87: The Cheat Code with Colleen Lennox & Jason Brooks

Chris: Colleen Lennox is the founder of Cyber Job Central, a comprehensive recruiting marketplace built for security job seekers and organizations looking to hire cybersecurity talent. Jason Brooks is the co-founder of Relative AI, a technology that leverages linguistics, psychology, and deep learning to enhance human connection. Thank you both for stopping by Barcode!

Colleen: My pleasure.

Jason: Of course. Thanks for having me.

Chris: Absolutely. So, Colleen, talk to me a bit about cyber job central. Why did you decide to start this platform, and how does your platform currently assist job seekers in their quest for a role in cybersecurity?

Colleen: Well, I’ve been a recruiter for 30 years. Scary, I know, but so I’ve always been on the IT side of the house. I owned an agency, a staffing agency, for over twelve years and had a successful exit. And I left there and I was gone for a few years and I went back to sell to just do business development for them. Now, in all my years of doing it, I’ve touched everything. But in 2016, all of a sudden, I was given an opportunity to find cybersecurity people and I had never heard of it. It was a new buzzword.

Colleen: So I started gutting into that whole space. And anyone that’s familiar with a recruiting agency, recruiters don’t like to work on jobs that are hard to fill. So in order for me to get into this client, I had to start finding recruiting candidates for myself. So I fell into the cybersecurity world and I just fell in love with the niche, it’s probably of everything I’ve ever done. The people are so nice, the people are so kind. They’re so generous. They’re so willing to help each other out.

Colleen: Maybe because they’re always the scapegoat in an organization that they’re more humble and kind. I don’t know the reason, but it seems like most people in this space that I experienced are so humble and kind. So, having an entrepreneurial spirit, I thought, okay, great, let me start another company doing cybersecurity. So out I went and I started doing only cybersecurity recruiting. And then I realized, okay, this space is so messed up. It’s a hard skill set to recruit for because the buzzwords are so interchangeable.

Colleen: So if you’re looking the same, buzzwords apply to many different jobs. So you really need to understand the job description and the job and I’m like that we have to do I would love let’s do a job board and so where we can narrow down like, this is my skill set, this is my expertise, and this is my skill set within that expertise. Because as you know, Chris, if you are a third party risk person, you’re going to have some of the same buzzwords on your resume as an engineer or security operations person and recruiters search by buzzwords, you have to be able to distinguish what area of expertise that resume is in. So that was really like, my passion in doing this.

Colleen: Five years later, literally, we have finally been able to launch it. It has been like a true labor love and sometimes my worst enemy. But along the way I’ve met so many great people. I’m fortunate because I have a great network of people. And so that’s so, you know, you read all the statistics out there. Like, there are 30, you know, 3 million open jobs out there. And, you know, breaking then also at the other end, there’s this breaking into cyber, which if you go on LinkedIn, it’s like, the hottest topic out there, breaking into cyber. So how do we take 3.5 million job openings and help people get into cybersecurity?

Colleen: Like, why is there such a disparity between all these people looking for jobs and all these job openings and people are not getting hired? So that was the reason for Cyber job central. Hence also Cyber Job Academy, which we can talk about later.

Chris: Interesting. So from your experience then, I’m curious to know what are some of the biggest challenges you typically encounter while working with aspiring professionals that are attempting to break into our industry?

Colleen: I would probably say the number one barrier is a job description. And job descriptions are I mean, honestly, most people are copying and pasting other people’s job descriptions and then tweaking it a little bit to fit their role.

Chris: So it’s the way that they’re interpreting the job description that’s written by the employer.

Colleen: Yeah, exactly. Or they’ll say, this is an entry level position, but you need to have two to four years experience. Like, those things just don’t match up. So basically, not to make it too technical, but when companies put their resume into any type of job board or any type of applicant tracking system or their own company job board, they’re screened by the applicant tracking system. So the system automatically weeds people out. That’s why people will apply to a job and get a rejection letter within an hour.

Colleen: No one even put eyes on your resume. The system itself screened people out based on the job description. So I think to me, that’s what I find to be one of the hardest barriers. Number one, people do not know how to write a resume. And it’s hard to write a resume. It’s super hard to write a resume about yourself or to be able to take a job description and tailor it to the job. In all my years of recruiting, whether it be cybersecurity or any type of technical field, if you have a good resume, you can get past the gatekeeper and you have good interview skills, interpersonal skills, you’re going to get a job somewhere, someone’s going to give you a shot.

Colleen: And I think those things are just I think that’s where people struggle the most is feeling confident enough to present themselves that they are worth hiring or giving a shot to.

Chris: And so you’ve designed an ecosystem to help solve for this, the Cyber Job Academy, or CJA. And I’ve been fortunate enough to serve as a partner with you on this journey and witness the evolution of this training infrastructure. If you don’t mind, explain how the CJA will address those issues that you just spoke about and improve the process.

Colleen: Yeah. So Cyber Job Academy came up. You and I started talking about Cyber Job Academy two years ago, and it was really just being able to start offering courses to people, real life courses, not knowledge based courses. Well, knowledge based but like, hey, this is what it looks like to be a sock analyst. This is what it looks to be a security analyst, a risk, a third party risk. So my goal was to gather experts like yourself and have them develop courses for Cyber Job Academy. And that’s really what it is.

Colleen: We’re not creating the content. Experts are creating the content. We’re just bringing this content to the masses.

Chris: Yeah. And I’d like for you to expand on that just for a moment in terms of what focus areas the academy will zero in on. And then also if you could just tell us a little bit more about the expertise that you’re involving as well to help deliver that knowledge.

Chris: So I’ll start where I think so many we’ve evolved through the years and having this come together. And so I’m going to bring Jason into it. So I was introduced to Jason through you, and we started having a conversation about AI. Obviously, AI being the hottest buzzword out there now. And you said, hey, my friend Jason’s doing this pretty cool thing. You guys should connect. And when we started speaking, I was like, oh my God, this is amazing.

Colleen: We can literally help people practice interviewing. And so we work together to come up with his avatar, which is Ariel, which is our new best friend, and help people really master interviewing because that’s really where your key to success lies. I think it’d be a great time now for Jason to talk about what his tool is because it’s amazing.

Jason: Thanks, Colleen. I feel like for us, it’s just so powerful to hear you articulate the problem. Right. 3.53.6 million jobs, right? And I always come it from high end down to the specific use case, right. So the planet is on fire, right? There’s all sorts of conflict, whether it’s racial, political, gender. I mean, you just open the page of any newspaper and you’re just going to get riddled with all sorts of problems.

Jason: And as a species, we need everybody on the planet to solve those problems. So the fact that you’ve got this huge disparity between job seekers and job providers feels like a good place to start in terms of making actual tangible progress towards solving some of those things. So when I think about applications of artificial intelligence, which again is just applied math, right, everybody gets so scared of it, but it’s just a bunch of math done really quickly.

Jason: It’s like, man, we could really match and we could really help people develop the skills that are going to make them successful and really productive human beings on this planet. And we as a species kind of need them to do this in this really kind of epic moment, right? We really need all of 8 billion brains really turned on and tapped into what they can do. So for us to be able to not only give folks the opportunity to literally feel in their body, the nerves, the kind of like, oh my gosh, did I answer that right? And then get some real practical feedback that helps them be the best representation of themselves, that’s something that’s really exciting for us. So to be able to partner with you all and say, like, hey, we want to be this one stop shop of screening, onboarding and training, I mean, that seems like an awesome use of AI. So that’s why we found it relative, is to use it that way and not to knock on anybody.

Jason: But I’ve said it before, I don’t know, and I legitimately don’t know if the next dating app is going to be what the human race needs. I don’t know if extracting one more penny per transaction is what the human race needs, but I do know that we need everybody to operate at their fullest, and if we can contribute to that, that’d be a heck of a legacy. So that’s really what we’re trying to build. And it’s awesome to be amongst folks like you all who are like, that’s why we got along so well at the beginning and we’re all doing it in our different spaces.

Colleen: Definitely.

Chris: Jason, Colleen mentioned ARIA. Tell us who ARIA is and how it’s going to help elevate the offerings from Cyber Job Academy.

Jason: So, at its core, we have built a large language model that allows people to interact with it, so people can interact with a digital agent that is trained on either a scenario and or real data, and that is represented through the form both vocally. Right. So we’re able to have voices and take what’s text on a screen and really breathe life into it almost, and have it actually speak back to you in a bunch of different voices and then, of course, visually make that LLM look like a bunch of different persons. So that is manifested in the form of ARIA, which stands for Avatars for Realistic Interaction and Analysis. And the special sauce is really I mean, I don’t want to overcomplicate this stuff. I know I’m talking quickly, so it sounds like I know what I’m talking about, but it’s what we’ve done and seen in sports and the military for so many years.

Jason: It is crazy to imagine that on a Friday night, you’ve got a high school senior football player and in the game you’re trying to teach that person plays. That’s not going to work. Right? Your girlfriend’s in the stands, your mom’s in the stands, your dad, everybody’s cheering, sweating, yelling, all that stuff. That’s not the time to learn. The time to learn is the Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday leading up to that game. And then you rise to the level of your training.

Jason: Right. But in the hiring scenario, in the screening scenario, people don’t have that level of practice and training and they’re quite literally just thrown into the deep end. Their body takes over and they freeze up. So what we’re really trying to do is can we in many ways show your brain, hey, this is what you’re going to see in a real life interview. Here’s what it’s going to feel like. So that way your brain can say, hey, I’m fine, I don’t have to be nervous, I can calm down.

Jason: I’ve done this five times before, the 6th time. And I can just actually talk about the capture the flag activity. I can talk about the meetups, I can do, I can talk about the hackathons. I’ve done that’s. What we’re really trying to do is how is to help people regulate themselves and get that real life practice so that they can go grab and achieve the job of their dreams. That’s really what the core we’re doing. It’s really about like our business is built on linguistics, psychology, and then deep learning. And it’s really the intersection of those three scientific disciplines that allows us to unlock a lot of this human potential.

Chris: And this is real time interaction too. So with that, how advanced is it that it will be able to pivot its responses based on the input that the applicant is providing?

Jason: Yeah, so that’s the cool part. It’s dynamic. So trained on interview specific data. So it’s not just like a chat GPT wrapper. That’s not what’s happening here. It’s a large language model that’s fine tuned on specific set of specific corpus of data that allows I don’t want to gender it, but it her, him, they, whatever actually looks like to respond dynamically, which that’s the special sauce. Right. I could sit here and ask you twelve questions. Where are you from? What do you like to do? DA DA DA DA DA. But the real special sauce is the follow up. The real special sauce is like that dynamic. Dynamic. Go back and forth. Tell me a little bit more about that. Right. So at its highest level, that’s what the product offers.

Chris: Yeah, because that’s what’s going to happen. And that’s the most realistic training you can get because it’s never going to be a one to one mirrored copy interview in terms of you and the next candidate.

Jason: That’s right. And that’s what Colleen and her team has been amazing in terms of great thought partners because we’re able now to input their expertise into that experience. So like kind of clear example of that. Tell me about yourself. So she’s able to say, tell me about yourself, walk me through your history and walk me through your CV. That’s more or less the same question. And like you’re wearing a Phillies hat. Coming down to baseball, if all you have to do is worry about hitting a fastball, then the candidate can worry about how fast that fastball is coming down the middle of the plate. So it’s like really giving them okay, cool. I know what a fastball looks like at 80. I know what a fastball looks at 90.

Jason: Now I know what a fastball looks like at 100. But at the end of the day, I still could recognize that as a fastball. So that, again, the whole goal is I can present my best self so that I can get the job that I want, so that I can make a meaningful contribution to the world, so that we solve all of these problems that we all agree that we have.

Colleen: Can I tell them about our demo that we did the other day? A friend of a friend through networking, she was looking for her first cybersecurity opportunity. She’s a superstar. So I’m like, can you help us? We’re doing some testing on this. Can you get involved? She said absolutely. So we did this test and we’re all online watching her. First of all, how intimidating is that? But she’s the audience we want to attract. This is the people we want to help, the people looking to break into cyber.

Colleen: So she took the first ARIA interview and then she gets her feedback. First of all, I thought she was awesome on her first interview. But then when she got her feedback and it was so specific to just the way she answered a question, like how she came across, she was like, I want to do it again. So then she did it again and just being able to understand, like, I need to elaborate on that. I can’t just say, hi, my name is I need to add some secret to that sauce, or whatever.

Colleen: And she was completely different the next time, which to me was completely amazing. As someone that’s interviewed people live for the past 30 years.

Jason: And I would say another thing for us just to kind of riff off of that. Colleen, it was really powerful for me. I’ve got four sisters and a mom, right? And I hear all these kind of crazy horror stories of what a female’s experience is like in the workplace. And it was really almost sacred to watch that happen and watch her confidence grow from the first time to the second time. That was the coolest part, to be like, if she had an interview next day, she’s going to crush that. I felt really good.

Jason: What we are putting out in the world literally makes people better. And I watched it happen before our eyes.

Colleen: I mean, same. It was fascinating just to have her get her feedback and look at her feedback and I’m like, I want to do it again. What do you mean? My confidence? That’s it. Honestly, I think it’s amazing. I think it can help so many people. And then also, cyber job academies will also offer people an opportunity to how do you write a resume? Take a resume writing course. We found an expert in resume writing. Like, how do you read a job description and put it into words? Put it into your resume and then also all these other courses on all different technologies, like, what does it look like? Day one, as a third party risk assessor, what does it look like? But to work in a SIM so, yeah, there’s so many courses that we have up, and people everyone I talk to is like, yeah, I’ll do it because they know there is a need for this out there. And I’m always fascinated by that, that so many people are like, okay, I’ll do it.

Chris: One aspect of the Cyber Job Academy I want to mention is the aptitude test. So for individuals starting from ground level, this is an aptitude test that maps their personal interests to fields within cybersecurity. And I think that’s a huge differentiator and a way to help point folks in a direction to explore that may be more appealing than another. It sort of pencils out a roadmap for them.

Colleen: Yeah, exactly. Because security analysts or SoC analysts, whatever you want to call it, does not necessarily need to be the entry job. There is a million entry jobs, and people just need to know about them. I think they don’t know where to start. They just think, like, let me just land somewhere and I’ll figure it out.

Chris: And that goes for those who come into the industry through school or through the military or even transitioning from another industry as well. So talk to me about what else students can take away from Cyber Job Academy. I’m curious to hear more about the advantages of this program.

Colleen: Well, again, I think you can take it at whatever course you want. So as these courses are listed, and you can just take the course and realize, okay, yeah, that’s something I want to explore. How do I pivot into app security? How do I pivot into risk GRC and whatever it may be along the lines. And I think the hardest part is you need to know what that job looks like. And cybersecurity majors, it’s pretty new to most colleges.

Colleen: There weren’t people 20 years ago graduating with a cybersecurity degree. It was like part of computer science. Maybe it was a minor, but it really wasn’t. Honestly, five years ago, you weren’t sure if it was one word or two. I’m still not sure.

Chris: One area I want to point out is the importance of tribal knowledge or aspects of our industry that only experience can bring that isn’t taught in a classroom or certification course. And I believe that that’s important and that is inside knowledge that I know Cyber Job Academy will be providing to students.

Colleen: Yeah. I know on our class, Chris, we spoke about mentoring, go into networking events, finding a mentor, and so many I would have been intimidated by that. Getting out of college, don’t be like, I have nothing to offer. No one wants to hear from me. I still feel that way most days. But I feel like once you put yourself out there and you start going to these events and I will say, I feel like there are so many networking opportunities within cybersecurity, and I do think people within this space are forever learners, that they’re hungry for more and more knowledge.

Colleen: That’s why when another question that comes up on an interview, tell me what you’re doing outside. Because cybersecurity people are learners and you need to have a hunger to figure things out, to even be good at the job. I probably couldn’t do the job for a living, but somebody like, if you’re not seeking things out, are you really passionate about cybersecurity? Because that’s what your job is, to figure out real strategy, like, where is this going wrong? How can we fix this?

Colleen: How can we make this whole thing better? I think that curiosity has to exist and that’s what people are looking for when they’re interviewing.

Jason: And I feel like hearing you both talk, I’m just reminded of some people get the cheat codes to life and other people don’t. And those cheat codes are costly, right. And we see it and we feel it, we bump into it. When you think like, oh, your daddy’s rich, like, yes, your daddy has a lot of money, but more importantly, your daddy’s been on that interview a million times and you’ve heard the questions since you were five.

Jason: And your daddy’s brother, your uncle also runs that company, and their friends that they all went to high school and college with, they also are downloading these cheat codes and you add that up over 15/20 years, it’s not really fair. And I think, again, the promise of AI is that we are able to democratize the cheat codes, and not just in the US. But across the world. This morning I was talking to a dude from Denmark, South Africa, Wales and me, and we just took a moment to be like, y’all, this was unimaginable 5/10 years from now, right. And I think there’s so much kind of like belly button, like nasal gazing around like in the US. They’re going to take our jobs like, no, we all have to your point, Colleen. Boo, you got to learn. And you got to learn because you’re competing against not 330,000,000 in the US. But 8 billion on the planet.

Jason: That’s a different number. That’s a different number. And those who learn and want to get better and surround themselves and use technology to connect are going to win. And the others who are like, well, I just deserve the job. You could think and feel that, but.

Chris: That doesn’t fly anymore.

Jason: Exactly.

Colleen: Yeah, definitely. And I do think that it is interesting now, especially with so much remote work, how people are all over the place. If a company is willing to pay you in that currency, they don’t care where you sit.

Chris: Right.

Colleen: So it’s kind of fascinating. It’s a changing world. The whole AI piece is only going to help people be better at interacting with people.

Chris: And over time, you’ll notice AI accuracy improve due to the intel that it’s gathering from individuals and by building profiles for those individuals.

Jason: Right. Yeah. This is where people, if you have been excluded, you are likely to say, like, yes, I want this. And if you have been included by default, you’re likely to say, like, OOH, I don’t know if I want everybody to know everything about us. So I think in our previous conversations, you know that we think a lot about AI ethics. And what are the second 3rd, 4th knock on effects of this technology.

Jason: Now, that said, I think there’s a huge opportunity in terms of really clarifying and then delivering that data to both candidates and hiring managers around who is the best fit.

Chris: Right.

Jason: Because we all know people who become a doctor because you make 400 grand a year and they hate what they do. Or I worked in education for a long time, and people it’s a steady paycheck, but they hated kids. And I’m like, why are you here? But AI can now say, actually, you didn’t know that you’d actually be an amazing cybersecurity analyst, or you didn’t know that you’d be an amazing front door clerk, or you’d be an amazing this or that. So the ability to really open up that possibility is really, really good. And I think this idea and then we’re just seeing it more and more, if ChatGPT can write your resume, if I can have a huge wide screen and I can have a cheat, quite literally a note sheet where I can like a cheat sheet on the side where I’ve already pre written the answers.

Jason: How do employers protect themselves? How do you really see the right interpretation of a person? And the AI filter is going to be really powerful. Is somebody misleading you? Is somebody misrepresenting their resume? Is somebody actually, they have a weird voice. I use that with so much grace. But like, conventionally weird voice, or you don’t like their voice, or there’s something about your background that makes them triggering.

Jason: Now all those sorts of biases get cut through because all of the candidates are getting asked the same question at the same time with the same frequency. And now we can see who’s actually the better person. And I don’t default to Chris because it’s easier to talk, and we both like sports, and then Colleen gets cut out of an opportunity because she doesn’t like sports. And we didn’t grow up the same way. Right.

Jason: That’s what’s really exciting in the ethical and responsible application of AI.

Colleen: That’s a good analogy. Yeah. And it’s true. Some people just do not interview well. They just do not interview well.

Jason: And it has nothing to do with the job.

Colleen: No. Even when I’m prepping someone. I mean, your resume always gets you an interview. You get you the job. You are responsible for developing a connection. It’s like dating. You have to get in there and say, do I have anything in common with this person? Because it’s not a Q and A. Where do you like me? And will you give me a shot? It’s Do I even want to work with you? And if you don’t go in feeling that same, we’re equals, you’re never going to get the job. Because if you think you’re less than that person, it’s going to come across that you think you’re less than that person.

Chris: Yeah. So from the employer standpoint, AI has the potential to help eliminate bias or even to help those who just don’t give off a good first impression.

Colleen: But they could be the best worker they ever hired.

Jason: 100%. And also the other piece, because I experienced this when I was running a school, you’d bring a candidate, they’d be on campus all day from eight to three. They’re exhausted. You’re exhausted because essentially you’re hosting a guest. And then you’d ask people like, hey, how’d that go? And everybody to a person that say, good. What? We all just spent 7 hours with this person and good is the best thing. Or like, hey, you should hire them. I was like, okay, great. I think we all agree. How much should I pay them? What classes should they teach?

Jason: Where should their office be? Who are they going to get along with? Should they lead the department? Should they not? There’s all these details of actually executing the job to your point, Colleen, that are not captured in good. But now we have the tools to really say, like, hey, legitimately, I know what your first 30 days are going to look like. Legitimately, I know what conferences I’m going to send you to. Legitimately, I know what projects I’m going to start you on.

Jason: And it helps both people, right? It helps both the candidate and the hiring the actual manager and the company. So again, we just believe in AI for good. And if you use it responsibly and ethically, it can be the great enabler, just like other I mean, we’re all wearing corrective lenses, right? I couldn’t imagine walking around without my contacts in. Like, my day would be so limited. I probably wouldn’t actually leave my house if I didn’t have my contacts in. But with contacts and glasses, right?

Jason: Literally the whole world opens up to me, right? So why not use my goal with AI is that in like 10, 20, 30 years, 100 years, it’s boring technology just the same way that your glasses, electricity, a mirror, clothes, all these were revolutionary technologies at their time. But they’re things we don’t even think about right now.

Colleen: Yeah. And I think that’s interesting also because it takes out like the person with the best personality is going to get the job or is going to win, and that doesn’t make them the best worker. And I think taking that bias just even someone just born with a naturally gift to gab is more likely to rank higher in when somebody’s feedback on them on an interview. It’s like, oh, I really liked this person.

Colleen: I could see myself giving this person a shot.

Chris: Cool. So, Colleen, where can folks that are listening to this find out more about Cyber Job Central and the Academy? And is the Academy available for enrollment yet?

Colleen: So right now, Cyber Job Central is up and running. We actually just even landed our first we signed three logos this week, which yay. So jobs are getting posted on there. And again, this is not meant to be like a regular job board where it’s very computer driven. We wanted to have a more personal feel to it. That’s why we have the Academy. That’s why we’re introducing people to experts. So it’s cyberjobscentral.com and the Academy is cyberjobacademy.com. There’s links on both sites for both platforms.

Colleen: ARIA is part of both platforms. I would encourage everyone to, even if they’re an expert, to practice interviewing before you go on. Especially because interview forums have changed through the years. It’s not face to face. A lot of them are Zoom or teams. That’s a little daunting, especially for someone that’s not used to this forum. We’ve become so used to it since the Pandemic, talking to people like this. But I don’t necessarily think, like, if you are a young adult looking for your first opportunity, being online with someone looking directly at you, and then you’re looking at yourself as well, like, where do I look?

Colleen: So I do think practicing this interview is mandatory for people to get better and to enhance their interviewing skills. And honestly, the feedback the other day was like, your confidence. And I think once you realize someone puts that bug in your head like you didn’t come across as very confident, it then not only applies to you in an interview, but it also applies to you when you’re out with your friends. When you’re on a date, when you are at a networking function and you have that in the back, it dings something in your head, like, I have to work on that. And sometimes we have to fake it till we make it.

Colleen: And once it becomes natural to you, it becomes just part of who you are. It’s not natural to anyone to be able to work a room. Yeah.

Chris: And it’s going to instill some of that confidence in you that’s going to go beyond what it’s intended for. So, Jason, tell us a little bit about relative AI and where folks listening can find you online.

Jason: Yeah, so a little bit backstory on the name. So we have all these sayings in English, it’s all relative. And then when you think of math, mathematics is all relative. Right. If I just tell you three, that number means nothing unless I compare it to another number. Three compared to four is different than three compared to 3 million. Right. So now there’s a relative relationship to that. And then the last piece is that, again, we’re dead serious about our mission.

Jason: We are committed to using AI responsibly and ethically to remind ourselves that we are all literally relatives to each other. Right? Like, there’s only one human race, and there’s an existential threat to our species that if we don’t figure out that we belong to each other, we’re going to kill each other, all of us. I’m reminded I went to a Catholic school, Colleen and I joke about all the time, but the great Catholic nun Mother Teresa says we have no peace because we’ve forgotten that we belong to each other.

Jason: And that was when we were thinking about, like, what do we want to name it? That really sat well with our team. So to get in touch with us, WW dot relative. AI. Relative without the E. And then, of course, I’m on LinkedIn and stuff, but yeah, really interested to connect with folks who are like minded and interested in using AI for good and AI to make themselves and the planet a little bit better.

Jason: Jason, did you all know one another prior to starting this business, or how did you all come together to form this company?

Jason: Yeah, so we met through friends of a friends. It was almost like Ken and Ryu a little bit, where somebody I’ll never forget, this guy named Luke, was talking to me, and he was like, you need to meet Arjun. And I was like, what do you mean? He was like, he is an Indian version of you. And I was like, what? And then I met him, and it was like we got on a zoom, and it was like this weird mirroring thing where I moved to the right and he moved to the left, and it was like I’m looking at my soul in another person’s body.

Jason: It was like the most bizarre thing, but it was just like platonic love at first sight to be like, oh, yeah, this is it. And then deeper and deeper and deeper, even down to our insane love of lions. We both really dig lions at that level. Super connected.

Colleen: So obviously let people transition into cyber. How did you transition into AI from education?

Jason: That’s a good question. Yeah, that’s a good question. So I was in education for a long time and then did a bunch of research at Harvard and was really looking at sociolinguistics. So how successful teachers talked to students and what language, like, literally the words and tonality that made a certain group of teachers successful compared to another group. So I’ll give you a very specific example.

Jason: Anywhere USA, a teacher will say, hey, guys, everybody needs to sit down. Please sit down, sit down. And if you came from where I came from, that’s not how my mom asked me to sit down, right? So if somebody’s like, hey, Jason, would you please sit down? My mom never spoke to me, but that way she’s like, sit down. And it’s ton of love. Ton of love, but incredibly clear. Like, this is not a request. I told you to sit down. And effective 100%, I was like, yes, ma’am.

Jason: But then what happens in a classroom is that you have that cultural difference that’s talking past each other. And I had seen it happen in schools, and then again was like, man, more people need to see this. Because you think from our perspective, the derivative of every problem is miscommunication, right? People fight. People drop a bomb. People will cheat each other because of miscommunication. So if we could use AI to solve that, that was really interesting.

Jason: So then when, as part of grad school and research and publishing, you get into these worlds of, like, art, how do you prove it at scale? And AI is the tool that really helped it. So, again, you were talking earlier about there’s some intimidation factor around cyber and AI and computer and tech, but when you really get into it, again, it’s a lot of math, and anybody can learn math with a lot of effort and just discipline.

Jason: And then once you learn the skills, then you start to see the world differently. You’re like, oh, I can apply these skills to a bunch of real problems that I’ve seen and had in the world. So that’s a bit of my story. And then, of course, Arjen and the rest of the team come to the same top of the mountain, but from different aspects, right? So Arjun was really deep in research and then saw an opportunity to translate some of that to solve some real world problems. So when we came together, it was, like, almost like the Avengers.

Jason: The meeting of the minds to form this hopefully, super team that can be a small, small part of saving the world.

Colleen: That’s awesome.

Chris: So you know what program this is. So I have to ask you, Colleen, what’s the best bar to go to in Philly?

Colleen: I love a good steakhouse, and I always think the bars and steakhouses are the best. They’re, like, kind of cold and dark, and you can start talking. I guess it’s more mature age wise, so you can kind of strike up a conversation with anyone in that kind of atmosphere. I can. Anyway, I would say I do love Capitol Grill’s bar in Philadelphia.

Chris: Okay. And Jason, what are you sipping on in LA?

Jason: Yeah, I mean, I’m a big whiskey guy. So the old fashioned, but I would tend to agree with Colleen. Like a steakhouse bar. We have a few here, like the Derby, Flemings. I don’t know if you have Flemings in Philly, but Fleming’s is fantastic. But a good old fashioned on a Friday, Saturday night. I’m at the age where I’m just like, I don’t need like, nine, I need like one, maybe two, but just I need like super high quality, right? And you can just taste all the I’m getting all the tannins and all the sugars and all that stuff, but like, quality over quantity, that part.

Chris: To sum up my interview, I have one final question for you. If you opened a Cybersecurity themed bar, what would the name be and what would your signature drink be called?

Jason: I’d probably name it “What Hat”. Because if we’re all AI for good, the cybersecurity equivalent of that would be a white hat. Then in that, we would just sell a ton of dope white Russians with maybe some with bourbon instead of vodka.

Chris: Oh, man, like that.

Colleen: Okay, so maybe my bar name would be “Privacy”.

Chris: Okay. I like it.

Colleen: So maybe the drink would be “Accept Cookies”.

Chris: Accept cookies!

Colleen: Yes, it’s on every website now.

Chris: Are you force feeding cookies to people when they walk in?

Jason: It’s like 2:30 here and my mouth is watering. I have a couple more hours of work yall.

Chris: It’s after 5PM here, so I’m good. Time doesn’t mean anything, man.

Jason: It’s all relative.

Chris: Well, on that note, I want to thank you both for stopping by and sharing your incredible insights with us. I’m super stoked about Cyber Job Academy and the integration with relativeAI. And yeah, I’m looking forward to our next conversation we’re going to have.

Colleen: Our next conversation is going to be at a bar in the Bahamas.

Chris: All right, guys, thanks again. Take care.

Jason: We’ll see you all.

Colleen: Thank you.