View the 2026 Speaker Lineup!

From law to venture capital to cybersecurity, Madeline Lawrence has taken the scenic route to securing the interwebs. Now, as CGO at Aikido Security, she’s on a mission to make security clear, accessible, and - in her own words - "no bullsh*t"

Maisa Fernandez is a global marketing leader with extensive experience across partner marketing, demand generation, ABM, and go to market strategy within the enterprise technology and cybersecurity markets. She currently serves as Senior Director of Global Partner Marketing at Palo Alto Networks, where she focuses on helping drive partner led growth and strengthening global ecosystem engagement.

Before joining Palo Alto Networks, Maisa spent more than seven years at ServiceNow in a variety of marketing leadership roles spanning global campaigns, ABM, partner marketing, and ecosystem strategy. Over the course of her career, she has built a reputation for creating collaborative marketing programs that align sales, partners, and marketing teams to drive measurable business impact.

Maisa is passionate about the future of partner marketing, AI driven engagement, and the growing role ecosystems play in helping companies build stronger customer relationships and accelerate growth.

With a background in television production, Marc has been turning great content into social media gold for the last dozen years. He started his career as a production assistant for AXS TV and worked his way through editing, digital content strategy, and brand storytelling before landing in cybersecurity. Basically he got tired of scripted drama and wanted the real thing. He has moonlighted as a replay operator for the Denver Broncos since 2007 and proudly sports his 2015 Super Bowl Ring at all formal gatherings. At Huntress, Marc leads the content and organic social teams, where he helps tell the story of a company on a mission to bring enterprise-grade cybersecurity to every business, not just the ones with enterprise-grade budgets.

‍

I am the Head of Product Marketing at Hack The Box, leading the marketing and growth for our 4-million-strong global cybersecurity community. Throughout my career scaling international growth, building functions from scratch, and managing 8-figure revenue targets, I’ve learned that there is only one way of doing marketing: human-to-human. I'm here to talk about how community marketing can bring authentic communication and revenue goals together.

Mariana Padilla is the Community Evangelist at Harmonic Security, where she drives pipeline by creating authentic connections and standout events. She champions community-led growth as the B2B world’s most underrated—and most powerful—growth engine.

She is the former Co-Founder and CEO of HACKERverse.ai, a platform that is redefining how cybersecurity software is evaluated. Her authentic personal brand and ability to cultivate meaningful networks were the company’s strongest drivers of pipeline and growth.

Mariana’s work has earned her a spot on the front cover of the 2025 Most Innovative Cincinnati Startups to Watch and features on over two dozen industry podcasts. She was also named a “Woman to Watch in Cybersecurity” by Authority Magazine and received scholarships from WiCyS and WISP for her leadership in driving diversity in tech.

She specializes in go-to-market, sales strategy, and inclusive innovation—and is passionate about making the cybersecurity space more transparent, efficient, and engaging for both buyers and vendors.

Marissa Salzone is an award-winning marketing executive and Director of Marketing at Echelon Risk + Cyber who has spent her career proving that marketing is not an elective, it is a business driver.

With deep roots in B2B cybersecurity and demand generation, Marissa drove over $22 million in revenue and a 420% increase in sales while helping grow a cybersecurity firm from startup to industry leader, earning coverage in The Washington Post, TIME, and Business Insider. She holds a record-breaking lead-to-prospect conversion rate of 46%, was named Cybersecurity Marketer of the Year for North America, and recognized as one of the Most Inspiring Women in Business.

Marissa has spent her career operating at the executive level and building marketing organizations that run like business units: accountable, aligned, and impossible to ignore.

Four months into her role at Echelon Risk + Cyber, she received the firm's highest honor: Echelonian of the Year, a reflection of the culture and standards she brings to every team she joins.

When she is not building marketing strategies, you will find her exploring new restaurants because life is too short to cook, and at her local yoga studio whenever it is time to decompress and reset.

Mary C. Yang is a Fractional Chief Marketing Officer, with expertise in helping deeply technical cybersecurity, AI, SaaS, and public-sector technology companies influence the market and develop enterprise traction. Throughout her career, Mary has played an instrumental role in positioning startups to exit (e.g., strategic or PE acquisitions).

Partnering directly with founders and CEOs, Mary establishes differentiated positioning, clarifies commercial strategies, translates complex technical capabilities into compelling buyer-centric narratives, and builds robust marketing foundations to drive growth, financing, or strategic transactions. Her expertise spans brand positioning and messaging, executive thought leadership, customer storytelling, PR, and analyst relations.

15 years selling to people who read the docs first.

Mate has spent 15 years figuring out what makes technical buyers actually buy - and 10 of those leading the teams responsible for the answer.

Currently VP Marketing at Axoflow, he previously served as Fractional CGO at BitNinja Security, where he turned a culture of "don't ship on Friday" into weekly sprints, halved churn, and doubled trial-to-paid conversion. Along the way, he's consulted for a range of seed-series A startups on PLG, positioning, and go-to-market strategy.

He specializes in B2B and B2D SaaS in cybersecurity - because marketing to people who can and want to read the documentation is the most honest version of the job.His teams run on empowerment, scrum inspiration, and the firm expectation that you'll ship before you've over-thought it. He's a doer with a thinking problem.

Based in Valencia, Spain. Married, father of twin girls, casual gamer, and a surfer in ongoing negotiations with the ocean.

Matt Johansen is a cybersecurity leader, educator, and entrepreneur with over 20 years of experience helping hundreds of organizations level up their security programs. He previously led software security at Reddit, where he helped secure the infrastructure behind one of the world’s most visited websites. Today, he runs Vulnerable U, a fast-growing cybersecurity media brand known for its popular newsletter and daily expert content across social media. He also leads a content agency that helps security vendors tell better stories without the marketing cringe. Outside of content and consulting, he advises and invests in early-stage tech companies and supports nonprofits with security strategy they otherwise couldn't afford.

Megan leads the development and execution of marketing strategy at Ten Eleven and provides hands-on guidance to the firm’s portfolio companies. She partners closely with founders and teams on positioning, messaging, category creation, brand awareness, press and analyst relations, demand generation, sales enablement, and other go-to-market initiatives. Prior to Ten Eleven, Megan spent over a decade in marketing strategy consulting.

She began her career in finance as an investment banking analyst at Morgan Stanley in New York. Megan earned her MBA with distinction from Harvard Business School and a BA from Williams College. She lives in Boulder, Colorado—just a few blocks from the foothills and the office—with her husband and two children.

Michelle Radlowski is the Vice President of Field & Partner Marketing at Vertex, bringing 20 years of experience building and leading high performing regional and partner marketing teams. She has a proven track record of enabling revenue growth, strengthening sales alignment, and scaling organizations through hypergrowth, acquisitions, and major transformation.Before joining Vertex, Michelle led the AMS and EMEA Regional & Partner Marketing teams at DigiCert, where she established integrated go-to-market frameworks and deepened collaboration across sales, SDR, and channel organizations. She previously led the Americas Field Marketing team at Zscaler, where she helped scale the company through significant expansion, including its successful IPO and a 14x growth trajectory during her tenure. She also held impactful roles at Dell, Quest Software, and Vizioncore, consistently elevating field marketing into a strategic, datadriven engine that supports both customer needs and business priorities.

Mike Batko is Senior Director of Sales at Cleverbridge, where he has spent nearly 20 years helping software and technology companies sell, grow, and renew online. He works with security vendors including WatchGuard, Gen Digital, and Acronis, and enterprise software companies such as Autodesk, Veeam, and Quest Software, whether they’re launching a new sales channel, consolidating a fragmented commerce stack, expanding into new markets, or automating orders and renewals.

‍

Along with spearheading the marketing and production aspects of ISMG publications and co-founding an Internet-based consumer sports company, D’Agostino brings an unprecedented level of hands-on experience with the Internet channel. Internet-related marketing skills such as lead generation, brand awareness strategies, and search engine optimization are areas of expertise along with web-based application development, database programming and architecture, graphic design and typography. Before helping to launch BankInfoSecurity.com (an ISMG publication), D’Agostino was responsible for the production and project management team of a boutique marketing firm. His responsibilities included overseeing the design, programming and project management of hundreds of SMB websites and Internet applications, along with managing ongoing Internet-related marketing initiatives.

Michael Lyborg is the Chief Information Security Officer at Swimlane. Prior to taking his current role, Michael was Global Vice President of Advisory services, a highly sought-after expert by the world’s largest Fortune 500 companies and global government agencies to advise on the creation and operation of industry leading security operations programs in North America, Europe, Australia, the Middle East, and Asia.

Before joining Swimlane, Michael was a head of security for the Fortune 100 fastest growing pharmaceutical company Heska (HSKA), where he held multiple responsibilities for global security operations, engineering, and compliance. His roles at Swimlane and Heska built on decorated US Marine Special Operations career supporting both cyber and physical response and the mitigation of emerging threats.

Missi Carmen is Chief Revenue Officer at Safetica, where she leads global sales, marketing, sales engineering, customer success and revops. She joined Safetica as CMO, rebuilt the marketing org, and later stepped into the CRO role. Her career includes leadership roles across cybersecurity and global B2B organizations including Spirion, OPSWAT, SYKES and Concentrix. She speaks from an operator’s perspective on marketing, revenue growth, RevOps and what it takes to lead effectively at the executive level.

MJ Kaufmann is the author of Moving from Vulnerability Management to Exposure Management and co-author of Attack Surface Management, both published by O’Reilly Media. She holds a master’s degree in Information Security and has more than two decades of experience across development, IT, cybersecurity, higher education, and technical marketing.MJ is also the CEO and founder of Write Alchemist, a product and content marketing company that helps cybersecurity and technology companies turn complex technical ideas into clear, credible messaging. Through Write Alchemist, she has worked with startups and global technology leaders, including UST, Saviynt, Bitdefender, Cisco, and Snyk. Her work combines technical depth, cybersecurity experience, and marketing strategy to help companies create content and messaging that buyers can trust.

Nathan Burke has spent his career building cybersecurity brands that don't look like cybersecurity brands.

At Axonius, where he was the first US employee and stayed from pre-product through $100 million in ARR, that meant a campaign built around Simone Biles and adaptive athlete Amy Bream — an argument that the best don't just overcome complexity, they find a way to give back — in a category still buying stock photos of hooded figures.

At 7AI, where he's CMO, it has meant a Black Hat booth designed as an art gallery, demo stations disguised as the exhibits, sitting quiet and deliberately strange in the middle of the show floor's sensory overload. The next year, 7AI took over the Las Vegas Sphere — and put almost no words on the booth at all.

The through line is a conviction that boring is the only unforgivable marketing sin, and that the playbook everyone is running is precisely why everything in this industry looks the same.He's a three-time CMO across five cybersecurity startups and seven startups total. He also once pitched Axonius at the RSAC Innovation Sandbox on less than 24 hours' notice after his CEO's flight was canceled, and won — a story he has now told enough times that you've probably heard it and you're rolling your eyes.

Nate lives on Cape Cod full time with his wife Randi and daughter Maggie, where his primary household function is early-morning food source to Travis the dog and to Eddie and Ashley, two cats with strong opinions and no volume control. He is a rabid New England Patriots fan and an unapologetic WWE fan, and considers exactly none of those a character flaw.

Nicole Gates is VP of Global Growth Marketing at Varonis and has spent the past 15+ years building growth teams, driving pipeline, and learning the hard way what actually scales in cybersecurity marketing. She communicates primarily in memes and GIFs, has strong opinions about Real Housewives, and will absolutely talk to you about both.

Paul Innella is the CEO of TDI and a cybersecurity entrepreneur with over 30 years of experience leading and advising cybersecurity companies. In addition to building and scaling his own firm, Paul serves on boards of cybersecurity companies where he provides direct input on go-to-market strategy, positioning, and differentiation. He works closely with executive teams to pressure-test messaging, align product and sales narratives, and communicate credibility to customers, partners, and investors. Paul brings a candid, operator-level perspective on what actually resonates in cybersecurity markets and how boards influence successful growth.