From Bartending to COO: Hospitality Skills, Remote Work, and Critical Thinking in Cybersecurity

The host welcomes Alise Barron to the Cybersecurity Recruiter podcast and introduces her career path from hospitality and internet marketing into recruiting leadership roles at Experis Finance, Cylance, and Blackberry, and then multiple promotions at Cyvatar to COO.

Elise describes a typical remote-work day balancing family routines, early email catch-up due to time zones, constant meetings, and handling unexpected escalations in cybersecurity operations. They discuss why hospitality backgrounds can drive rapid advancement: strong work ethic, quick critical thinking, customer and stakeholder management, resilience, and learning to set boundaries without adopting a victim mindset. Elise connects these skills to project management, noting she later recognized she had been applying PMP-style practices.

They also discuss productivity tradeoffs between remote and office work, the value of networking, and how incident response requires structure, patience, and calm communication.

00:00 Welcome and Catch Up

00:42 Small World in Security

01:47 Elise Career Intro

02:59 COO Daily Routine

04:58 Remote Work Realities

08:44 From Bartender to COO

13:39 Hospitality Skills in Corporate

18:02 Boundaries and Ownership

19:24 Project Management Mindset

25:12 Hiring Through Networking

26:59 AI and Recruiting Filters

29:20 Closing Thoughts and Wrap