Abstract
Most people trying to break into cybersecurity already have more relevant experience than they think. They just don't have the language for it yet.

This talk is for anyone who has looked at a job posting, a cert exam, or a conference badge and thought, “I don't belong here yet.”. The career changers. The late starters. The people whose resumes look like they couldn't make up their minds, and those who suspect that might disqualify them.

Instead of disqualifying me, it prepared me.

Before I was a cybersecurity student holding three CompTIA certifications, one ISC2 certification, and ranked in the top 1% of TryHackMe users globally, I was an actor, a filmmaker, a chef turned cookbook author, a digital marketer, and a self-taught web developer who learned to code on MySpace and ran FTP transfers before most people knew what a server was. I built my first custom PC at 13. I was on the internet, unsupervised, at age 5. I helped wire a local ISP as a preteen in Ohio. None of that showed up on a cybersecurity resume. All of it shows up in how I work.

This talk draws a direct line between the skills that built those careers and the ones cybersecurity welcomes and rewards.

Improv and red teaming share the same wiring: adapt in real time, no script, no panic. Building an acting career is an advanced persistent threat campaign against a system designed to reject you. Marketing is blue team work: planned campaigns, adversarial awareness, analytical log analysis, automation that still needs human eyes on it. Social engineering? I was doing that to keep the lights on long before I knew it had a name.

Your path probably has more in it than you're giving yourself credit for.
I'm currently completing my cybersecurity degree at CIAT, one of New Mexico's newest cybersecurity programs, which covers cert exam costs until you pass. That’s a detail worth knowing if cost is what's holding you back. I also co-founded Crumpled Thoughts, a New Mexico 501(c)(3) bringing cybersecurity and tech literacy to underrepresented communities. A lot of people just need someone to show them they're already closer than they think.

Take the leap anyway. The support in this community will break your fall.