Today I finally pulled the trigger and created a website and got a domain! I am still figuring out how all of this works, but I plan to document my journey into Cybersecurity and create a portfolio on this site. This is a pretty big step and I have been mulling it over for a while. I am a little surprised that I finally was able to pull the trigger (without getting completely raked over the coals for setup costs, thanks NetworkChuck for the coupon code so I could start my first year with a domain that I can play with)!

About Me

Hi, my name is Megan Yakel, but you can call me Meg. I am married with a wonderful daughter and two rescue dogs. I was raised in front of a computer before being raised in front of a computer was cool. When have been building computers since I was a kid, reformatting operating systems, manually fixing viruses,

I graduated from Johnston Senior High School in Johnston, IA, USA way back in 2004. When I graduated I wanted to go into video production, but there were no really good programs near me so I decided to enroll in DMACC. I ended up dropping out because I had no direction that I really wanted to go and it didn’t keep my interest. Then I worked at a movie theater, pizza place, became a certified watch maker, worked dozens of temporary jobs in offices and eventually got enough office experience to mix with my customer service skills to work in Customer Service Call Centers. It was soul crushing work and I was not very interested in it, but it paid the bills. I worked for about 10 years just paying the bills trying to jump from a call center into more of an administrative or analyst role within my career. I was great at what I did and when the companies I worked for brought in new people, I would always be the one to train them as one of my innate passions is to teach others what I know. Eventually I developed self-confidence issues feeling like I was always a bride’s maid and never the bride in my career. I would apply for my own position full time but never was able to branch out of the role of a contractor. When I was at the lowest of my lows on New Year’s Eve 2016 I quit my job working as a dispatcher for a forklift company (I was terrible since I had no training and didn’t know what I was doing anyway). I had no plan other than I refused to work for a temp agency again that didn’t have a set in stone end date.

Starting off in 2017 I had an excellent start where I had gotten two seasonal part-time positions that I could start right away! That was great, it gave me three months to search for my next position while I was bringing in enough money to pay the bills. I went to job fairs during my time off which connected me to another temp agency who kept swearing the position they were staffing for was full time and a direct hire position in a call center… soul crushing work again… no thanks! But this agency was persistent and kept telling me it was different than other call center jobs because it was a “Customer Experience Advocate” position not a “Customer Service Position”… ok switch two words whoohoo… By the time spring rolled around I still hadn’t found a full time position, I did find a lead on another part time job where I got played to play video games with kids (I kept that part time job for several years). Finally I decided to entertain the temp agency for the Customer Experience Advocate (CXA) position, at least it would be practice for interviews and they were offering more pay than the Administrative Assistant to a VP which wasn’t paying enough to cover my cost of living at the time.

The interview went extremely well for the CXA position, and I was extremely honest with them that I didn’t want to work in an entry level call center position and I expected to grow quickly due to all my years of customer service experience. I think they liked the ambition because they offered me the job although it met my minimum requirements to cover my cost of living. They swore to me that the starting pay would change as I completed different parts of my training (which it did). I accepted the position and that started in July of 2017. I continued working the video game job as many hours as I could find, but I couldn’t find another short term position so driving for Uber and Lift helped me survive the 2 months until the job began.

Within my first year I tried to apply for early post out of my position, but nothing really came along that I was qualified for so that didn’t pan out. My team leader was fantastic, and it turns out my partner team leader had put in a personal recommendation for me since he worked with me when I was a contractor at another call center and remembered me. I was so fortunate to be at a company where I felt like I actually belonged for a change. The culture was focused around the individuals and they handled themselves focusing on the quality of the calls over how many people you could talk to in a day. I was actually able to take my time and ensure first call resolution and that the people I was talking to were happy instead of just rushing through the call. But I still hated being in the call center.

Just before my first year ended there was a position on the IT Help Desk available that I wanted to apply for because of my life long passion for computers it would have been easy for me to jump in and learn the ropes. Unfortunately, my team leader accepted a different opportunity within the company and that put me under a new leader who was not comfortable letting me post out early because she was so new to her position. I accepted her opinion and was moved to a different team after completing training at the top of my class (which I had no interest being on that team). Because my interest on being in that division was low, I didn’t do the best. The new team leader didn’t like me because I had my phone out during orientation (which I had talked to the facilitator and told them I was waiting for a call about my car which had broken down the weekend before I started and they said it was ok to keep my phone out), she called me an “entitled millennial” which I really didn’t appreciate. She was freshly hired from outside the company and didn’t know the company culture. She was the type of personality that how she succeeds as a leader is to fire all the dead weight she could, so she eventually tried to fire me because of any technicality she could find (I don’t like micromanagers). Long story short HR didn’t let her fire me and after jumping though a few moving goalposts (and a maternity leave), she left the company. After having yet another new leader, I was able to show I had been meeting and exceeding expectations that were within my control and was finally allowed to post out from the call center.

I had seen an internal job posting for an Identity and Access Management Business Administrator that I was very interested in. It was an IT job where they were looking for someone who knew their way around a computer, could be taught, and had excellent customer service skills. That sounded even better than working in the IT Help Desk. I had requested the front end of access management before as an Administrative Assistant and I knew how to manipulate some of the security permissions on my own computer for when my friends/roommates used my computers in the past they couldn’t access my personal files. Well I sent over my resume the day I was allowed to post out and contacted the next day to set up an interview!

The interview went very well, it took longer than scheduled, we went over a lot of questions involving judgement and scenarios of what I would do in different scenarios. They loved that I would go through my own resources to find the answers to questions and how when I run into issues I will ask for help or question why the procedures are what they are. In January 2020 I started my first job in Cybersecurity and I didn’t even realize it.

I had started by learning the technical words of what I used to call “doo-hickey” and “what-cha-ma-call-its” for provisioning and access allocations. I jumped into a world with two feet that I didn’t realize I could ever do but I was finding it a challenge and very interesting! Finally a job that was keeping my interest and had room for growth! Then the pandemic hit and we were all sent home. Since we were essential for business operations we started working from home a few weeks before the final call came down for the rest of the organization. I started filling my time by searching and reading procedures for different policies. Everyone thought we were only going to be out for a few weeks so they put my training on hold. I was getting bored and I hated seeing a long backlog growing when I was barley doing anything with my day. I started assigning myself some new types of work, reading the procedures and policies, finding holes in the procedures, reaching out for help and taking notes on what was missing, then updating the procedures to follow the current policies, then completing the request. Eventually I started learning more and more, taking on more assignments, and fixing more procedures that hadn’t been touched for years.

I am very proud to say that now as part of our training model, when we train new IAM Admins we question old procedures and update them if needed with a fresh pair of eyes based on the training model that I started for myself.

I have been fortunate enough to participate in two AWS Sponsored Hackathon’s with my current employer and while I might have been lacking in technical skills, I was able to leverage my administrative and customer service skills to be able to translate technology speak into a way that the general side of business would understand.