Cybersecurity mentoring sessions
Meet one-on-one with cybersecurity professionals, explore career paths, and get personalized advice from industry experts.
Oct 17, 2026 — 9 a.m. to 5 p.m.
Meet one-on-one with cybersecurity professionals, explore career paths, and get personalized advice from industry experts.
Event details
Interested in a career in cybersecurity?
As part of the OWASP Ottawa 25th Anniversary Celebration, students are invited to connect one-on-one with cybersecurity professionals and learn about careers in the field.
Whether you're exploring your options, preparing for internships, or seeking advice from industry professionals, these informal mentoring sessions offer an opportunity to ask questions, gain career insights, and hear firsthand experiences from people working in cybersecurity.
Mentors come from a variety of backgrounds and career stages and can share perspectives on topics such as education, job searching, professional development, and day-to-day work in the industry.
To book a mentoring session, browse the mentor profiles below and contact the mentors you'd like to meet with directly by email to arrange a meeting time during the event.
Meetings will be booked on a first come, first served basis.
Mentors
Garth Boyd
Security Architect, Devious Plan
Language: English
Senior Application Security/Cloud Security Architect specializing in Secure Software Architecture and Ethical Hacking with experience supporting development organizations wishing a designer, creator, and breaker to help them on their security path. Founder of DeviousPlan, a boutique security firm specializing in Security Architecture, Threat Modelling, Securing the public cloud, Security Training, and Penetration Testing. A lifelong learner who enjoys crafting solutions to interesting and tough problems through architecture, threat modelling, mitigation design, and penetration testing. Researching new ideas, troubleshooting, communication, and thinking of six impossible things before breakfast are part of the journey.
Abigail Dubiniecki
Privacy Consultant and Data Strategist, LegallyAbigail Data Strategist (dba)
Languages: English, French
I am a privacy lawyer, speaker, writer & consultant who’s passionate about Privacy by Design, privtech, Data Justice & Indigenous Data Sovereignty, and disinformation, especially in relation to areas such as biotech, AI, and adtech. I help clients from startups to global multinationals across industries navigate complex privacy regimes like the GDPR, Quebec’s Law 25 & the EU AI Act, with a focus on human-centred design.
In addition to developing over 200 controls for Privacy by Design (PbD) for AI to assess AI-enabled products and services for PbD certification readiness under ISO 37000-1 PbD Standard, I have been helping clients navigate the privacy risks of working with and developing AI.
Magno Logan
Head of Product Security, Fellow.ai
Language: English
Magno Logan, Head of Product Security at Fellow.ai, focuses on AppSec reviews, security architecture, and fostering a positive security culture. He contributed to MITRE ATT&CK for Containers, published research on Kubernetes, container, and CI/CD supply-chain attacks, and maintains awesome-k8s-security on GitHub. His recent work focuses on AI security.
He is also a Cyber Training Specialist at the Bank of Canada and an Investor and Advisor at GoHacking, where he has taught more than 35k students. Magno founded Brazil's OWASP Paraíba chapter in 2011 and has spoken at DEF CON, KubeCon, SecTor, NorthSec, Global AppSec, SANS, and BSides.
Logan MacLaren
Offensive Security Lead, Huntress
Language: English
Logan is the lead Offensive Security engineer at Huntress where he is responsible for planning and executing red team operations as well as bolstering incident response capability through purple team exercises. He has been a long time enthusiast in the security space, building a career spanning big data analytics, bug bounty, and offensive security.
Harsh Makwana
Security Architect, Morgan Stanley
Language: English
Harsh Makwana is a security architect and former application security consultant specializing in AI security and offensive security. He holds an MEng from the University of Ottawa and certifications including eWPTXv2 and eJPT. Harsh previously practiced offensive security as part of his appsec work and now focuses on securing systems, early in their design phase, well before they reach production by evaluating real attack surfaces and applying practical, hands‑on security techniques across modern cloud and AI‑driven environments.
Warren Moynihan
Penetration Testing Manager, Previously at IBM & Software Secured
Language: English
Warren has spent over 15 years in the offensive security testing space, from performing hundreds of pen-tests personally to managing large teams of pen-testers at IBM and Software Secured. He’s worked with dozens of development teams globally to support secure engineering, vulnerability management, threat modelling, and incident response. He has spent a lot of time mentoring pen-testers of all levels, also working with a variety of people in various other roles. He enjoys building, optimizing, troubleshooting, and a lot of breaking. Always curious, he has a passion for security and is a strong privacy advocate.
Louise Powell
Operations Partner / Senior Penetration Tester, Xanthus Security
Language: English
Louise is a Partner at a boutique cybersecurity firm in Ottawa, where she works as a Senior Penetration Tester. Over the past seven years, she has worked with government and private-sector clients across financial services, healthcare, and defence, while leading a small team of security professionals.
She specialises in application security and mobile testing, with extensive hands-on experience assessing real-world systems. As a mentor, Louise is particularly passionate about supporting women entering or progressing within cybersecurity, sharing practical advice on building technical confidence, developing offensive security skills, navigating career growth, and finding your place in a still heavily male-dominated industry.
Sunny Verma
Ethical Hacker, Packetlabs Ltd.
Language: English
Sunny Verma is an offensive security practitioner with 5+ years of experience performing penetration testing activities on web applications and networks owned by organizations ranging from SMBs to Fortune-100 companies. In his new role at Payments Canada, he will be helping secure the backbone of Canada's Payment Infrastructure using his offensive security skillset.
Diane Watson
Product Security Program Manager, Ribbon Communications
Language: English
Diane Watson has spent over 20 years in the rooms where telecom, cloud, and cybersecurity meet at Fujitsu, Nokia, and now Ribbon Communications, where she leads product security for customers in banking, government, telecom, and other critical infrastructure as a Product Security Program Manager. She holds an MSc in Computer Science. But ask anyone who's worked with her and they'll tell you the through-line isn't the tech it's the people she's quietly pulling up alongside her.
Pooyan Zamanian
Security Architect, Phreesia
Language: English
Pooyan Zamanian is a Security Architect at Phreesia with over 10 years of experience in application, cloud, and product security. He focuses on helping engineering teams build secure software and cloud environments, with experience across application security, secure SDLC, cloud security, and AI security. He is a CISSP, CASP+, and AWS Certified Security – Specialty. Pooyan enjoys mentoring and sharing practical experiences with students who are interested in building a career in cybersecurity.
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