Security News > 2021 > April > CISO Conversations: Raytheon and BAE Systems CISOs on Leadership, Future Threats
Much of SecurityWeek's CISO Conversations series discusses how to be a leader.
This begs a fundamental question: what makes a good leader - is a good leader born or bred? That's one of the questions we asked our two CISOs - Jennifer Watson of Raytheon Intelligence & Space and Mary Haigh of BAE Systems - for this issue of CISO Conversations dealing with the defense sector.
Jennifer and Mary are not the first women CISOs in the series, but this is the first time that both CISOs are women.
"I believe leadership is something that can be learned," said Watson, "But I do believe that it has to be in there somewhere. It's about learning to follow first. You have to be able to do the job yourself before you can lead others." For Watson, leadership qualities were probably innate.
Interestingly, neither of our CISOs were willing to entertain the idea that women may have some psycho-emotional advantages over men in being a good CISO. Haigh simply stated, "I'm not a fan of stereotyping certain traits."
Being a CISO requires additional skill sets that need to be integrated into the leadership expertise.