Meet Our Spring 2023 Scholarship Recipients: Alex Webb and Tarah Cavallaro!

We're so excited to announce our Spring 2023 Scholarship recipients, Alex Webb and Tarah Cavallaro! Alex is our VetSec Scholarship recipient and Tarah is our Open Doors Scholarship recipient.

Before the bootcamp takes up too much of their time, we sat down with them to ask them how they wound up enrolling in our Cyber Defense Analyst Bootcamp—and what they're most excited about.

Meet Alex Webb

Meet Tarah Cavallaro

Q: What were you up to in terms of your career/education before the bootcamp - and what made you decide it was time for a change of pace?

A: I have been working as a Mechanical Engineer for the better part of a decade since graduating from the Ohio State University’s Engineering Department. During this time, I have been able to expand and hone my skills, but within the last couple of years I have begun feeling that I needed to be doing something that would provide more of a continuously evolving challenge. Don’t get me wrong here, between owners, architects, and ever evolving code requirements, there is always something that is going to need redesigned as an engineer, but, at least in the Mechanical Electrical Plumbing (MEP) sector I am in, the landscape is somewhat limited to “Make ‘x’ amount of air flow through ‘y’ space without spending more than ‘z’ dollars.

Watching the transition of so many companies to work fully remote during the pandemic, and seeing the challenges which the companies I was working for had to overcome, I was intrigued by the complexity of design and continual modification required to maintain security of our electronic data and systems.

In the last year I have completed several self-paced online study courses, as well as joined multiple mentorship programs to learn more about the various aspects of cyber security, and I couldn’t be more excited to continue this journey with Level Effect!

Q: Why did you choose to attend Level Effect’s bootcamp over the others out there?

A: Anyone who knows me will tell you how much research I do on any given topic before being able to make a decision, and Level Effect was no exception. In my mentorship programs I have received a great deal of very good advice and recommendations regarding how to best ensure a smooth transition to a role as a cyber security professional, and Level Effect was one of the top names to keep coming up.

 I was impressed by the overwhelmingly positive reviews (5 stars everywhere I looked!), as well as endorsements from well-known names such as John Hammond.

The emphasis on practical application, as well as the desire to “cut through the gatekeeping mentality” got me really excited, and the impressive credentials of the instructors pushed it into a no-brainer category for me.

Q: What are you most excited about as you begin the bootcamp?

A: I have always had a virtually insatiable appetite for learning, and this seems like such a wonderful opportunity that this is a difficult question for me to answer. While everything about this bootcamp has me energized, I can confidently say that, aside from actually being selected as a scholarship recipient, I am most excited about the Adversary Tactics and Threat Hunting aspects, as I believe these align most closely to my desire to join a red team operation.

***

Congratulations, Alex and Tarah! We're so excited to welcome our Spring 2023 cohort to class and can't wait to kick things off!