MK Palmore sits down with Wendy Whitmore, the Senior Vice President at Palo Alto Networks leading Unit 42.
Guest: Wendi Whitmore, Palo Alto Networks [@PaloAltoNtwks]
On Twitter | https://x.com/wendiwhitmore
On LinkedIn | https://www.linkedin.com/in/wendiwhitmore2/
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Host: MK Palmore, Host of The Leadership Student Podcast
On ITSPmagazine | https://www.itspmagazine.com/itspmagazine-podcast-radio-hosts/mk-palmore
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Episode Description
President of Palo Alto Networks' Unit 42. Wendy discusses her compelling journey from law enforcement to becoming a significant player in the cybersecurity sector. Listeners gain insights into her professional ethos, the challenges she's faced, and her perspectives on effective leadership in the fast-paced world of cybersecurity.
Wendy elaborates on her career trajectory, detailing her experiences at renowned companies like Mandiant, CrowdStrike, and IBM. She highlights the unique challenges and rewards of scaling teams in small startups versus massive enterprises and sheds light on how her background in the Air Force helped shape her investigative approach to cyber threats.
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From Air Force OSI Special Agent to Cybersecurity SVP: Wendi Whitmore's Leadership Journey Wend | The Leadership Student Podcast with MK Palmore
MK: [00:00:00] Okay, folks, here we go. This is MK Palmore. Welcome to another episode of the Leadership Student Podcast. Today in the virtual studio, I have Wendy Whitmore, who's the Senior Vice President at Palo Alto Networks, leading Palo Alto Networks Unit 42. which is a, very well respected threat intelligence and consulting services team, that Palo Alto Networks deploys throughout the enterprise space, on cybersecurity matters.
MK: I've known Wendy, as a colleague, for a little bit of time here. And she's got a unique experience in the private sector. We also share a little bit, that we'll get into in terms of our common law enforcement background, but I thought bringing Wendy into the studio will be exciting for our listeners.
MK: Wendy, welcome to the virtual stage.
Wendi Whitmore: Thank you, MK. Excited to be here today
MK: So, Wendy, why don't you start us off with giving a little bit of a background on your history. You've worked at some unique big brand, companies over the years, but also had a start in law enforcement.
MK: So why don't you tell us a little bit about your background?
Wendi Whitmore: absolutely. So as you mentioned, my job [00:01:00] today is leading the unit 42 team at Palo Alto Networks. I like to refer to us as our special forces unit, at Palo Alto Networks. in terms of being the eyes and ears on the ground.
Wendi Whitmore: so that's everything from responding to investigations and incidents, into breaches, on the proactive side, preparing our clients to effectively detect and respond to them, threat intelligence. That includes our analysts and researchers. We're looking at patterns across all of the work we do.
Wendi Whitmore: And then our threat hunters who are on a 24 by 7 basis hunting into our client's environment to identify new attack patterns. So I started after college, I joined the air force and I became a special agent with the air force office of special investigations, which works, very closely alongside your former employer, within the FBI. I know before that you had Marine Corps background.
Wendi Whitmore: So A lot of commonality there, and I focused on computer crime investigations within the Air Force, And, you know, we were kind of in the early days of figuring out how to piece together these intrusion sets. [00:02:00] Everything we did was classified. And so we couldn't really talk a lot about it.
Wendi Whitmore: My senior supervisors had grown up in the world of understanding how intelligence works, but not understanding the cyber element to it. And in fact, cyber wasn't even a term or a career field at that time. I spent about five years in the air force doing that on active duty, transitioned out and stayed in the reserve for a few more years after that.
Wendi Whitmore: But at that time, joined this really tiny company that no one had heard of, based out of Washington DC. And that company was Mandia. Which is now obviously part of Google, and I know you're pretty closely aligned to over there. So, you know, worked there for six years, started on the federal side where I was working primarily with government clients and helping them build out their security operations centers and their incident response programs.
Wendi Whitmore: But then as breaches became just ubiquitous, I think our client base just became almost, you know, anyone and everyone, after six years at Mandiant, I had the opportunity to join CrowdStrike [00:03:00] and to found their services team. And that was in a really early days there as well. We were, you know, one person on the team.
Wendi Whitmore: And so a lot of challenges there in terms of how do we recruit a team? how do we attract people to this mission for this company that no one's ever heard of? I spent four years at CrowdStrike. I'm sure we'll get into some of that journey. today it was really, you know, fantastic time, but definitely a lot of ups and downs.
Wendi Whitmore: It was more of a rollercoaster ride than a straight shot to success initially. I left CrowdStrike for an opportunity that was very different than the others that I'd had. And that was to join IBM and to lead their X Force team globally. So, you know, going from at the time was a 300 person company.
Wendi Whitmore: I think when I left CrowdStrike to a 440, 000 person company, you know, very different challenge. And I took that in particular because I thought it was going to allow me to stretch some of my leadership skills and mature different muscles, that I hadn't had the opportunity to do before. And, ended up really enjoying my time there.
Wendi Whitmore: I spent five years at IBM on the X [00:04:00] Force team. Really growing their ability to deliver that work and understanding just the challenges our clients were facing globally. And then about three, just over three and a half years ago, I was reached out to by Nikash, who is the CEO of Palo Alto Networks. he, reached out and said that they were building a team that was going to be fusing that services business that they had just acquired.
Wendi Whitmore: with the threat intelligence practice and was looking for a leader who had some background in running a services team at a product company, which can be a little bit of a different ballgame. So, I guess the rest is history. I've been here three and a half years. It's been quite, quite a journey. I think this, the pace, you know, you're very familiar with the pace at Palo Alto networks.
Wendi Whitmore: It's exceptionally fast. and that's been really enjoyable actually, just to get to. See the changes that we've made. See the capability that we're bringing to the fight. And just last week, we were named a leader. So in the leader quadrant within the Forrester wave. And so that was pretty exciting to see, you know, [00:05:00] this team that we've really been focused on rolling up our sleeves and working on to have that kind of outcome.
MK: I used to describe it to, when I was employed there, I used to describe it to folks as feeling like I was on a rocket ship ride. It sounds like it's still in an upward trajectory. Hasn't reached the zenith yet, but good to hear that things are going well there. impressive background in history.
MK: in terms of your professional background. Talk to me about the intentionality about sort of double dipping or leaning into the cyber lanes. So Air Force O. S. I. I have to imagine at the time that you were an agent at cyber. As you indicated, wasn't even really a big thing. How do you lean into it? How were you selected to sort of participate in those types of investigations?
MK: And what about the field? You know, Felt exciting to you.
Wendi Whitmore: Yeah, I appreciate the question because it actually wasn't a straight trajectory into it. I really had to fight to get in that role. I had a computer science degree, so I was certainly more than qualified to, apply to be a computer crime [00:06:00] investigator.
Wendi Whitmore: But at the time, the recruiter, I spoke to the recruiter at length. I got all of these, letters of recommendation and went through the interview process to become a computer crime investigator and pass that. But when I got my assignment, and you're familiar with how that works in the military, you don't get a whole lot of choice, right?
Wendi Whitmore: You're, either lucky or maybe not quite so much right with what you get selected for. And so when I got that, I said, I got selected to be a special agent, which was very exciting, but I noticed it didn't say computer crime investigator. And I thought, Oh, that's weird. This must be some sort of mistake.
Wendi Whitmore: So I called the recruiting office and, spoke to the head recruiter there and explained, Hey, I applied for this role, but I see that I wasn't selected for that. And the recruiter said, Oh yeah, well, I just figured that was a mistake that you had applied for that role. And I said, what do you mean by that?
Wendi Whitmore: And he's like, well, only nerds apply for those roles. I don't think you actually want to do that kind of job. That doesn't seem to be a fit for you. And [00:07:00] I said, I know I very much want to do that, that job. you know, I've got a computer science degree. I'm qualified. It passed all the interviews and the tests really like to apply for that role.
Wendi Whitmore: And I can't imagine you have, you know, an influx of too many people applying for these roles, knowing that, you know, it was hard enough to get into OSI. And at the time, honestly, no one wanted to be a computer crime investigator, right? It was very limited. the really, Sexy work was the criminal investigations and the counterterrorism work we were doing.
Wendi Whitmore: And, you know, I got to the office. So thankfully I passed that hurdle and got to the office and, you know, it was kind of like, hi everyone, you know, my name is Wendy. And, you know, all these guys are like, You're a computer crime investigator? Yeah, we feel bad for you. We don't even know why you get issued a gun.
Wendi Whitmore: Are you gonna shoot a keyboard or something? it wasn't the cool thing to do by any means at the time and I really had to kind of fight those perceptions and then fight the educational battle of Why is this important? what does it mean when you tell [00:08:00] a boss that at that point in time, it was tens of gigabytes of data that were getting stolen out of defense contractor organizations and military networks.
Wendi Whitmore: What's the significance of that to a person who'd never, you know, lived in that space. pretty different than it is today, to say the least.
MK: Yeah, I mean, did you view it as a direct line from what you had studied in school to what you thought you might want to do professionally? Or did you feel like you had some indication?
MK: As I like to put it, our reliance on these systems would just be like this astronomical multiplier over time. And that these types of investigations and things would just become more important over time.
Wendi Whitmore: A bit of both. Now, you know, the computer science curriculum at universities at that time, again, this is more than a few years ago, right?
Wendi Whitmore: so at that time, there wasn't computer security and cyber security classes. The closest thing I got to that was, you know, the real world of the work we were doing was a computer networking class, and I had [00:09:00] one of those in the entirety of my curriculum, right? It was all coding. It was a lot of theoretical type of work, and so I couldn't necessarily draw that, direct connection, but to your latter question, I could look at it and say, cell phones and laptops and mobile devices, Are only becoming more ubiquitous, right?
Wendi Whitmore: People are using these on a daily basis and the really cool part of my job. I think two parts to say, circling back to your earlier question about how I was interested in it during the interview process, I talked to all of these different special agents about the work they did and one thing that one of the computer crime investigators told me was every day I come to work.
Wendi Whitmore: I feel like I'm dealing with a criminal. That's smarter than me. They're challenging me intellectually. I'm learning. I'm expanding. my curiosity just continues to grow.
Wendi Whitmore: He's like, you know, that doesn't interest me as much in terms of really looking into the psyche of an investigation. And so I think that became a huge part of the work we did was that I thought, man, as a computer crime [00:10:00] investigator, I was testifying in all kinds of criminal cases because I was doing the forensic analysis of the devices, that these criminals were using, but I was training, assets on the counterterrorism side and participating very closely in counterintelligence investigations and, fraud investigations for, hundreds of millions of dollars of fraudulent activity to the government.
Wendi Whitmore: And so. To me, it was a no brainer, that this field was going to continue to grow. Now, certainly to the degree with which we've grown today, I didn't anticipate that.
MK: So, if folks picked up on it, when you were talking about, your career trajectory, you've done some time at what was considered at the time, probably some small startups, right?
MK: These companies have grown into these massive entities now, but Mandiant early days, CrowdStrike early days, small environments, probably at the time. Palo Alto Networks. When I left Palo Alto, it was 10, 000 plus. I'm not sure where you guys are in terms of the employee structure, but certainly your time at IBM.
MK: We're talking [00:11:00] about, hundreds of thousands of employees. Talk to me a little bit about the difference that you've seen in terms of your leadership skills, moving from maybe small environments to large scale environments and maybe some of the, challenges that you face in one environment or the other.
Wendi Whitmore: Yeah, I think that's a great question because there certainly are Maybe not so nuanced differences, right? you know, when you're working for a smaller environment and in particular one, that's so mission focused. if we look at CrowdStrike and Mandiant in the early days, I was employee number 30 at both locations.
MK: lucky number. You should be betting that multiples every,
Wendi Whitmore: Yes, no, no doubt about it. and so when you work for an organization like that, that's so small. And by the time I left both of those, we were in the three to five, 600 range, of team members.
Wendi Whitmore: But even at that level, you're still very mission focused. You've got a CEO who's founded a company who lives, eats and breathes the mission. at Mandia, it was, finding evil and solving crime. CrowdStrike, it's defending against [00:12:00] attackers and stopping breaches. It's all the same kind of laser focused mentality.
Wendi Whitmore: So then when I shifted, to a company like IBM, where you had again, hundreds of thousands of employees, you also had leaders at the executive leadership level. Who came from very different worlds, right? They were by a large technologist. So had some sort of technology background, but not in cybersecurity.
Wendi Whitmore: And at that time, you know, when I joined IBM was 2016. I think there was still a fair amount of skepticism about, threat intelligence related to cybersecurity. Like, is this really a real thing? What as a CISO and a CIO buyer, kind of saying, why is this really relevant and important to me? and there was a different shift of not only the kind of adjusting laterally, if you will, across an organization that large, but then learning to communicate effectively to leaders who didn't have the same background I did and how to really truly speak in their language and then how to find [00:13:00] alignment with other areas of the business where you might traditionally be pitted against one another.
Wendi Whitmore: But if you were really strategic about it, you could look for opportunities to work together. And so those were very different skills. And I think muscles that I needed to, really learn to leverage in that organization. I think Palo Alto has been a bit of a combination of both. to answer your question, we're somewhere between 000 employees today.
Wendi Whitmore: So we've continued to grow, made a few more acquisitions. you've got a really dynamic business in the sense of the type of work we do now, right? You've got multiple product lines, multiple types of, offerings even under our services division. And so. That's changed a bit, but we by and large operate with the same sort of mission focus and certainly the pace that a small 30 person company works at.
Wendi Whitmore: And so to me, I actually think it's kind of the best of both worlds. You know, I like to say we're a startup within the largest [00:14:00] cybersecurity company in the world. I would say in our CEO and our executive leadership, very mission focused, not everyone, obviously coming from the same background I am where we are.
Wendi Whitmore: I think we have the best mission in the sense of waking up every day, trying to solve a crime for a client is pretty straightforward, right? We're all motivated to do it. And when these breaches and investigations get initiated, it is just game on. We are laser focused. So that's a really cool energy and capability that I think we bring to the larger mission, which is making the mission tangible for all of those engineers and developers, you know, who might otherwise be sitting in a back room, writing great code, but not really like living and breathing that mission that our clients, are facing and understanding how they're using our technology.
MK: So one, you're existing now at. the highest, rank structure, quick access to the C suite, with your position at Palo Alto Networks. I mean, you're one of the leaders of the company. you haven't always been, [00:15:00] at that level though. And I'm wondering whether or not you can recall any challenges in terms of making sure that your ideas, your voice, the opportunity to show your skill sets, have there ever been obstacles in terms of your ability to show up and be able to be present and show the types of skills that you bring to the table, maybe at different experiences and at different levels.
Wendi Whitmore: there have been, And I could recount. some specific examples that I probably would rather not. I think, you can certainly relate to the journey of coming into a room where you look different than other people. you may be the only woman or the only minority.
Wendi Whitmore: Person of color in the room and there are certain assumptions that can be made. Certainly throughout my career. I think what I realize though now is that Because of the access that you mentioned that I have now My voice has the opportunity to be a little louder than it was in some of those earlier stages meaning people listen to what I say a bit more I have an opportunity, ideally, to [00:16:00] change that for other people in the room and to make sure that people's journey that come after mine, doesn't have some of those same obstacles.
Wendi Whitmore: So that's definitely an area of which I'm really passionate about. I will say when I faced many of those situations, my background, I was, my parents were both teachers and my dad was a coach, his entire life. And so I was used to being in situations where, there was constant feedback being provided, a lot of continuous criticism in terms of ways to be better.
Wendi Whitmore: And that really helped me. I joked that I went, The one I went through basic training that, it was way easier to get yelled at by, you know, drill sergeants who I didn't know, then, you know, maybe the pressure that was going on with my dad at home. And I say that with all due respect,
Wendi Whitmore: We have a great relationship, thankfully, but I took that for what it was. A lot of times when I face those kinds of situations, in the workplace, it's kind of like, okay, how can we make this better for the next time? I'm not going to take this personally as a reflection on [00:17:00] me as much of a, this is a reflection on the person who's exhibiting that situation.
Wendi Whitmore: So that's really helped me push through to kind of get to where I'm at today.
MK: You are a busy executive, but I suspect that the outreach to you from younger women, maybe even men as well, in the space is probably significant. Folks want to get on your calendar. They probably want and desire time guidance.
MK: how do you feel about the mentoring space? Do you make time to mentor? others in the industry. and am I right? First of all, that you probably get a lot of outreach, from young, aspiring folks in the industry.
Wendi Whitmore: I think it's really important certainly that we're mentoring, any opportunity that we get.
Wendi Whitmore: So that's both within the company that I work for and then people that I meet along the way who reach out. I think one of the questions that I get, often is there's maybe this perception that like. When you get up to a certain level of leadership that [00:18:00] like all of the just day to day human challenges kind of magically go away, right?
Wendi Whitmore: Like you're all of a sudden not nervous for a speaking engagement or, an intense meeting with the boss. And so that's something that I, didn't ask this question, but I guess I'm going to preemptively answer it. it's just that one of the most common kind of questions I get is Oh, well, you know, when did you get over those things?
Wendi Whitmore: And, you know, the reality is all of those, Things, right? The anxiety, the imposter syndrome, whatever other challenges we might be bringing. can still exist. And so one of the things I say so frequently to people and mentoring and to young people I speak with is just learning to adapt your own capabilities.
Wendi Whitmore: So what are the mechanisms that allow you personally to work through those challenging situations and ones that are really nerve wracking. and as you can kind of create that muscle memory in your own body and more importantly your mind, that's [00:19:00] something that then can help you get up to whatever the next level is that you aspire to be.
MK: So I do a little speaking on the industry circuit as well. what exercises do you go through like pre presentation? Do you have, are you a, I find there are two types. Let me preface it with this question, so that I feel like I'm on one end of the spectrum, which is the I don't want to practice anymore the day of.
MK: I don't really even want to look at the material anymore. I'm just gonna, at the moment before going on stage. I'm taking a couple of deep breaths and I'm gonna go and I feel like I'm gonna knock it out of the park. The other end of the spectrum is folks I see who get really inward and I can see them sort of cycling through.
MK: Where are you on the spectrum?
Wendi Whitmore: I'm unfortunately on the other side of the spectrum, right? So I love to, you know, I love to go in and kind of sit in the back if I'm not the first person presenting, for example, and just listen and kind of read the room and get a feel for what the audience is like.
Wendi Whitmore: But then directly before the presentation, maybe 20 minutes or so before I like [00:20:00] to just kind of. Be alone with my thoughts and really kind of working through. Okay. And this transition I need to hit, or I need to remember to say this thing. It depends if it's, you know, if it's a panel, for example, where there's other people, I really enjoy those, right?
Wendi Whitmore: That's easy, easier to feed off of other smart people and really then just get the conversation going. But if it's something where I'm giving a keynote, I still get quite, inward. And that's kind of my pregame.
MK: Yeah, it's different for everybody. I can appreciate that. again, if we talk about this leveling, your access to the C suite, folks wanting to have access to you, you know, one of the principles that I'm sure you were taught in the military as I was, is this idea of sort of making that connection at every level of the enterprise, right?
MK: What do you do now to ensure that you're keeping in touch, with folks who are maybe entry level in the enterprise, maybe even in your chain? I know you can't reach and [00:21:00] touch everyone. I don't know how big the organization is now at unit 42. I know you can't reach and touch everyone, but, folks aspire to have a leader at that level who's easily accessible.
MK: you have to kind of manage that. what kind of leader are you in that space in terms of accessibility? and what efforts do you make to sort of make sure that you're making contact with people that are doing the real work of the day to day?
Wendi Whitmore: Yeah, that's a such a great skill set to have right in an area we all have to prioritize.
Wendi Whitmore: And as the organization, as you say, gets bigger, it becomes more challenging to do so. So I try to pretty continuously identify people that either new to the organization that maybe have a different point of view or background or perspective than some of the other team members and just stay engaged with them as much as possible via one on one.
Wendi Whitmore: So I've got kind of a consistent rotating list, if you will, outside of my direct reports where I'm doing one on ones and really just getting their, you know, understanding of, Hey, what's your perspective on this? This is what I see, but is that way off base? also as a leader, I think it's important [00:22:00] to have people around you that, you know, are going to shoot you straight because it doesn't always, stay that way as you move up to the organization,
Wendi Whitmore: Sometimes there are people who may be afraid to tell you what they think you don't want to hear, or maybe trying to, protect other parts of the organization and have the best intent. But if you're as a leader, not getting the real story and what's going on, then that becomes quite problematic.
Wendi Whitmore: So for me, from a communications perspective, you know, Directly it's one on ones and then trying to foster that so that, Hey, the more people I can talk to, the more the word will get around that like, Oh, Hey, if you have a problem, you know, you can talk to Wendy. I had a situation probably about six months ago where someone, a few layers, on my team below where I'm at in the org chart had reached out directly and slacked me and said, Hey, you know, I hate to bother you have a situation and, it would be really helpful if we could talk through it.
Wendi Whitmore: So I ended up having a few minutes and said, Hey, can you talk right now? got on the phone and they explained some challenges that [00:23:00] were going on At the end of the day, their ask was, is there a possibility for me to move into some other role where I can contribute, but it's not requiring me to be on the road as much as I am right now, because they had some circumstances, that they needed to work around.
Wendi Whitmore: And, so I said, yeah, you know what? I think we've got a solution here. Let me talk to a couple of people and see what we can do. The thing that they said at the end was, yeah, you know, you and I have never talked directly, but another team member, that I was talking to, I was explaining to them this challenge and they said, we'll just reach out to Winnie directly.
Wendi Whitmore: I'm sure she'll do it. Be able to help. And I thought like, okay, man, that's awesome. In the sense that the message that I would have hoped to get out of like, Hey, she's a reasonable person that would probably be really more than willing to help come up with a solution. so that that's the kind of behavior we want to encourage.
Wendi Whitmore: It's tough though, to get to every level, to make sure that people, understand that.
MK: No, I applaud you for that. you're absolutely right. That's a huge indicator. That someone would [00:24:00] even recommend that who maybe had a direct interaction with you and recommending to this other person to blindly reach out and discuss what to them is, a serious situation, right?
MK: every employee, they don't come to you with the easy stuff. They come to you with problems, right? If they came to you with the easy stuff, then your calendar will be overflowing with stuff that they can handle themselves. But every problem that comes to you, is probably a challenging one.
MK: I've been, historically noted as sort of recognizing, certainly for myself, that I feel like I learn infinitely more from, Failures, whether it be, you know, absolutely just falling on my face and something or, or, or having a misstep somewhere. I, I take those lessons and I try my best to never repeat them.
MK: but I just feel like the learning impact of difficult situations is infinitely more powerful than the positive ones that we experienced. Feel free to agnosticize the content, but anything stick out in your memory as maybe an experience that you've had from a leadership standpoint. a misstep maybe or something that you just thought.[00:25:00]
MK: Wow, I really kind of, missed that one, but I've grown from the experience.
Wendi Whitmore: Well, I mean, I could give you probably five just in the last 24 hours, right?
MK: I'm sure that's not true, but you get the gist of what I'm asking.
Wendi Whitmore: No. And I think, part of, the trend right of people who have worked their way up is that they have probably failed a lot more than they've succeeded, right?
Wendi Whitmore: In the sense of being able to learn from those failures and turn that into things you would do differently the next time. I think one of the most challenging times of my entire career, was undoubtedly in the early days of CrowdStrike, we were probably in the first year and we were at a point where we had recruited some great team members, was very excited about, where we were going, but we just weren't hitting the numbers yet from a services perspective.
Wendi Whitmore: And it was really important because at that time in the company's history, we weren't selling a ton of product yet. Right. Product was still being built and developed. And so the company really relied on our team. [00:26:00] And during that same time, I had a series of people who were resigning from my team.
Wendi Whitmore: Just, you know, not the right fit. We're not really sure that company's going to go anywhere. Just feeling like we don't have enough work to do. It's not the exciting investigations I came over to do. And no fault against anyone who left, right? I understood why each of them are doing that.
Wendi Whitmore: But, you know, as a leader, you wake up and you're just getting kind of pummeled and like, God, what ball is going to drop today? You know, this is really tough. And at the time I was personally renovating a home that had gone three times over budget from the renovation. I, was like, my God, am I gonna, you know, at some point lose my job and not have a home.
Wendi Whitmore: And, what I did was say, you know what, I'm going to go to work every day. I'm going to control what I can, and I'm going to deliver the best services and best performance that I possibly can. And I'm going to help out my teammates as much as we can.
Wendi Whitmore: And we got down to about 10 [00:27:00] people at that point where it was like still a very small team. And all of a sudden when this happened and I rallied the leaders around, it was like, A total, storm happened and not the best way, right? A storm of all of a sudden we were getting phone calls of, Hey, you know, that RFP that you guys sent in months ago, we want to execute on it, but we want to start that work tomorrow.
Wendi Whitmore: And then this investigation came in and another one. And we were like, work coming in from other parts of the world where we were sending people to travel to. And now all of a sudden we probably have three to four times as much work as we actually have employees for, to be able to deliver it. So we had within a matter of months, like this complete chaotic problem.
Wendi Whitmore: and it changed from one end of the spectrum to the next. what I realized though from that is we built some relationships with those team members that were very much like being on a military mission, you know, that you're going through almost a battle with and you survived it and you came out of it.[00:28:00]
Wendi Whitmore: And from that point forward, our team was, not 100 percent rocket ship, but pretty close, right? There were still maybe a couple dips along the way, but we had gained so much confidence and so much camaraderie from working through that working through that, like probably one of the lowest points of my life professionally really gave me personally, and I know all those team members that were there, a massive amount of confidence of, okay, we can get through some pretty demanding, challenges.
MK: Yeah, I think you nailed it on the head there towards the end for me, which is the mention of the confidence that you build from experiences like that. It just, it really girds you, in future experiences when you've gone through a rough patch and you know that you can lead through that.
MK: There's no such thing as permanence, right? There's only change. so the opportunity to experience that I'm sure made you a stronger leader in the long run. So, Wendy, I just finished a blog that I posted on LinkedIn about something that I call the alchemy of leadership. It's this [00:29:00] idea that by combining skills and traits and elements and different leaders, you kind of come up with a composite of what good leadership looks like.
MK: When you think about leadership in that context, what are the top two or three skills that leaders absolutely need to possess?
Wendi Whitmore: You know, I can't say that I've quite been asked a question in that way, so I appreciate it. to me, I think the first thing is leading from the front. So that's something I'm pretty passionate about in terms of, you know, I tell my team members, I'll never ask you to do something that I wouldn't be willing to do myself.
Wendi Whitmore: That doesn't mean I have every skill that they have. But certainly at some point on amongst my career, right? I've likely had to do some things that weren't ideal. And I like to remind the team of that, that oftentimes we get to do this really interesting, exciting job, of these investigations and finding out information and being really passionate about our mission.
Wendi Whitmore: But sometimes we have to do work that's It's not as great. And that means working, long hours and [00:30:00] nights and weekends and other times. And so I think the team being able to see and observe that you're living and breathing that mission is also, just really critical as a leader. One of the other areas that I'm really passionate about and that I appreciate in leaders that I work for, is the ability to.
Wendi Whitmore: It's kind of the definition, I guess, of alchemy, right? Of combining different skills and strengths and materials to create some sort of an outcome. And so in that lens, I always, whether it's the team I'm at today or a team that was, you know, from 10 years ago, for me, it's important to get to know the team members well enough to understand what are they, not only what are their skills, because that's important.
Wendi Whitmore: I think when people get to do work that tends to align with their strengths, they feel better about what they're doing. They feel like they're having an impact, but also work that they're really passionate about. And that includes things they're personally passionate about as well. And when [00:31:00] you can align those, you're generally going to have a team of people that are excited to come to work that are going to give others the benefit of the doubt when mistakes are made or other types of mishaps because of the fact that they really feel good and valued about the work that they're doing.
Wendi Whitmore: And so I think those are two areas in particular that are important to me as a leader. Outstanding.
MK: personal reset hobbies. Like, what do you do to reconnect with the person that you know that you are that maybe gets lost sometimes and all the busy work that you do?
Wendi Whitmore: Yeah, well, I'm a former athlete.
Wendi Whitmore: I say former because my skills are incredibly rusty, but I, grew up. I mentioned my dad was a coach and he was a big baseball player. So I actually grew up playing softball and I ended up playing through college. And so being outdoors and working out and having some sort of level of physical fitness every day is really important to me.
Wendi Whitmore: I certainly love to explore new things. I used to [00:32:00] probably say travel was a hobby. Now I don't know if it qualifies as a hobby because I think I'm doing it a little too much for work, but I think the big part of travel is exploring new places, meeting different people, meeting new cultures.
Wendi Whitmore: and questioning, like taking that back and kind of reevaluating, right? How you work in a daily life and incorporating some of the cool things that we all see amongst our travels. definitely love to spend time with the family. I'm a huge animal lover. and then as I've gotten older, I love things like design and architecture and studying all kinds of fields that are like totally unrelated to the work that we do.
Wendi Whitmore: That's cool.
MK: Sometimes you just gotta unplug. Wendy, I know you're, extremely busy. I know that you guys are still on that rocket ship ride over there at Palo Alto Networks. I appreciate you taking time for the podcast. anything on the horizon that you want folks to know about? You writing any books, any articles, blogs, anything that we need to be paying attention to?
Wendi Whitmore: not immediately on the horizon. I would say, one of my team members just released a book, which is fantastic, by Chris Scott [00:33:00] and then a former team member that's now at CrowdStrike, Andrew Gorecki. It's Cyber Crisis Response.
Wendi Whitmore: I think a lot of really great insights into the work we do on a daily basis. So I would certainly highlight that, our team is going to continue to grow. So I think if you've got people out there that are interested in talking to Palo Alto and unit 42 would love to, have them reach out.
Wendi Whitmore: And otherwise, just really appreciate the opportunity to get to talk with you and learn from you today.
MK: Well, a fantastic company, fantastic guests, and I appreciate the opportunity to speak with you as well. Thanks, Wendy.
Wendi Whitmore: Thank you, MK.
MK: That's going to do it for this episode of the Leadership Student Podcast.
MK: Be sure to like, listen, and share, and we'll see you guys next time. Thank you.