For International Women's Day we would like to introduce you to some of the women of DOMA

What made you want to work in the field that you are in today?

I did not know that I wanted to go into Information Technology Compliance / Analyst work until a friend, who was the head of HR for Monarch Bank, contacted me and said they were looking for an Information Security Analyst (ISA) for the IT department. My business career had been in accounting, human resources, internal auditing, and bank security, so the idea of making this leap was exciting and intimidating. Shortly after I started at Monarch, my manager asked me if I would be interested in taking his spot in a week-long Certified Information Security Management (CISM) training class. I LOVED the class and was hooked on information security. I lost my job when Monarch was bought out by Towne Bank which turned out to be a good thing as it allowed me to come to work at DOMA as the IT Compliance Analyst.

What is the part of your job that you find the most fulfilling?

It’s fulfilling when I study a new regulatory rule (or an update to an existing rule) and get to help ensure that DOMA is compliant with relevant laws, policies, and regulations. (Yes I’m a geek,  and have been since before geeks were considered cool!) DOMA is required to be compliant with several regulatory laws and IT standards so I have to be knowledgeable about HIPAA, HITECH, PCI-DSS, NIST SP800-53r4, NIST SP800-171, GDPR, ISO 27001, ISO 27017, ISO 9001-2015, CCPA, and soon DoD’s CMMC. (I know, a lot of acronyms, I’m showing off 😊)

What advice would you give a woman looking to enter your field?

You have to be thick-skinned, to not take push back to implementing rules and standards personally. You also have to find a way to be sensitive to the business manager’s need to get work done and balance that with protecting the company from regulatory non-compliance which can lead to fines and penalties. You have to be able to teach and explain why something has to be done, not just telling people to do it because it’s a regulatory rule.

Who is the woman you look up to the most?

First my mom. She started working outside the home when all of my friends’ moms stayed home to raise their families. She always said, “Marti, you can be anything you want to be.” For you younger folks, those were the days when women’s “jobs” were to be teachers or bookkeepers until they got married. Second is the recently deceased Katherine Johnson, NASA mathematician. Talk about a woman who took on the (supposedly men’s) world of science!

What challenges do you think women still have in the workplace today?

Women still have to face the challenge of being taken seriously. I work in a male-dominated field (IT) and it’s tough to break into it. But even when I worked as a Financial Manager or HR Manager, I was often the only woman at the table. If we’re competitive we’re often looked at as “difficult”. If a man is competitive he’s considered a “go-getter”. It’s gotten much better since I started in the job market, but there is work to do to get women on a level playing field with men.