heard quite a lot about people leveraging AI tools to, for instance, write code. And it's been interesting, we'll say, to put it diplomatically, how these models are training themselves, the datasets that they're using that perhaps contain some of the same vulnerabilities that human error is likely to introduce, that maybe the AI turns out vulnerable code again. And and so as I understand it, you're pursuing an advanced degree relating to AI and and pentesting. Do I have that right?
That's that's that's impressive, and that's a really hot area. So I'd be curious to hear your thoughts on what some of the biggest AI specific vulnerabilities might be coming down the pike.
I think that we're gonna end up seeing the the same way that you have, like, the OWASP top 10 for, for example, web applications or for different types of vulnerabilities. We're gonna have those same type of things for AI. I think we have actually put out one for a top 10 for AI already. I'm pretty sure I saw that at some point.
Yeah. But they they they basically have, I think, two pretty high profile in my mind types of vulnerabilities, which are like, you know, prompt injections and then, you know, basically data poisoning. Where, you know, the two things that you're counting on for an AI system, one is when you ask the question that it provides you with a correct response. We've got this thing called hallucinations where sometimes AI models will basically come up with something, like on the fly that is not based on reality, it's not actually true, right? Then you have a class of vulnerabilities where you have people who are purposefully injecting incorrect or inaccurate information that the model is then learning. And then, you know, if that information were to replace the actual information, then of course you have something where it's like garbage in, garbage out, right? That actually helping. And then the other thing is, is that when it comes to the data itself, right?
A lot of the data that these systems are trained on, and that's when we're talking about the high overhead cost, the training of the models are what end up costing a lot of money. That data is extremely biased. We see some downstream impacts for the uses of AIs that we've had prior to the launch of ChatGPT a couple years ago. Where we've seen like bias in facial recognition, or bias when it comes to healthcare outcomes? Or, you know, if you ask one of the image AI generators to draw a picture of what juvenile criminal justice looks like, or draw me a picture of what that looks like, They don't draw anything that doesn't involve little black boys. In their mind, the only people who go to jail that are juveniles are black children, right? So again, you have an AI system that's one, giving you this graphical depiction, right?
And we know that AI pictures have been, you know, making their way around. It may come down to, you know, life or death, right? And the way that we improve those, you know, kind of going back to the kids program, is by one, getting people who are going to care about these issues and then researching them as they go into school. Right? I don't recommend the model that I take, is, you know, hey, keep going back to school where you end up with five master's degrees and working on a doctorate. Right? I don't recommend that in general to anyone. Right? But I think that if we're going to see these downstream impacts in terms of the data, in terms of the algorithms, we need to start getting more diversity in the room so that it's not based on what's biased and largely homogenous, right? It needs to be upgraded. It needs to be fixed. And that's how we do that, is that we start getting kids introduced to AI into machine learning so that we you know, over the course of time, start having, you know, better data, better algorithms, and, you know, better cybersecurity solutions.
Absolutely. You know, and you mentioned the importance of uprooting bias from some of these models. The the stakes are increasingly getting really high. I mean, I'm sure you already have AI sifting through resumes, say, and rejecting certain ones based on certain assumptions or certain biases that may be present in the AI technology. And then to your point about life or death, I mean, we had our cofounder and chief technology officer, doctor Mark Kuhr, on the program a couple weeks back, and, you know, he pointed out that there are gonna be weapon systems informed Absolutely. By AI with targeting in mind. That's the last place you wanna have bias saying target a certain group or target a certain, you know, and it's very frightening to think of. I mean, it's it's I don't like to think about it.
I know. But, you know, my my my concern with this is that, like, when you look at some of the the downstream impacts, you have computers and AI systems that are basically determining sentencing recommendations. They're determining whether or not you're, you know, the level of recidivism, you know, for if you commit a crime, like how likely and be so determined whether or you can become free. Or there's a lot of different applications just saying like, hey, Tennisha committed a crime because we saw her face, but I can't differentiate between Tennisha and another black woman. Right? Those things are super scary, especially, you know, if you are in these underrepresented communities. Right? These models were trained on essentially white faces. So when it sees a non white face, it's kinda like, close enough. And, you know, I think that it's important that we kinda address some of these issues before we start seeing the downstream impacts as they start to play out.
People said, I think it was in 2022 when they first launched ChatGPT, they were saying, Hey, maybe we should put a pause on AI until we've had the chance to investigate, maybe do a six months, and I think there was like something like 30,000 people who had signed an open letter about that. And, you know, the collective response as you could see was like, hey, full speed ahead, with security as an afterthought, with ethics as an afterthought, you know, with bias as an afterthought. You know? So I think that it... You know, we need to somehow manage to catch up with this bullet train at this point that has already left the station and then is, you know, moving towards major cities and The United States as a whole.
I'd be curious to hear your thoughts on kind of corporate diversity, equity, inclusion initiatives. And this segues from this discussion because I'm thinking back to when Google took all the flack for their Gemini AI bot. Right? And people were saying it's outrageous that your AI images are struggling to present, quote, historically accurate depictions or whatnot. And you've seen this, like, this corporate pushback. Think their stocks were punished for it. And you see some companies, and I'm not saying this applies to Google necessarily, but just as a trend that that has been reported on, are scaling back investment in DEI programs, maybe maybe seeing that as an area to cut. What are your thoughts there and how that applies to some of the work you're doing?
I think it impacts our lives very much so because as a nonprofit, our largest donors, our largest sponsors, our corporate sponsors. Right? And, you know, when you look at the news, at least for the past six months or so, one of the impacts that we've seen post the Supreme Court decision to get rid of DEI and affirmative action in colleges is that a lot of programs have started letting go, cutting back on their DEI departments, those leaders, those organizations, right? That's had a couple of impacts. One, you know, a lot of those departments are run by black women, so we've seen a lot of high profile of those, you know, either laying off or resignations or leaving or whatever it is. Right? Then we also will see that there's gonna be less money that are going to help keep, you know, organizations like mine afloat.
We had a pretty high profile, at least in my, you know, online social circles over the past month or so, Women Who Code was... Sent out a message saying that they were basically closing down their doors because they couldn't, you know, continue to operate financially. There's two groups of people. There was the group of people who said, Hey, you know, I'm sad, this is, it makes me heartbroken, we lost an organization supporting women. And then you had, you know, another group of people who were basically saying, well, we didn't need that organization anyway. You know, you're either a coder or you're not, right? And most of those folks who said those things were generally, you know, white men speaking from a position of privilege. And when it comes down to it, the downstream impact is going to be that you, one, have less hiring of diverse candidates from out of the school systems because, you know, of course, those folks are not getting into those schools as much anymore.
Because the whole reason why it was implemented in the first place is because there wasn't, you know, equity in terms of admissions for colleges. Right? So those folks are not getting hired, which means you have less folks that are working in, you know, if you think about, for example, like some of the major four technology consulting firms or the major, like, you know, consulting firms in the DMV area who who do a lot of their hiring specifically out of certain schools who now, you know, will have less diversity in them as well. Right? Not to mention the funding for organizations that support communities of women or black people or underrepresented communities. I think that there's going to be a lot of negative downstream impacts. And what I'll be interested in seeing is that, you know, for these companies, you know, are they still publishing their DEI numbers? Are they still publishing all of the things? Or are we like, hey, we don't care about this anymore.
Yeah. And it will be interesting to track. And to your point about schools and education and, you know, perhaps some of the rulings on affirmative action affecting that pipeline of diverse candidates getting into some of these schools, I understand you've announced a black kids hack program
So that is primarily to help provide exposure to careers in cybersecurity technology. Studies show that when you look at young girls, that they don't establish their STEM identity until maybe around the fifth grade or so, fifth, sixth grade or so. And what we want to do is we want to let people know that jobs and ethical hacking exist, that careers in cybersecurity exist, that careers in technology exist. Because the reality is is that, you know, when you look at a lot of Holmes' black family, you know, we're telling our kids to go and be athletes and actors and engineers and doctors and lawyers. Right? But you're not... Especially if you're, you know, coming from an older generation, you're not telling your kid like, hey, go be a hacker or go be a technologist or go whatever the case may be. Right? Right. So...
Right. And and so through the gamification of cybersecurity, so things like capture the flags, things like, you know, letting them know, like, hey, you've got these tablets and these cell phones in your hands, you know, probably twenty four seven. You know, what about the security within those? What about the things that you're doing already, you know, which don't require you to be able to code, which don't require you to be able to, you know, be excellent at math, right? You can very much still be in cybersecurity without those things. And I think that, you know, a lot of times the society in, you know, our communities are pushing girls towards, you know, some of the paint jobs, necessarily towards technical fields, like engineering and science and things of that nature. And even when they actually do go to school, you know, statistically, they're more likely not to actually work in the field after they graduate, right? So we want to, as much as possible, try to steer as many people as we can in the pipeline for employment for cybersecurity,
Because, you know, today we can't fix the, you know, 450,000 or four forty five million or whatever the number is that they're promoting. We can't fix that today, right, realistically. But, you know, how do we, implement a process that will have the downstream impacts? And I think we do that by exposing kids earlier. One of our goals at BGH is we're going to, for fifth through eighth grade students, provide exposure programs, introduce them to Capture the Flags, the gamification of cybersecurity, and careers in general, just so that they can be aware as they're evaluating their, you know, hey. What do I wanna be when I grow up?
I saw a really successful cyber escape room geared toward kids. I think it was a CISA event or something, a cybersecurity infrastructure security agency event, if I remember correctly. And it it was really cool. They have all these little nuggets and people learning, getting excited about problems that they wouldn't have wouldn't have otherwise even considered. So what's next for Black Girls Hack?
We've got a conference that's coming up in August during Hacker Summer Camp. So this will be our third year of having a conference. We did Girls Hack Midlands the first year, and then we've done SQUADCON last year and this year, so we're really excited about that. We've got some amazing keynote speakers. We've got an educational roadmap that include things like AI, GRC, Digital Forensic Incident Response that we're rolling out over the course of the next quarter, Because we want to continue to expand to have programs throughout all areas of cybersecurity at some point. We're always looking for trainers. We're always looking for volunteers to help do the things, send volunteers to your organization. Time and money are two of the biggest things that, you know, we need to in order to keep moving on and keep going. So if anyone's interested in volunteering or training or helping out, giving back, helping review resumes, whatever it is that's your particular set of skills, we're always on the lookout for those things.
That's right. The mother of hackers. And for listeners interested potentially contributing to Black Girls Hack's mission, I should mention it's a... They're not hard to find. blackgirlshack.org. It's a pretty pretty straightforward URL there. And finally, before we bring this interview to a close here, really a fascinating and important discussion. I I do have one question that we ask all of our podcast guests, is the fun fact question, if you will. What's what's something that we wouldn't know about you, Tennisha, just by looking at your LinkedIn profile?
Let's see. I like gardening. I'm a fan of gambling. So I actually do research in areas of like casino security and especially in the adoption of like AI and virtual reality, things of that nature. Yeah. I think that's that's it.
Gambling. So is is the... What do they call it? The Martingale strategy? Is that a good strategy for me to go apply at the blackjack tables of doubling your bet every time?
I mean, it depends. I love seeing, like, some of the mathematical models that are behind, like, things like poker and betting strategy and things of that nature. I actually, I watch poker games to fall asleep at night. Which is is really interesting. Just because like, it's interesting to me just in terms of the way you approach it. And I think just, you know, I I enjoy watching the game. I've always loved games.
a lot a lot of fun. Well, thanks again for joining us, Tennisha. I really appreciate it. Best of luck with the conference coming around the corner. We'll see you there.
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