The Five Fs, with Theresa Payton, The White House’s First Female CIO

Theresa Payton is often referred to as one of the United States most respected authorities on secured digital transformation. Theresa was named the first female White House Chief Information Officer with duties that included maintaining federal records and building a 24X7 security operations center.

Our podcast partner, Dr. Rebecca Wynn spoke to Theresa who shares her thoughts on balance, DEI and much more in this episode of the Soulful CXO – catch the full podcast here.

This article summarizes the highlights of the podcast and will provide you with insight into:

• The Five Fs and how Payton keeps stress at bay
• How to make the business case to the board for budget
• Reimagining CIO and CIOs Roles with the three R’s: Resiliency, Reliability, and Recoverability

Early Lessons

Early in her career, Payton felt significant frustration. She had become sick and tired of being underestimated, as the youngest and only woman in the room at work, in meetings people spoke over her, dismissed her ideas, and would even restate her ideas a few minutes later as her own. Her father told her, which she will always remember, “your greatest gift is being underestimated because you can operate in stealth mode, and nobody will ever see you coming. So just remember when you're underestimated, turn that into positive energy and just go for it.”

When initially contacted for the White House position Payton was in disbelief, thinking she was being socially engineered. She initially struggled to understand how she could be qualified for the role, but she was reminded that she had responsibility for global operations at a bank, she was in a fishbowl, and knew how to fight fraudsters and criminals. Although there were some things she would need to learn and they would teach her, she would bring them the knowledge and lessons they needed.

Balance and Wellness in the C-Suite

There’s no lack of discussion around the burnout being felt by CIOs and CISOs alike, they need to be always “on” and often struggle to decompress.

Some key methods Payton leverages for her stress reduction and suggests to others:

• Pace yourself, the work will never stop, don’t allow the pace to run you
• Build 5 to 10 minutes into each workday to recharge, you may not get the day off you are looking for to recharge so you must find time each day.
  • Recharging does NOT include doom-scrolling on social media
  • Instead: take a walk outside, find a bright spot to build into each day

Additionally, when going into the White House she created a System of Five Fs for herself, color coding her calendar based on these Five Fs. The first four Fs are Faith, Family, Friends, and Fellowship. “The fifth one is what are you Fighting for,” she said. “For me, I’m fighting to protect people, businesses, our
country, and our allies.” If she sees it’s very lopsided, she will focus on changing allocations in the following 30 days for better balance.

Reimagining CIO and CIOs Roles

As Payton states, the focus for CIOs is mainly on technical debt, transformation, and innovation strategies, and still need to have time for business as usual. The three R’s are critical: Resiliency, Reliability, and Recoverability.

While CISOs focus on security it’s about those three R’s as well.

However, leaders need to apply those same three Rs to themselves, before the business. If in a leadership role, you don’t have resiliency, for example, you can’t do your job.

Payton sees the opportunity to reimagine CIO and CISO roles and transformative thinking. Companies need to think about Co-CISO roles or shift CISO roles. Today, every company, regardless of what they do for their revenue model, must be a technology and security company and operate as such.

How To Get Board Buy-In

The concept of fear, uncertainty, and doubt or just stating that the technology is needed just does not work. There must be a focus on what business problem your company solves, how customers interact with the technology/company, and leverage the user stories into the discussion during your ask. Leaders will have an easier time selling the business case when the user stories are woven in.

While it’s hard to show ROI, the discussion can be flipped. If you are doing an incident response playbook, show what an incident would happen and what the expenses would look like to the org. However, if more staff or tech were implemented the expense should an incident occur, would be reduced.

Women In STEM and DEI

Diversity and inclusion go beyond the employees and need to include companies you are working with and consultants you are contracting. It can be disheartening to look at leadership on websites and rarely see DEI representation. And it’s not strictly about how they look but also their backgrounds including those who may not have gone to college. Companies need a rich tapestry of all walks of life. Payton also encourages women to find both male and female mentors, and never give up. “Keep searching and keep networking, keep reaching out, you will eventually find your calling and passion in the right place for you where you can thrive.”

What is Fortalice?

They wrapped up the session by discussing Payton’s company and how she chose the name.

The story started with her sitting with her husband trying to decide on the name. She knew she wanted a real word, not her name. She knew that for her company, she wanted to look many years out on the horizon and think about what was coming and be an advisor to execs and CISOs. The goal would be if something is coming, there’s the ability to protect and defend.

Her husband said that in medieval times, that was called a Fortalice. And with that Fortalice Solutions was cemented.

She ended by noting that for a company, it’s important to have the North star – core enduring principles.