Dr. Yolanda Reid didn’t choose national security. She had a competing offer from a pharmaceutical company and picked the National Security Agency because the scheduling lined up better with school. She was 18. She didn’t know the difference between the two industries. She just knew someone would pay for college.
In this episode of “Rookies to Rockstars,” hosts Amanda Ziadeh and Camille Tuutti sit down with Reid, vice president of cybersecurity at The MIL Corp., to discuss what it looks like to build a career when you have no roadmap, a lot of candor — and occasionally too much of it.
In this conversation, you’ll hear about:
- How Reid landed at NSA and what she wishes she’d known about mentorship from day one
- The technical director who became her first mentor and why she promptly told him no
- What it’s like to be the only woman and only person of color in the room for years before you even realize it
- How a cancer diagnosis forced her to write her priorities on an index card, and what made the list
- Why she started homeschooling her daughter through first grade from a wheelchair and what that year gave them both.
Reid also talks about leaving government, how she thinks about cyber and AI today, and what she’d tell her younger self about the ideas she let go of too easily when the first answer was no.
At her 5-year cancer-free mark, she and her best friend went to Egypt for two weeks. Fifty people, two groups, ancient history she’d studied alongside her daughter. She loved every bit of it — except the part where there were 50 people.