Dr. Alissa Abdullah, Mastercard

As Mastercard's deputy chief security officer, Dr. Alissa Abdullah leads the Emerging Corporate Security Solutions team and is responsible for protecting Mastercard’s information assets as well as driving the future of security. She is also the host of the Mastering Cyber podcast.

Prior to Mastercard, Dr. Abdullah was the chief information security officer of Xerox where she established and led a corporate-wide information risk management program. Dr. Abdullah also served as the deputy chief information officer of the White House where she helped modernize the Executive Office of the President's IT systems with cloud services and virtualization.

Dr. Abdullah holds a PhD in Information Technology Management from Capella University, a master’s degree in Telecommunications and Computer Networks from The George Washington University and a bachelor’s degree in mathematics from Savannah State University.