ICIT - Key Persons
As a multi-passionate business woman and marketer with 25 years of Director level experience, Catherine is ICIT's go-to expert in event and experiential marketing, and operations management. Comfortable at wearing many hats, she moves easily from vision & strategy to implementation & analysis, and is always ready to roll up her sleeves and take on any project, head on. Using her trademark skills of innovation, creativity, and an upbeat, can-do attitude, she helps ICIT produce high-caliber strategic events and meetings where ROI and objectives are a key driving force. She is skilled in every phase of event strategy, design, planning and management; from consulting with clients, developing initial ideas and concepts to managing all facets of production, to post program analysis and debriefs. You will find she is a solutions-driven thinker with entrepreneurial spirit and a flair for taking the ordinary and developing an extraordinary angle or solution to every project.
Her track record includes pioneering the successful start-up of a national event division for an $11 billion global organization, and managing an events division for a Fortune 500 company from the ground floor, with direct responsibilities for all areas of sales, marketing, operations & business development.
Catherine has a bachelor's degree in Business Administration and Finance. She enjoys food, wine, cooking, travel, learning new skills, deep conversations, and live cultural experiences.
Job Titles:
- Lead Researcher at the Institute for Critical Infrastructure Technology
As the Lead Researcher at the Institute for Critical Infrastructure Technology, Drew Spaniel is an expert in the information security and technology industry with a keen understanding of emerging trends, C-level needs, and cutting edge technologies. In his role at the Institute, he is the principal research analyst for ICIT publications and research initiatives and is the primary author on most major ICIT publications. He serves the Institute as a technical expert in cybersecurity, technology, and data science, as well as emerging adversarial trends, threat actor profiling, and legislation and agency initiatives related to information security and privacy. He regularly supports the ICIT Executive Director in engagement with ICIT Fellows and senior government and private sector executives including participating in research calls and other forums with critical infrastructure technical leaders and policymakers.
Drew earned a Master of Science in Information Security, Policy, and Management from Carnegie Mellon University's Heinz College and a Bachelor of Science in Applied Physics from Allegheny College. When not focused on Information Security, Drew enjoys board games, RPGs, video games, reading, and pop culture.
Joyce is one creative and gifted innovator-who also knows how to execute. She's a tech exec with the rare skill of knowing how to select, assemble and lead the right people, technology and resources to successfully take an initiative from whiteboard to go-live in either the private, public or philanthropic sector.
She's served as both the Interim CIO and Deputy CIO of the US Department of Agriculture and held other senior leadership roles within the federal government, Lotus Development Corp, Lawson Software, and Computer Sciences Corporation (CSC). She's managed multi-billion dollar IT budgets and established or led several data governance and PMO initiatives. She understands how to communicate with and across diverse communities and how to forge relationships that enable those stakeholders to succeed. She regularly uses these skills in both her TEDx talks and publications.
Joyce has a BA from Villanova University and an MBA in Marketing from the University of Pennsylvania, Wharton School of Business. She holds certificates in Emotional Intelligence, Design Thinking, Technology Business Management (TBM) and Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe). She sits on multiple industry boards and is active in several philanthropies focused on advancing STEM and Data Science education for underserved and underrepresented youth. When she's not working she's cheering for her hometown (Philly) teams. She lives in Germantown, Maryland.
Kathryn D. McIver is a doctoral candidate in business administration with the University of Maryland and a Lean Six Sigma Master Black Belt. She holds an MBA from Syracuse University and is the Content Manager for ICIT. In her role for ICIT, she supports Fellows, SMEs, and industry leaders in creating powerful content that advances the ICIT mission to improve resiliency in our Nation's 16 critical infrastructure sectors.
Before focusing on professional development and training, McIver held executive-level operations and consulting roles whe re she led and advi sed department leaders on topics such as strategic planning, Lean Six Sigma implementation, key performance indicator development, operational excellence, and operations management. She also serves as a Lean Six Sigma curriculum developer creating online training for Yellow, Green, and Black Belt students, in addition to teaching Bl ack Belt courses. McIver is a past Chair of the Denver section of the ASQ and has published on the topics of applying game theory to organizations, selecting the appropriate methodology and tools for project success, and case studies on Lean Six Sigma implementation. She has spoken at ASQ, PMI and trade organizations to contribute to increasing the caliber of professionals in the workplace. Her professional areas of interest include organizational success factors, mitigating chaos and complexity in organizations, and bridging the scholar-practitioner gap in evidence-based management application s.
With a lifelong passion for leadership and community building, Parham Eftekhari is a cybersecurity executive who has spent the past decade building trusted relationships with the nation's leading technology and national security leaders. Led by three core values - kindness, respect, and integrity - he regularly engages with policymakers, federal agency executives, and critical infrastructure leaders on initiatives that center around strengthening the resiliency of our nation against digital threats.
Parham served as ICIT's Executive Director until April 2020 and now serves as Chairman of the Board. During his time as Executive Director, he was responsible for building and executing the Institute's mission, including its content and education strategy, community engagement, and fundraising. Currently, Parham is SVP of the Cyber Risk Alliance and Executive Director of its Cybersecurity Collaborative business, a membership community defined by CISO collaboration offering strategic and tactical guidance, CISO career development, and industry advocacy. Prior to ICIT, Parham co-founded the IT collaboration group GTRA and led the technology practice at a boutique competitive intelligence research firm.
Over the course of his career, Parham has led the development of multiple research publications on a broad range of cybersecurity and national security issues, many of which he co-authored and has addressed forums ranging from Congress, the World Bank, RSA, and C-SPAN. He holds a BBA from the University of Wisconsin - Madison School of Business and spent two years at the Ecole Superieure de Commerce de Paris in Paris, France studying international business, and is fluent in French and Farsi.