SANS Technology Institute: Leadership Essay SANS Technology Institute

Leadership Laboratory

Leadership Lab: STI Degree Candidates' Leadership Essays

SANS Technology Institute's mission is to develop the leaders of the future for the information security industry. One of our admission requirements is that an applicant complete an essay describing leadership qualities they have demonstrated in the past.

Leadership Essay SANS Technology Institute

May 22nd, 2009
By Seth Misenar

Though my experience with SANS only began two and a half years ago, my tenure has afforded me many and varied opportunities to grow both as an information security professional and as a leader. My initial position of "volunteer" would certainly be considered a rather lowly one, but even from this inauspicious beginning I had my sights set on becoming a peer to the instructors I had come to value so highly, whose status as leaders in the information security community is undeniable.

The obvious first step toward this goal would be to determine a path to achieving this end. Luckily, I was not reticent about my lofty goals and was told about the SANS Mentor program. I was emboldened. This program would allow me, having achieved sufficiently high scores on my SANS certification exams, to apply to assist students in my local area in studying one of the courses in which I had been certified. Now all I had to do was to generate interest in my local community. Hailing from Jackson, Mississippi, recruiting students proved to be a much more challenging aspect of the program than actually assisting the students with understanding the courseware.

After one successful Mentor event, several false starts, and many emails, I was given the opportunity to actually teach, rather than mentor, students in my local community by leading Stay Sharp (now known as STAR) events. Rather than the typical six day SANS courses, Stay Sharp classes were considerably shorter, ranging from three hours to two days. Recruitment again proved most challenging for these endeavors, but I was able to convince my contacts at SANS to allow the courses to run even though my largest class proved to be only three students (including the free seat for the hosting organization).

Having "taught" a whopping total of nine students, by some stroke of sheer luck combined with a fair amount of dogged tenacity, I was given the opportunity to fly solo and teach my first Community SANS event. I was, at once, overjoyed and petrified. This was to be something altogether different than teaching 3 students over the course of a few hours with whom I had usually had prior contact. I would be teaching more than double the number of students I had instructed in my previous classes combined. Several nerve wracking weeks of preparation, twenty students, six days, and forty six hours of instruction later, I was elated. The evaluations and students’ comments seemed to suggest that I indeed had a knack for leading people through the craggy terrain of information security. Though only a volunteer just over two and a half years ago, during 2008 I have thus far led more than three hundred students on this same journey.

Submitted: January 6, 2009

My career and my life seem to have consistently waxed and waned through phases of mentorship: my clinging fiercely to those who would willingly share their knowledge; and my serving others by attempting to impart what knowledge my experiences had imbued me with. I think one of the most sincere forms of leadership can be found in one earnestly trying to help others to achieve the acme of their potential. To this task I continually devote myself, to be simultaneously the best student and mentor that I am able to be.

“SANS provides top instructors; that is what separates SANS from all other learning opportunities.”
Todd Greenlaw, Telus

The SANS Technology Institute

Leadership Laboratory

Leadership Essay SANS Technology Institute

May 22nd, 2009
By Seth Misenar

“SANS provides top instructors; that is what separates SANS from all other learning opportunities.” Todd Greenlaw, Telus

The SANS Technology Institute

Leadership Laboratory

Leadership Essay SANS Technology Institute

May 22nd, 2009By Seth Misenar

“SANS provides top instructors; that is what separates SANS from all other learning opportunities.”
Todd Greenlaw, Telus

May 22nd, 2009
By Seth Misenar