Tennisha unpacks the important work of The BlackGirlsHack Foundation, which provides training resources and cybersecurity education to underserved communities. That includes giving Black children avenues to complete cybersecurity certifications and snag their first jobs in the industry.
Cybersecurity organizations tend to have unrealistic hiring expectations, according to Tennisha Martin, founder and executive director of the training-focused nonprofit BlackGirlsHack. That can make it hard for would-be candidates to stand out and contribute to solving urgent cybersecurity challenges.
In the latest episode of WE’RE IN!, Tennisha unpacks the important work of The BlackGirlsHack Foundation, which provides training resources and cybersecurity education to underserved communities. That includes giving Black children avenues to complete cybersecurity certifications and snag their first jobs in the industry.
“Part of the reason why I started BlackGirlsHack was because I was a black girl that was trying to get into cyber security and I was like, hey, I've got a whole bunch of degrees and years of experience and certifications, and if I'm having a hard time, I know that the people who are fresh out of high school, for example, may be having a hard time as well,” she said.
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[00:00:00] Blake: Hello and welcome to We're In, a podcast that gets inside the brightest minds in cybersecurity. I'm your host, Blake Thompson Hoyer, and joining me today is none other than Tennisha Martin, executive director and founder of the training focused cyber non profit Black Girls Hack. Tanisha's work building Black Girls Hack into a bustling community of over 2, 000 global members has earned her the nickname Mother of Hackers.
[00:00:21] I'll ask Tennisha about her varied career as a pen tester, author, and influencer, and we'll touch on how organizations can hope to bridge the cybersecurity talent gap. We'll also talk about diversity in tech and what skills are needed to launch a successful career in cyber. But first, here's a quick word from our sponsor, Synack.
[00:00:39] Thanks, Tennisha, for joining me on the program. It's great to have you on the podcast.
[00:00:43] Tennisha: I am happy to be here. Thank you for having me.
[00:00:45] Blake: So right off the bat, I have to ask, your online bio mentions a very particular nickname, Mother of Hackers. How did that come about?
[00:00:54] Tennisha: It came about as a joke because, um, I was saying like, you know, we're certifying so many hackers, you know, they, they, they might as well just start calling me the mother of hackers. And then it kind of like stuck. We had our conference last year and, um, my team actually got me like a little sash that said, mother of hackers.
[00:01:10] During like the, um, the end of our conference and I was like sitting there all blubbery and like, Oh, this is so sweet. Um, but it, it's, it's kind of, uh, stuck because, as a training organization, we've, put out a whole lot of, um, certified hackers, over the past five years. So, I'm embracing it.
[00:01:26] Blake: Hey, why not? It's a great nickname. And to your point about getting some of these folks outfitted with certs, it can still be quite difficult to find some of these entry level positions in the cybersecurity field, despite what I hear is almost constant warnings about, Oh, we have this talent shortage. We don't have enough cybersecurity workers in the field.
[00:01:46] So tell me a little bit, how does Black Girls Hack prepare its participants for the future? For the reality of entering this quite competitive job market with, with really high barriers to entry.
[00:01:57] Tennisha: Absolutely. as you mentioned, like, there are a lot of barriers to entry. Some of those are financial, which is what we try to address, and then the other ones are, you know, basically time related. So, you know, we'll say, you know, hey. You need to get these certifications depending on where your ultimate goal is.
[00:02:13] You know, depending on what you're working for. So let's take a red teamer, right? If they're trying to become a penetration tester, we'll take them from, you know, 0 to OSCP. So we'll train them, you know, Our programs start off with like either a Grow with Google cybersecurity certificate or, Certified in Cybersecurity, just a foundation level because we assume that they're actually starting at zero, um, and then we provide them with basically the training, they meet once a week with their cohorts.
[00:02:38] Make sure you know those words and help them get the certification. So over the course of you know most of those programs are like a year to 18 months, Over the course of that period of time you know they'll get both hands on labs to help build a portfolio and get experience, but then they'll also get the certifications and then they're You know, once a week training with their instructors if they have any questions about the labs or, you know, any of the stuff that they're working on, but they start together, they spend, you know, basically the 18 months and then when it's done, we provide, resume reviews, um, LinkedIn updates, and then also help them do mock interviews to prepare so that they can, you know, understand what's about to come for them.
[00:03:17] And then the other thing that we'll let them know is like, this job market is crazy despite the fact that they, say, hey, there's a huge, skills gap. There's 4. 5 million jobs out here.
[00:03:28] Blake: know the number seems to change by the week. I feel like
[00:03:30] Tennisha: It does, um, you know, and I think, but we're at the same time. You have, the fact that there's probably been 300 plus thousand people who've been laid off over the course of the last quarter, in the technology and cyber security sector.
[00:03:43] We try to also make them realize that they need to stand out. And they need to be competitive in terms of, what's literally thousands of other people that are probably applying for jobs, hundreds if not thousands, because we literally will put a job up and it will, I think have hundreds of, of people who've applied to it within a very short period of time.
[00:04:01] So I think just the job market right now is such that there's a lot of people that are available. And companies are, they've always been a little bit, I think, unrealistic in terms of what they're looking for. Because, you know, they'll be like, oh, this is an entry level job that you need a CISSP for, like, okay, we're, I always say that we're building hacker unicorns, but we, we want to make sure that we basically help them to be able to stand out amongst what is probably a very, wide array of applicants for jobs.
[00:04:30] That's how we basically approach all of our training programs is we give them the hands on skills because I think that's very much so lacking in a lot of cyber security education today. We give them the, you know, certifications, And the only thing that we cannot actually give them is the experience, right?
[00:04:45] So I don't have a job to actually give them, we talk to them about like, you know, Hey, you can either volunteer, you can do, an internship, you know, whatever it is to help you to, you know, stand out amongst other people who may have also started at, you know, what may actually be zero.
[00:05:00] Blake: Right. I hear you on the jobs descriptions front. I feel like it's particularly comical when you have ones that list requirements for like 10 years of experience in GPT 4 and it's like, wait a minute, wait, wait,
[00:05:12] Tennisha: ago. What are you doing?
[00:05:14] Blake: That's just, yeah. How are you going to find somebody with that? And speaking of certs, so what's your take on the necessity of certs for a successful technical career in cyber? Is, is pursuing a cert generally a good, Strategy for, for getting off the ground in this field. Are there other paths or what, what do you, what are your thoughts there?
[00:05:32] Tennisha: I actually had a professor, I think it was at Johns Hopkins, when I did my cybersecurity master's degree, and he did not have, a degree himself, um, but he had, you know, X number of years of experience. He had a whole bunch of certifications. He had been in the industry doing all of the things for 20 years, I think at the, at that point in time.
[00:05:50] And that was probably like 10 years ago at this point. And I say all that to say that there are a lot of, cases where people are able to do extremely well within the industry without having any education, right? Like, as far as like, Hey, I've got a bachelor's degree or I've got a master's degree or whatever, right?
[00:06:07] The certifications, I think, serve a specific purpose in terms of making sure that it shows that you've got, you know, at least some level of skill knowledge, right? I've seen people who have, you know, like, certain certifications that can't, you know, hack their way out of a paper bag. The certification doesn't necessarily say, hey, you know all of the things, but it says like, hey, I've at least mastered the subject enough to be able to get these certifications, right?
[00:06:32] Blake: that's a, that's a floor, like a baseline almost.
[00:06:35] Tennisha: absolutely. And I think what it, what, what happens is that when we have people applying for, for jobs and, you know, they'll say, hey, this is our wishlist, this is what we want, you know, and as long as you have one of these, our thought is, you know, if you have these certifications,
[00:06:49] It helps you stand out amongst other people, that may be at the same level than you. So I think that it helps in that way. I think that there's been a movement, over the past, you know, probably a couple of years or so to remove the requirements for education. But I don't think that we're going to get away from the certifications, like at least having like a certification that says, if you work in the government sector, of course, you know, they have requirements for them in order for you to even have a job, right?
[00:07:15] But outside of it, you know, they're still, hey, I want you to have an OSC or, oh, I want you to have a OSWE or whatever the case may be. They want you to have those certifications to basically show their customers like, hey, we can do these things. These certifications represent that I've got certain skills or that I've achieved a certain level.
[00:07:33] Blake: That makes sense. I have to say I've been very impressed witnessing both the alumni of some of your programs and even some contributors to our, you know, SYNACK Red team. The age with which some people are able to get these certs is really impressive nowadays. And as I understand it, in addition to Black Girls Hack, your foundation runs something called the We Got Next cyber program, Um, quote from the site here, you know, targets underserved students and aims to introduce ethical hacking and careers in cybersecurity with the opportunity to test and pass an entry level cyber certification. Well in high school, I, I'm thinking back to what I was doing in high school. I certainly wasn't doing cybersecurity certs. So why did you start that program and what's the experience been of running it so far?
[00:08:22] Tennisha: We started the program because, you know, we realized that if we're going to see, you know, downstream impacts, and improvements in cybersecurity, we need to get people who haven't yet decided what they want to be when they grow up, right? This is going to require, I think people who, major in mathematics or people who major in computer science with a focus on specific areas, in order for us to start seeing more diverse faces in those areas.
[00:08:45] Because what we've been seeing thus far with the lack of diversity, like, data, for example, and in, curriculums, what we end up seeing is that, you know, there are a lot of biases, like when we look at things like AI, for example, machine learning, and the way that we get rid of those biases is that we have to get more people of color, more underrepresented communities, more women, into those rooms where those research are being done because it's usually the people who are impacted by, issues that are choosing to fight on behalf of those issues, right?
[00:09:15] That's part of the reason why I started Black Girls Hack because I was a black girl that was trying to get into cyber security and I was like, hey, I've got a whole bunch of degrees and, and years of experience and certifications and if I'm having a hard time, I know that the people who are, you know, fresh out of high school, for example, may be having a hard time as well.
[00:09:34] Blake: Now that gets to a next question, which is, you know, what are some of the biggest challenges to the work you do at Black Girls Hack?
[00:09:40] You, you flicked at this with, you know, even in your own experience, some of the challenges of securing position with the expertise that you bring to bear. What, what are some of those challenges?
[00:09:50] Tennisha: I think that some of the challenges are like, unrealistic job descriptions, as we've mentioned before, unrealistic hiring expectations. Everyone is literally looking for Hacking Unicorns. They want, you know, basically, when you talk about, you know, dating, sometimes they say, you know, hey, you're batting way out of your league, right?
[00:10:06] And realistically, I think that's what a lot of jobs are looking for. They're looking for, a really well educated, well experienced person, but they want to pay, you know, like, entry level money for them, right? I think over the past, maybe let's call it two or three years. We'd seen like a whole lot of hiring in the tech and cyber security industries as people were working remotely. But I think that as people are going back towards like the office and, they're seeing the downstream impacts of, you know, not having people in actual buildings. Folks have started laying folks off.
[00:10:36] I mentioned there's been 300, 000 plus, folks that have laid off over the past, uh, quarter or so. Um, I think those are some of the, the issues that we're going to start to see, especially as, you know, more people get into the workforce.
[00:10:50] Blake: Right, right. And I wanted to circle back on a point you made about AI and the need to get more individuals of color, women, people from diverse backgrounds into the room when decisions are being made. I feel like you hear these terms bandied around, responsible AI, AI safety, AI security, how is AI changing the work you do? And which areas do you, where do you see the largest, largest impact coming from all this hype around AI?
[00:11:20] Tennisha: I think that most of the research that I've been doing and seeing in the space, a lot of the applications for AI have been around defensive security, so, if you do a search on any of your, like, Google Scholar or, you know, any of the databases, you'll see that there's a lot of research that's been done around that. on, uh, defensive blue team applications for AI. Um, if you look for red teams, you'll see that there are one or two, articles, but for the most part, it's, you know, very much so lacking in terms of the availability of, of research and people, looking at the potential applications. People say, you know, when you're talking about AI, they'll say, you know, hey, AI is going to one point take all of our jobs.
[00:11:58] I think that, you know, Penetration testing, ethical hacking is one of those things where we don't have to worry about that taking because, a lot of the research that they've done thus far shows that there has to be some sort of like, they call it human in the loop, where it's basically there's a certain demarcation point where, at which, AI stops being effective when it comes to doing things like critical thinking, problem solving, at what point do you have a human take a look at this, right?
[00:12:23] And I've seen research where folks have come up with different models where they'll say, Hey, we'll have, basically two or three streams of, analysis. And if all three of these streams come up with the same response in terms of whether or not it needs to be escalated, we'll disregard it as, you know, false positive.
[00:12:39] But, if they don't agree, then a human needs to take a look at it. I think that what the future is going to end up looking like, we'll have at least some of the low level, repeatable, automatable, tasks that, that we do as a part of, like, for example, reconnaissance and, scanning and enumeration.
[00:12:54] You know, a lot of those things, I think, can be taken over by AI. Um, we can also have AI take over things like exploit development, code development, for example, and code review. So those, those types of things, we don't necessarily need a human. In today's day and age to take a look at, maybe supervise.
[00:13:12] But when it comes to, at some point, there's a level at which, you know, a human needs to basically take a look at that because, you know, you need to consider what the impact is going to be. It requires, you know, more than what a lot of AI systems today can be able to give us reliably. Like for example, healthcare or financial impacts, right?
[00:13:30] Where the cost of being wrong is, substantial.
[00:13:34] Blake: Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. And I, I've, I've heard quite a lot about people leveraging AI tools to, for instance, write code. And it's been interesting, we'll say to put it diplomatically, how these models are training themselves, the data sets that they're using that perhaps contain some of the same vulnerabilities that human error are likely to introduce, that human error is likely to introduce, that maybe the AI churns out vulnerable code again. And so you're, as I understand it, you're pursuing an advanced degree relating to AI and pen testing. Do I have that right? And what do
[00:14:08] Tennisha: I am, I'm working on a doctorate.
[00:14:10] Blake: that's, that's, that's impressive and that's a really hot area. So I'd be curious to hear your thoughts on what. Some of the biggest AI specific vulnerabilities might be coming down the pike.
[00:14:22] Tennisha: I think that we're going to end up seeing the, the same way that you have like the OWASP, uh, top 10 for, for example, web applications or for, different types of vulnerabilities. We're going to have those same type of things for AI. I think they've actually put out one for, um, a top 10 for AI already.
[00:14:37] I'm pretty sure I saw that, at some point, but, um.
[00:14:41] Blake: language models, they have an OWASP top 10 now.
[00:14:43] Tennisha: Yeah, but they, they, they basically have, think two pretty high profile in my mind, types of vulnerabilities, which are like, you know, prompt injections, and then, you know, basically data poisoning, where, you know, the two things that you're counting on for an AI system, one is when you ask a question that it provides you with a cur Correct, response.
[00:15:02] We've got this thing called hallucinations where, sometimes AI models will basically come up with something, like on the fly that is not based on reality, it's not actually true, right? Then you have a class of vulnerabilities where you have people who are purposefully injecting incorrect or inaccurate information that the model is then learning, and then, you know, if that information were to replace the actual information, then of course you have something where it's like garbage in, garbage out, right?
[00:15:30] It's not actually helping. And then the other thing is, is that when it comes to the, the data itself, right? A lot of the data that these systems are trained on, and that's when we're talking about the high overhead costs, The training of the, the models are, are what ends up costing a lot of money. That data is extremely biased. We see some downstream impacts for the uses of AIs that we've had prior to the launch of ChatGPT a couple years ago. Where we've seen, like, bias in facial recognition or bias when it comes to, healthcare outcomes or, you know, if you ask, one of the image AI generators to, draw a picture of what, you know, juvenile, criminal justice looks like, or, you know, draw me a picture of what that looks like.
[00:16:13] They don't draw anything that doesn't involve little black boys. in their mind, the only people who, you know, Go to jail that are juveniles are black children. Right? So again, you know, you have an AI system that's, one, giving you this graphical depiction, right? And we know that AI pictures have been, you know, making their way around.
[00:16:32] It may come down to, you know, life or death, right? And the way that we improve those, you know, kind of going back to the, the kids program, is by, one, getting people who are going to care about these issues, and then researching them, as they go into school, right?
[00:16:47] I, you know, I don't recommend the model that I take, which is, you know, hey, keep going back to school where you end up with, you know, five master's degrees and, you know, working on a doctorate, right? I don't recommend that as, in general, , to anyone, right? But I think that, you know, if we're going to see downstream impacts in terms of the data, in terms of the algorithms, we need to start getting more, you know, diversity in the room so that it's not, you know, based on what's biased and largely homogenous, right?
[00:17:15] It needs to be upgraded, it needs to be fixed, and that's, that's how we do that, is that we start getting kids, introduced to AI into, you know, machine learning so that we can, you know, over the course of time start having, you know, better data, better algorithms and, you know, better cyber security
[00:17:32] Blake: Absolutely. You know, and you mentioned the importance of uprooting bias from some of these models. The stakes are increasingly getting really high. Yeah. I mean, I'm sure you already have AI, through resumes, say, and rejecting certain ones based on certain assumptions or certain biases that may be present in the AI technology.
[00:17:52] And then, to your point about life or death, I mean, we had our co founder and chief technology officer, Dr. Mark Kora, on the program a couple weeks back and, you know, he pointed out that, you know, There are going to be weapon systems informed by AI with targeting in mind. That's the last place you want to have bias saying target a certain group or target a certain, you know, and it's very frightening to think of. I mean, it's, it's, uh, uh, I don't like to think about it, honestly, but
[00:18:22] Tennisha: I know, but, you know, my, my, my concern with this is that, like, when you look at some of the, the downstream impacts, you have computers and AI systems that are basically determining sentencing recommendations. They're determining, whether or not you're, you know, the level of recidivism, you know, for if you commit a crime, like, how likely it'll be, so determine whether or not you can become free, or, there's a lot of, different applications to saying, like, hey, Tennisha committed a crime because we saw her face, but I can't differentiate between Tennisha and another black woman, right?
[00:18:52] Those things are, are super scary, especially, you know, if you are in these underrepresented communities, right? These models were trained on essentially white faces, so when it sees a non white face, it's kind of like, hmmm. Close enough. And you know, I think that it's, it's important that we kind of address some of these issues, um, before we start seeing the downstream impacts, um, as they start to play out.
[00:19:16] You know, people said, I think it was in 2022, when they first, you know, launched, I think, ChatGPC, were saying, hey, maybe we should put a pause on AI until we've had the chance to investigate, you know, maybe do a six month. And I think there was like something like 30, 000 people who had signed an open letter about that, and, you know, the collective response, as you can see, was like, hey, full speed ahead, with security as an afterthought, with, ethics as an after, you know, with bias as an afterthought, you know, so, I, I think that it, you know, we need to somehow manage to catch up with this bullet train at this point, um, that has already left the station, and it is, you know, moving towards major cities in the United States as a whole.
[00:19:57] Blake: I'd be curious to hear your thoughts on Kind of corporate diversity, equity, inclusion initiatives. And, this segues from this discussion because I'm thinking back to when Google took all the flack for their Gemini AI bot, right? And people were saying it's, outrageous that your AI images are struggling to present, quote, historically accurate depictions or whatnot.
[00:20:21] And you've seen this, like this, corporate pushback. I think their stocks were punished for it. And you see some companies, and I'm not saying this applies to Google necessarily, but just as a trend that has been reported on, are scaling back investment in DEI programs, uh, maybe, maybe seeing that as an area to cut. What are your thoughts there? And, how that applies to some of the work you're doing.
[00:20:41] Tennisha: I think that it impacts our lives, um, very much so because, um, as a non profit, our largest, um, donors, our largest sponsors are corporate sponsors, right, and, you know, when you look at the news, at least for the past six months or so, one of the impacts that we've seen post the Supreme Court decision to get rid of DEI and affirmative action, um, in colleges is that a lot of programs have started letting go, cutting back on their back on their DEI departments, those leaders, those organizations, right?
[00:21:15] That's had a couple of impacts. One, you know, a lot of those departments were run by Black women, so we've seen a lot of high profile of those, you know, either laying off or resignations or leaving or whatever it is, right? But then we also will see that there's going to be less money that are going to help keep, you know, organizations like mine afloat.
[00:21:34] , we had a, Pretty high profile, at least in my, you know, online social circles over the past month or so, uh, women who code, was sent out a message saying that they were, um, basically closing down their doors because they couldn't, you know, continue to operate financially. There's two groups of people.
[00:21:51] There was the group of people who said, Hey, you know, I'm sad. This is, it makes me heartbroken. We lost an organization supporting women. And then you had, you know, another group of people who were basically saying, well, we didn't need that organization. Anyway, you know, you're either a coder or you're not, right?
[00:22:06] And most of those folks who said those things were generally, you know, white men speaking from a position of privilege. And when it comes down to it, the downstream impact is going to be that you, one, have less hiring, of diverse candidates from out of the school systems because, you know, of course those folks are not getting into those schools as much anymore because the whole reason why it was implemented in the first place is because there wasn't.
[00:22:28] You know, equity in terms of admissions for colleges, right? So those folks are not getting hired, which means you have less folks that are working in, you know, if you think about, for example, like some of the major forward technology consulting firms or the major like, um, You know, consulting firms in the DMV area who do a lot of their hiring specifically out of certain schools who now, you know, will have less diversity in them as well, right?
[00:22:51] Not to mention the funding for organizations that support communities of women or Black people or underrepresented communities. I think that there's going to be a lot of negative downstream impacts. And what I'll be interested in seeing is that, you know, for these companies, you know, are they still publishing their DEI numbers?
[00:23:11] Are they still publishing, all of the things? Or are we, like, hey, we don't care about this anymore? So I'll be interested to see how that works out.
[00:23:21] Blake: Yeah, and I, it will be interesting to track. And to your point about schools and education and, you know, perhaps some of the rulings on affirmative action affecting that pipeline of diverse candidates getting into some of these schools, I understand you've announced a black kids hack program coming soon. So how does that tie in? What can you tell us about that?
[00:23:45] Tennisha: So that is primarily to help provide exposure to careers, in cybersecurity technology. Studies show that, when you look at like young girls, that they don't establish their STEM identity, until maybe like around the 5th grade or so, 5th, 6th grade or so. And what we want to do is we want to let people know that jobs in ethical hacking exist, that careers in cybersecurity exist.
[00:24:08] So we're looking at, a lot of homes, black families, you know, we're telling our kids to go and be athletes and actors and, engineers and doctors and lawyers, right? But you're not, especially if you're, you know, coming from an older generation, you're not telling your kids, like, hey, go be a hacker or go be, technologist or go whatever the case may be, right?
[00:24:32] All right, so, what
[00:24:34] Blake: radar. Yeah.
[00:24:35] Tennisha: Right. And, and so through the gamification of cybersecurity, so things like capture the flags, things like, you know, letting them know, like, hey, you've got these tablets and these cell phones in your phone, in your hands, you know, probably 24 7, you know, what about the security within those?
[00:24:50] Um, what about, the things that you're doing already, you know, which don't require you to be able to code, which don't require you to be able to, you know, You know, be excellent at math, right? You can very much so be in cyber security without those things. And I think that, you know, a lot of times the society and, you know, our communities are pushing girls towards, you know, some of the pink jobs and not necessarily towards technical fields.
[00:25:13] Um, like engineering and science and things of that nature. And even when they actually do go to school, you know, statistically, they're more likely not to actually work in the field after they graduate, right? So we want to, as much as possible, try to steer as many people as we can in the pipeline for employment for cybersecurity, right?
[00:25:31] Because you know, today we can't fix the, you know, 450, 000 or 4. 5 million or whatever the number is, um, that they're, they're promoting. We can't fix that today, right, realistically, but, you know, how do we, you know, implement a process that will have the downstream impacts and I think we do that by exposing kids earlier.
[00:25:53] One of our goals at BGH is we're going to, you know, for fifth through eighth grade students, um, provide exposure programs, introduce them to capture the flags, the gamification of cybersecurity, and careers in general, just so that they can be aware as they're evaluating their, you know, hey, what do I want to be when I grow up?
[00:26:11] Blake: I saw a really successful, uh, cyber escape room geared toward kids. I think it was a CISA event or something, uh, Cyber Security and Infrastructure Security Agency event, if I remember correctly. And it, it was really cool. They have all these little nuggets and people learning, getting excited about problems that they wouldn't have, wouldn't have otherwise even considered.
[00:26:28] So, what, what's next for Black Girls Hack?
[00:26:31] Tennisha: We've got a conference that's coming up in August during Hacker Summer Camp, so this will be our third year of having our conference. We did Girls Hack Village the first year, and then we've done Squad Con, last year and this year, so we're really excited about that. We've got some amazing, keynote speakers.
[00:26:44] We've got a educational roadmap that includes things like AI, GRC, digital forensics incident response that are, we're rolling out over the course of the next, um, quarter. Because we want to continue to expand to have programs throughout, you know, all areas of cyber security at some point. We're always looking for trainers, we're always looking for volunteers to help do the things, um, as a volunteer organization.
[00:27:08] Time and money are two of the biggest things that, um, you know, we need to, in order to keep moving on and keep going. So, anyone's interested in volunteering, or training, or helping out, giving back, helping review resumes, whatever it is that's your particular set of skills.
[00:27:23] We're always going to look out for those things. Our goal is to put the word out about what it is that we're doing, so that we can, you know, train more people and I can, you know, birth some more hackers.
[00:27:32] Ah,
[00:27:37] Blake: in, you know, potentially contributing to Black Girls Hack's mission, I should mention it's a, they're not hard to find. BlackGirlsHack. org. It's a pretty, pretty straightforward URL there. And finally, before we, uh, Bring this interview to a close here. Really a fascinating, important discussion. I, I do have one question that we ask all of our podcast guests, which is the, fun fact question, if you will. What's, what's something that we wouldn't know about you, Tennisha just by looking at your LinkedIn profile?
[00:28:05] Tennisha: let's see. I, uh, like gardening. I'm a fan of gambling, so I actually do research in areas of, like, casino security and especially in the adoption of, like, uh, AI and virtual reality, things of that nature. yeah, I think that's, that's it. I
[00:28:26] Blake: strategy? Is that a good strategy for me to go apply at the blackjack tables of doubling your bet every time?
[00:28:33] Tennisha: mean, it depends. I love seeing like some of the mathematical models that are behind like things like, poker and betting strategy and things of that nature. I actually use, uh, I watch, uh, poker games, uh, to fall asleep at, at night. Um, which is, is, is really interesting.
[00:28:48] Um, just cause like, it's interesting to me just in terms of the way you approach it. And I think just. You know, I enjoy watching the game. I've always loved games, so.
[00:28:56] Blake: Well, maybe we'll have to meet around the table at Hacker Summer Camp in Vegas. Uh, that would be a lot, a lot of fun. Well, thanks again for joining us, Tennisha. I really appreciate it. Best of luck with the conference coming around the corner. We'll see you there.
[00:29:07] Tennisha: All right, sounds good. Thank you for having me.