Voices of Leadership: Redefining Success and Driving Change
What does it mean to lead?
This season on Voices of Leadership, we’re stepping into the stories of women who are redefining success and thriving on the edge of change. From trailblazing pioneers to resilient entrepreneurs and unwavering visionaries—meet the iconoclasts who refuse to be bound by convention.
Join us for candid conversations that will ignite your curiosity, provide inspiration for what comes next and remind us all that leadership isn’t just about titles—it’s about making a lasting impact.
Voices of Leadership: Redefining Success and Driving Change
Code Like a Girl: Dinah Davis on Redefining Retirement, Math, Mentorship and Women in STEM
Dinah Davis is no stranger to firsts. She’s built her career—and her life—on a series of them. As a mathematician and cryptographer, she stood out as one of the few women in a field dominated by men.
She was the first to code Bluetooth technology. She holds a variety of patents, which means she was the first to create something and she’s even experienced her first retirement.
Highlights from this episode:
- Dinah discusses her early experiences in a male-heavy tech environment
- Dinah reflects on the fleeting years we have with our teenagers before they head off into the world. She’ll take the garbage time—the car rides, the mundane errands—because those moments often hold the most meaning.
- Insights into the patent process
- Reflections on burnout and the concept of “first retirement”
- Code Like a Girl’s evolution and its impact on women in STEM
- The role of AI in cybersecurity and its ethical implications
- Emphasizing the importance of mentorship and women supporting each other
Resources
Code Like A Girl Website
Code Like A Girl Instagram
Dinah’s Instagram
Dinah on LinkedIn
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But I also thought like what's more powerful than my voice, but like hundreds of voices. And you know, over the last eight years we now have had over 900 women published stories with us and we have almost 50,000 followers. That's really cool and like. So my whole point, my whole kind of reason for doing this was one, to change perceptions of women in technology. Two, to kind of be a place and a resource for parents and teachers of how to keep girls in STEM. And then three, like how can men be allies? Can men be?
Amy:allies. Firsts. What does it mean to be first? Sometimes it's crossing the finish line, claiming the gold medal and basking in the glory of victory. Other times it's an act of courage, a trailblazer, smashing barriers and paving the way for others to follow. And occasionally it's a choice others to follow, and occasionally it's a choice. Welcome to Voices of Leadership, my podcast that tells the stories of women who are redefining success and thriving on the edge of change.
Amy:Dinah Davis is no stranger to firsts. She's built her career and her life on a series of them. As a mathematician and cryptographer, she stood out as one of the few women in a field dominated by men. She was one of the few women in a field dominated by men. She was one of the first to code Bluetooth technology. She holds a variety of patents, which means she was the first to create something, and she's even experienced her first retirement. Dinah is an accomplished technology leader and founder of Code Like a Girl, a platform for women in technology that has evolved into a supportive community where women can find mentorship, resources and support, because being first is never easy, but it's a little less lonely when others are walking beside you. One of her first jobs was at BlackBerry, a company that revolutionized mobile communications with its QWERTY keyboard and first iteration of the modern day smartphone. If you haven't heard of them, look it up, because you wouldn't be able to text or snap someone today without its pioneering technology. Hi Dinah, welcome to our very first in-studio video podcast episode.
Dinah:Thank you. I think this might be the first time I do a podcast like in person in studio, so I'm excited. I think it's gonna be way more fun this way Me too, and the chairs are so comfortable, which is fantastic.
Amy:I have to say, I don't normally do this. I usually record online, not just because most of our guests don't live locally, but also as an independent podcaster. It's more cost effective to get video clips in order to promote our episodes. So, but today's different and I'm so excited. I'm so excited about this opportunity, um, because we get to sit here and have a chance, as an independent podcaster, to record, sort of like the big kids do, and I'm thrilled that Bespoke Productions and the Voice of Leadership podcast have partnered with Onward Media to sort of make video and in-studio podcasting accessible to creators like me. So it's really exciting and I thank you very much for being our first guest in this new format. No problem, I assume that being first is something you're quite familiar with. Yes, yes, so as a mathematician who has experience in the tech, cryptology and startup, space, cryptography, cryptography. Thank you, space. Can you tell us about some of your firsts?
Dinah:Yeah, I think like my, one of my most notable firsts was way back in university. So I went to the University of Lethbridge in Alberta and an interesting thing about that is when I went the ratio of men to women was like one to six, so there was like six women for every guy at the university. Mostly it was a school where you went to to become a teacher, which is what I did, but it turned out I liked math better than other people's children, so I didn't become a math teacher. But in my first kind of senior level computer science course I walked into the room and so remember, seven to one women to guys I walked into this computer science class. There's about 60 people in the class and two of us were women, two so like this was like not something I was used to, just because of how you know.
Dinah:It was like, but I said to myself okay, like by the end of this first class I'm going to make a friend because I like to do my assignments with other people. So I remember turning around at the end of the class and looking at these guys that were sitting behind me and I was just like hi, I'm Dinah. And they were like oh my God, oh my God. The girl's talking to us and I still know some of those people today. One of them actually works in the region here, which is kind of crazy, since we went to school in Alberta. But yeah, that was my first first first of being a woman in tech, I guess, guess.
Amy:There's a lot. There's a lot of progress. I hope that is made, but I know we still have a long way to go, not only in tech, but in many other industries as well. So this might be a small detail to you, but I'm kind of dying to ask you, because you have a long list of accomplishments and I find it fascinating that you hold several patents. Can you explain to us why we need patents and how the process of applying for one and receiving a patent works?
Dinah:Okay, well, I'm going to talk about my experience with patents at BlackBerry, yes, which I think is probably a vastly different experience than anyone else doing patents. I didn't know that experience than anyone else doing patents. I didn't know that. So in the early 2000s, when I was working at BlackBerry, they were a patent machine, so their goal was to create as many patents as possible around their technology, to protect it basically, and so anything we thought was even remotely novel we would apply for a patent, and it really was a factory. Now, you did have to have something novel, it did have to be patentable, but there was an army of lawyers that worked with the technologists, like with the software developers, to just usher that process through. So if anybody has like done a patent, like independently, it's a lot of work, like you have to write it. You have the idea, you have to write it up, or you have to pay lawyers a lot of money. At Blackberry you had an idea and then it had various stages.
Dinah:So you would write it up, but then the lawyers would work with you and you would have a 30-minute conversation and then they would submit it, but it would take years so like oh, years for anything to happen, like in the order of five to ten years for a patent to go all the way through and be issued, and they had all kinds of incentives. The inventor's banquet was the glory of all glories.
Dinah:So if you had a patent be accepted you got to go to it and it was like definitely the fanciest thing. But it was really fun and it was really cool. And the way I got on to the first patent was I actually found a cryptographic flaw, oh, in the algorithm. So I was really proud of that one. That one wasn't like. There was so many patents that were like email on a mobile device, um yeah, and I those kind of became came before my time so so it was a little harder when I got there.
Amy:Had to be more nuanced a little bit.
Dinah:It had to be more nuanced. But like, yeah, I was working on the most prolific patenting team at BlackBerry, which was CryptoDev. We did everything security for BlackBerry, except for the very low level OS stuff. So, like my blackberry, yeah, okay. So so in in, you know, for some context here, I have like 20 patents in my career. Um, my co-workers have like 150 or 200. This is what I'm saying. Like I did get there. I got there after the on a mobile device, right?
Dinah:Where you could patent everything every day, where you could patent everything because no one had patented it on a mobile device. Yes, so yeah, mine were a little harder. That way, is it yours forever, though? Well, I mean, patents hold for 20 years. That's pretty cool, and then anyone can use them. So, like, sadly, are we getting to?
Amy:that point? Yeah, we are. We don't want to date ourselves, but we're getting to that point.
Dinah:No, we really would be, because I started working for BlackBerry in 2004. And that very first patent was something I worked on within my first six months. So, yeah, it's probably starting to be open to the public to use now.
Amy:Well, we'll have to look that up. I'm sure I can find that somewhere.
Dinah:It's possible. It's possible Okay.
Amy:I hope you enjoyed our discussion about the intricacies of the patent process as much as I did. There's something endlessly fascinating about the creativity it takes to be awarded one. I have to admit I have a mild obsession with patents. They're like little trophies for the imagination. Next, our conversation takes an entirely different turn, one that touches on something many of us wrestle with the evolution of a career and the meaning of retirement.
Amy:I love the term Dinah uses her first retirement. It's such a perfect reflection of the times we live in. Gone are the days of one job, one company, one career trajectory for life. Dinah's story is one of ambition and endurance, starting as a co-op student to her time at BlackBerry and playing a pivotal role in the success of Arctic Wolf. 20 years of a relentless pace without a break. So how do you know when it's time to stop or at least pause? Dana shares the signs she couldn't ignore and what led her to embrace her first retirement. So I guess I didn't mention this, but this is our first time meeting in person. I feel like I know you because you spoke at a tech talk here at the Catalyst Commons and I was inspired by your story and I was also fascinated by your take on the concept of first retirement. Can you share with us a little bit about what that term means to you and what your transition into this first retirement has been like?
Dinah:So I spent 20 years working in tech. I did co-op before I started my first job in 2004 at BlackBerry um in 2004 at blackberry and I worked in high like very intense technology like blackberry was a amazing place to work but extremely stressful. But I got to ride that amazing, like hockey stick curve that blackberry did right, starting in 2004. I was there before there was a million BlackBerry users and I left in 2011 and things were starting on internally not looking good, but to the outside world but at that point there's probably 300, 400 million people using BlackBerry, so it's pretty cool and I never took a break my whole career longer than three weeks, and I'm telling you, maternity leave does not count. No, it's not a break. Who says that's a break?
Amy:my whole career longer than three weeks and I'm telling you, maternity leave does not count as a break. Who says that's a break?
Dinah:I did take that one maternity leave, but that does not count, and in 2015, I started working for Arctic Wolf and it was, at the time, a 35-person company and I ran all of their R&D team was only 15 people, but over the next five years, I rode that hockey stick and that's that's the ride I was looking for. Again, I didn't get to be part of any of the stocks with BlackBerry. I showed up too late for that and we built this amazing development team.
Dinah:We built an amazing product and within five years, we'd unicorned, which, for listeners who maybe don't know what that means is you're a privately held company that's worth over a billion dollars within the first 10 years of creation of the company, and so we hit that mark after the company was created for seven years. So I was there after the first three years, um, and then I held um various a few different roles after that and and chose to leave in 2023 january, 2023 it so fairly recent. Yes, this January will be two years. Yeah, it'll be two years, and you know, fortunately, I was able to sell some of my stock on the secondary market, enabling me to retire from that corporate life.
Dinah:And because in those, you know, basically 19, 20 years of working, I'd never taken more than three weeks off, I was unbelievably burnt out. Yes, I can imagine Just so. So burnt out and so done with corporate politics and all of that stuff. So it took me about a year, a year, to recover from that burnout, basically, and then in this last year, I've really been able to work on my core passion, which is my publication called Code Like a Girl, and I actually started that back in 2016. Called Code Like a Girl, and I actually started that back in 2016.
Amy:So we've been going for wow, yeah, like, almost, like I can't math right now.
Dinah:Like eight years, eight years so you were doing that simultaneously?
Amy:Wow, I was doing that, yes.
Dinah:I was doing that simultaneously. I did hand it off to somebody when I became a vp at arctic wolf. For about two years I had somebody else running it, uh, and now it's just back to all me. So, yeah, so I'm fortunate enough to, you know, be able to choose what I want to work on right now and, um, so I do that and I mentor people. I I'm part of many mentoring programs to help mentor Canadian cybersecurity startups and all kinds of women and all kinds of stuff like that. So, yeah, it's maybe first retirement or second act, second act or something like that, yeah yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly, exactly.
Amy:But I want to talk about Code, like a Girl, and all the other things you're doing. But when you stopped, what was that first couple of months like, even if you're burnt out, was it strange to not be so busy?
Dinah:Really strange.
Dinah:I made myself take a month off and then I thought it was good and so I started doing a whole bunch of other stuff, like working with some companies and, um, like, I just picked up a lot of that kind of advisory work and about three, four months after that I just realized how I wasn't enjoying any of it Interesting and I really had to take a hard look at myself and I realized that I was still really burnt out and I needed to do only the things that were going to matter to me. And then last year, at the beginning of September, I decided that was going to be the year of me being healthy, decided that was going to be like the year of me being healthy. Uh, so like caveat, uh, in my thirties, along with my career, I discovered I had an eating disorder and so I I went through very like intense recovery on that and you know I I've, I am recovered from that. So when I say focus on health, I do not mean go to the gym and run five miles, or try to lose weight.
Dinah:Like that's ridiculous. Uh, I really wanted to focus holistically on myself and I didn't like that Like trying to like go on a hike with my husband. I was out of breath and that was crazy to me because I'd been doing CrossFit for uh, seven years.
Amy:Wow, that's a whole nother good for you seven, eight years that's impressive but it wasn't not a lot of cardio in crossfit though like it.
Dinah:Yeah, it's good for strength training which you know turns out you really really need, especially in these perimenopausal years yeah, no, this is perimenopause, yes, um. So I decided I had just gotten back into swimming, which is something I did as a as a teenager, and I started Pilates and I really just focused on like only doing the things that I really loved so called like a girl and some of the mentoring and prioritizing my time more on that physical and emotional well-being.
Dinah:Yeah, yeah, yeah. So in the last year I've done two open water swim competitions one in Barbados last year and one in Curacao this October.
Amy:Before you hear the rest of our conversation, there's something that needs to be highlighted. Alongside her quote-unquote day job, her demanding, trailblazing career, dinah has spent over a decade building something extraordinary Code Like a Girl. It started as a personal project to challenge the stereotypes women face in STEM, but, like all great ideas, it grew Today. Code Like a Girl is a thriving community that showcases career opportunities available in technology to girls with mathematical aptitude and is a place where women can access resources, support and mentorship to excel in their careers. Dinah shares what motivated her to launch this initiative, how it evolved and why she's excited about its current direction. So you mentioned Code Like a Girl, which is something I noticed right away, because if you Google you, that's one of the things that come up and I thought it was such a great initiative and I was curious how you started it.
Amy:I mean, you talked a little bit about doing it simultaneously, which I find fascinating, but what was your motivation, I guess?
Dinah:Was it your?
Amy:experiences, or was it more sort of also giving back to the next generation, I guess?
Dinah:No, it was like, deeply rooted in my experience. So, like I said, I was at BlackBerry for the first eight years of my career and while I was there, I was like, yeah, I'm a woman, but I'm going to pretend I'm not a woman, Like I just didn't want that to be an issue. And in the early 2000s, right like there, there was maybe 10% of us in the workforce as software developers, so I wasn't going to be like the feminist and bring things up because I didn't want it to impact my career. And on top of that, I ended up having an amazing team up having an amazing team Like my, the, the guys that I worked with, my bosses, like um in that you know, direct team. I never once felt, uh, discriminated against, possibly in the larger BlackBerry, Like there was still some issues there, but um, never in that team.
Dinah:And when I left BlackBerry in 2011, just because I could really see the writing on the wall that it was over and I felt like for my career, I needed to leave for it to flourish, and I got headhunted out, hunted out, and it was the first time I left. I mean, Blackberry was my first real job outside of co-op, so I didn't really consider that it would be different someplace else, that I wouldn't be supported someplace else. And it turned out that the person I was working for was horrible really. He was a bully, he was a misogynist and probably within about 10 months my self esteem was in self-confidence uh was kind of was fairly destroyed. I'm so sorry. Yeah, it wasn't, it wasn't fun.
Amy:No, and it's sad that this isn't the first time I've heard this podcast.
Dinah:So at the time, my daughter was about five years and you know, I realized a few things. One, I couldn't stay in that environment. And two, if a company wanted me to work for them, they were going to have to be OK with me talking about what it was really like to be a woman in tech, and so that's when I found a new role. The company the next company I went to was much more supportive and I started blogging online and a lot of it in the early days was focused actually on, you know, how to get girls in STEM, because, like, and how to keep them in STEM, because my daughter was five, right, and so I knew that.
Dinah:I had like probably how to keep them in stem, because my daughter was five, right, and so I knew that I had like probably five to six years to really get her to love stem and try and hold her loving it through those teen years through high school.
Dinah:It's hard, it's very hard, but just so you know, success. Good for you, success. She's currently in grade 11. Congratulations, taking all four sciences, fantastic Plus math. So success, success on that side of it. And then, I think around 2015, I started writing a little bit more about what it was like to be a woman in tech in my journey.
Amy:And then I was like, and I was doing all of this writing on medium, the platform, medium you don't know much about that.
Dinah:I found it interesting. I had never heard of that before. Yeah, yeah, so if you don't know, it's kind of like a long form. I used to say a long form twitter, but twitter is just so horrible now is it like a precursor to substack in some ways?
Dinah:Yes, Okay, yeah, totally, it's a lot like that. So, anyway, you would get more views or more people could see your stuff if it was as part of a publication on their platform. Okay, but there was like no, there's only one or two women in tech publications on the platform and, um, they had, they didn't want my stuff. So then I was like sad, yeah, this in typical diana fashion. I then go well, how hard is it to create a publication? I love that. I'm like that too.
Amy:How hard can it be to make a podcast right, exactly how?
Dinah:I've thought that, I thought that, but then I've decided not to do that. Yeah, you could just be podcast guest. Maybe maybe because I still own this publication, but anyway, yeah, a couple of clicks, a couple of clicks, that's all it took, um, and now I've owned this thing for, yeah, like eight years. But I also thought, like what's more powerful than my voice, but like hundreds of voices, and you know, over over the last eight years, we now have had over 900 women published stories with us. Um, in the last year and a half we probably have close to 150 active women publishing with us and we have almost 50,000 followers of the publication now, and on a monthly basis we're getting hundreds of thousands of views, and so that's really cool.
Dinah:And so my whole point, my whole kind of reason for doing this, was one to change perceptions of women in technology, to to kind of be a place and a resource for parents and teachers of how to keep girls in stem. And then three, like how, uh, can men be allies? Um, and in the early days, um, almost all the stories were about being a woman in tech, and today that's completely changed. I'm so happy. It's so different. Very few stories are about being a woman in tech. Maybe 5% of them, and the rest are either technical articles or articles about leadership of career growth, that kind of thing, which is just amazing, like I just I love, love, love seeing that. Um, so yeah, so I, that's what, that is what I do now. I, I review, I read and review. Uh, probably we're publishing about 60 to 70 articles a month.
Amy:Wow, that's incredible. Well, congratulations. It sounds like you have shifted the narrative then over the years, if the content has changed.
Dinah:Yes, well, I feel like I mean, there's a lot of factors that that you know go into that and I think you know the the women in tech movement also got a lot of push when the Me Too movement happened and, like a lot of diversity stuff started really coming out. But what's really concerning to me right now is to see some of that diversity stuff get clawed back, like Walmart just recently announced that they're like ending most of their diversity initiatives, which is crazy.
Amy:It's not a good sign when a big company does it.
Dinah:No, I did read that too, and I mean, the more I see it, the more I feel like a lot of stuff is diversity theater. Yes, um, and so there's all these like great diversity. If you can't you can't tag lines reader, you cannot see me quoting myself but like quote, putting in quotes. But like diversity programs that are meant to help the company look good and and I think many people in the company think they are doing good. But all you have to do is look at the C level. Yes, okay, what does the C level? What is the C level compromised of? If it's all white men, then obviously their diversity programs are pretty much all diversity theater because they don't actually believe it in the core of the leadership. And if they don't believe it in the core of the leadership, then you know, it's just, it is not actually there.
Amy:No, and if it's only for a lower entry level, let's say, then it's not really a diversity of equity program at all.
Dinah:No, no, yeah, yeah.
Amy:Because then there's the whole power struggle that comes into play. Program at all?
Dinah:No no, yeah, yeah, cause.
Amy:Then there's the whole power struggle that comes into play, right, yes, so um, I want that. You mentioned teachers and parents. Is that sort of your target then, with code like a girl, is education or?
Dinah:no, and I would say that part's probably way more faded off. Oh, okay, yeah. So I would say the biggest thing now is just like providing a place for women to write about what they do and helping amplify their voices to do that. That's just more where the article submissions have been coming from lately, and I think that's great. More the more women are actually publishing technical stories like how they solved this problem, how they coded it up, um the better, because then the next generation is going to come looking for these same kind of stories to learn from and they're going to have these role models right to see it. So, um, there's still a few stories here and there about, um, kids in tech and maybe also cause my child's more grown up, it's a little less of a focus for me, right For sure.
Amy:Yeah, and so then what's next for code? Like a girl.
Dinah:You know what I? I've actually the whole time I've done it. I have not really purposefully gone and said what's next. It's more like really purposefully gone and said what's next. It's more like what are? You know? What I'm going to keep doing is really trying to support my authors the best way I can, helping them, and we spend a lot of time on articles, polishing the article, oh so you help with the editing and sort of final yeah like really doing a lot of polishing on the story and making it impactful and working on really like normal things like the title of the story, and how is that going to grab people's attention?
Dinah:enough Is the, you know the formatting. Is it all right? And because part of it too is like these women want to be heard and so if it, if the writing quality isn't great, then it's not going to be read by as many people. Their voice isn't going to get amplified in the same way. So, um, I, I spend, well, yeah, kind of a ridiculous amount of time.
Amy:You're now an editor, which you didn't think you'd ever be right.
Dinah:Just so you have no idea. You have no idea. And when I was in elementary school I needed, like when I think I was in grade like grade eight or grade nine, I had to go like for remedial tutoring for my English and grammar and like. So if you'd asked, like you know that 14 year old Dinah, you're going to run a publication and you're going to help people write better, I would have been like you are nuts, like why would I do that? I can't spell and I don't do grammar. I still can't spell. Okay, this is so totally true. And Grammarly is a is a great thing, best friend.
Amy:Yes, I don't spell that well either.
Dinah:Grammarly is my best friend. Yes, but I do know. Now you know, after editing that many stories and then seeing which ones do well and which ones don't, I do have a good sense of what makes a good story, yes, and how to present that story as a good story.
Amy:Right, and we'll let Grammarly help with the spelling.
Amy:It's not about commas. It's sometimes about how you tell the story. It's the same thing with the audio. How do you tell the story? Yes, absolutely For sure.
Amy:So what does life look like for Dinah now, a couple of years into her first retirement? So what does life look like for Dinah now, a couple of years into her first retirement? The answer might surprise you. It involves a lot of driving and a profound awareness of the ticking clock that is parenthood. Dinah reflects on the fleeting years we have with our teenagers before they head off into the world. She's learned to redefine what quality time means with her teen. She'll take the garbage time any day, the car rides and the mundane errands, because those moments she's discovered often hold the most meaning. But just when you think you've got Dinah figured out, she casually drops this into the conversation. She was one of the first people to work on the code for Bluetooth for the Canadian government. Bluetooth, that small, unassuming technology that connects our devices, often without our permission. Not surprisingly, she discovered that, as groundbreaking as it was, bluetooth wasn't entirely secure. So you mentioned Code Like a Girl, and your mentorship. What else are you spending your time on these days? Not just in work, but what else?
Dinah:Yeah, so one of the big things I wanted to be able to do when I quit my corporate world working two years ago was spend time with my daughter, because when I quit she was in halfway through grade nine and I knew I only had I only had three and a half more years of her being around, um, and so I I do spend a silly amount of time driving her around. If you don't have a teenager yet, uh, and if you do, you'll know this. But like, driving them around is sometimes when you get the best conversations, so that really like that downtime, that's not special moments or whatever. My husband was telling me I can't remember who who said this quote, but like forget, um, forget, like special moments. Give me all the garbage time. Yeah, forget about quality time, give me the garbage time so that time like from you know, picking up from swim practice to go to home and you get five minutes and all of a sudden they're just like tell you everything. I totally agree.
Amy:Yeah, I have a 19-year-old and we always said those drives he played very high. He still plays high-level hockey, so the drives were longer and more important conversations happened in the car than elsewhere. And now I'm at the grade 9 level. I have a set of twins who are in grade 9.
Dinah:Yes, okay.
Amy:So we almost appreciate it more because we know that once they get their license, that's, I think, what we miss the most. It was nice that he could drive to the 10 o'clock practice, but we miss the time in the car.
Dinah:I know we're on that bubble she has her learners.
Amy:That's a tough time too. That's a whole different tough time At the same time Because you can't talk in the car. When they're driving, there's no talking because they have to drive.
Dinah:But at the same, I'm not really going to be that upset when she can drive herself to 5 am practices three timesa week. That part I'll be okay with, I agree.
Amy:I mean, I'm fortunate enough to be flexible too, and choosing to spend the time driving them around has been some of the best choices we've made, because you do build a very strong relationship.
Dinah:Yeah, and that was stuff that was actually really hard for me to do when I was working. Yes, um, cause I had a really big corporate, I'm sure.
Amy:Cause I had a really big job.
Dinah:I was you know, I was a VP of a crazily growing startup and um, so there was a lot of sacrifices that, uh, that I made and I I I don't think I made too many sacrifices. You know, I always made it to the important things and I was fortunate enough that. You know, the company I worked for was like they were OK with that Right, like making sure, but you know, my parents did way more driving for us and you know there was some things that I missed and I just feel like these four years are gift. We're halfway through and they've definitely been a gift. It's like I don't really know what I'll fully do with myself when she goes to university, but I feel like I'm just I'm not going to go there.
Amy:No, you gotta leave it.
Dinah:You just gotta leave it. I'm going to leave that for later, and then I'll have to deal with my emptiness.
Amy:That's right. Oh yeah, it's a whole different transition. But you know, you've practiced one, let's not do another one right away. No, I don't think that's a good idea. So what do you think the future holds for cryptography, in sort of an emerging technology or a trend that you find particularly that you're excited about?
Dinah:Um, okay, so well, maybe a bit of background there. So my master's degree was in cryptography, which is you know if you don't know.
Amy:Mine's in history. It's the same thing right.
Dinah:So it's basically the study of algorithms that will allow you to secure, protect or sign things, basically. And so cryptography is a lot of the mathematics behind how things are encrypted today, or even as simple as Bluetooth has cryptography inside of it. As simple as Bluetooth has cryptography inside of it. And the reason I bring up Bluetooth is that back in, I think it was 2000. Nope, nope, nope. Even back further back late nineties.
Dinah:The late nineties when I did my very first co-op term, I did it for the Canadian government, the CSE, which is kind of like the NSA for Canada, and what I was tasked with was building the Bluetooth algorithm from white paper using C++. So I was to write this algorithm up for their cryptographers so that they could evaluate it as one of the candidates for the next version of AES. And AES is just a cryptographic standard that people will use all the time, and NIST, or the US government as part of NIST, decides which baseline algorithm that AES is. And so Bluetooth was evaluated as part of that and I coded it up, and no one had heard of Bluetooth before that.
Dinah:And now it's like everybody in the world has heard of Bluetooth and I was one of the first people to like actually write it up as a cryptography. Like that's actually kind of crazy. I was probably one of the first people hundreds of people that actually coded it in a, in a, in like a computer language. That's so fascinating. That's unbelievable. It's really unsecure.
Amy:So just so you know I can figure that out. Yes, my phone connects to Bluetooth without me asking.
Dinah:So I'm thinking it's not very secure.
Dinah:Yeah, so it's not, it's not secure as a secure as a cryptographic algorithm for exchanging, you know, secure communication, but it turns out it had this other crazy purpose. So when things come down to it, then you never really know. You know what is going to happen in the future of things. And the next big step in and I don't keep that up to date in the crypto world anymore because I morphed into this tech career, which turned out to be a bit more about cybersecurity and software development and cryptography is just like a very slim piece of the cybersecurity whole pile of things so tell me what's next in cyber security.
Amy:Then that what you think, if you'd like oh well, I mean, there's so many things.
Dinah:So, or, what are you excited about? I mean ai, is that next? I mean it's so gross that I just said ai because it's like the hype word right now, but it is real. It is real because we're all actually starting to use it in a real way, like people have talked about ai for a long, long time.
Dinah:Um, and some some of the interesting things I'm seeing from a cyber security perspective is like, how are we going to manage ai? Right, how are we making sure that, um, people aren't just, you know, like the constraints of AI, with all the hallucinations and stuff like that? So there's some, there's some companies that I've been working with that are working on, you know, how do you evaluate an AI model to see if it's actually, you know, got inherent biases in it. Right, because the, the models are only as good as the data that also goes into it, and the data is often quite biased. So there's some cool companies out there that are working on how you evaluate an AI model as to how well it performs from a bias perspective, a could somebody attack it perspective, a PII perspective. So, personal, identifiable information this is a huge problem, right? You don't want your doctor just putting your stuff into chat GPT to help it diagnose your issue and now you don't know who all has access to your own personal information.
Dinah:So there's some there's some really cool companies out there that are that are looking at that. So I think I think, as cliche as saying AI is, it's not just saying, oh, ai is going to solve everything. It's like, how are we going to put the guardrails on AI to, you know, get the use of it out, because that, you know, that cat is out of the bag. Like, ai is never going back in the bag. That is out of the bag. And you know, there have been, you know, very significant shifts in technology over the last 30 years, and I think AI is one of them. So, like, like, for a couple examples of other major shifts that happened well, apple introducing ui, right.
Dinah:So back in the like, early, like late 70s, early 80s I can't remember because I don't have notes in front of me um, you know, they introduced this concept of, like, a user interface and before that, everyone was just command line typing in. Well, that changed our world, right. Like, it changed everything and it didn't all change at once. But, like, without that innovation back then, like, the way we even play with our phones is a totally different, different thing.
Dinah:A lot of people will give credit to to Apple for smartphones, of credit to to um, apple for smartphones. But we all know we're here from waterloo that blackberry really invented that, yes, and I will give to iphone that they and apple that they perfected the you know, the keyboardless screen, like that really and and the app store. But so mobile phones changed everything as well, like how accessible we are, how we're connected, um, in ways that we could just never have imagined before. Right, and ai is going to do the same thing. So you know things that just you know we wouldn't even have thought are possible in 20 years. We're going to be like how did they not think of?
Dinah:that sooner, yeah, like like if you, just if you watch tv, if you watch shows or something that are based in the 90s, and you realize they have no way to contact that person, like there's no cell phone, what are they like? What is happening? You know, and I grew up that way, so I should know that right, like it seems.
Amy:So long ago, but it's so crazy that we did that. I miss the keyboard, by the way. I think a lot of us do yeah.
Dinah:Yeah, I mean, it is what it is. We evolve, but I do think that, you know, AI is one of those cats that are out of the bag, like the UI, like the smartphone, that are going to fundamentally change how we interact with each other, how we interact with the world, how we do our jobs, um, in ways that we don't see yet, and so, because of that, we do have to be careful. Like, how do we, how do we put guardrails on that? How do we? You know, uh, oh yeah, this is really interesting.
Dinah:Another podcast that I love, it's called the AI fix. Anyway, they were the one of the one of the hosts, um, from that did a really interesting thought experiment on. You know, uh had decision-making, AI decision-making and, um, the trolley car experiments. Have you ever like heard of like this? It's a psychological problem that people like to think. So you're in a trolley and you're going down a hill and you can, you can. The brakes are broken and there is, you know, five people. If you stay on the track right where you are, there's five people that are going to die, or you can flip a lever and you can hit one person and the one person will die. It's a horrible experiment.
Amy:It's a horrible experiment.
Dinah:It's a thought experiment, okay, so, like, as humans, we go okay, well, we have to flip this switch right Because, right, okay, now what if that one person's your spouse? Right, right, okay. So he just did this whole thing where he talked to AI with this experiment.
Amy:Ok, so and he put.
Dinah:he put this, these theories in and like, of course, on the first one the AI was like, well, yes, we must, we must divert and go hit the one person because that's less bad. But then it was like. Then he was like, well, what if it was five lobsters or one lobster? Like. Then he was like, well, what if it was five lobsters or one lobster, which I know this sounds ridiculous. But when it asked the AI, the AI said, well, I actually don't know the value of a lobster life. Wow, so I'm, because there's no inherent value, I will react by doing nothing. Oh, I will react by doing nothing. Oh. And so the ai would choose to kill five lobsters instead of one lobster, which, okay, that's fine. But that, right there, that was a really interesting thought experiment for me, because think about, like ai is helping us drive cars, right, what else doesn't it value? What else doesn't it value? Or it doesn't't it value, or it doesn't know the value of Right, and then it chooses inaction, right.
Amy:Wow, what an interesting experiment yeah.
Dinah:Yeah, so it was really. It was last week's AI fix. I think it's called by Graham Cluley. Anyway, I'll look it up. We'll put it in the show notes for sure yeah, yeah yeah, I can send you a link to it for the show notes, but yeah, so I think that's where you know. There's some further thought on how how we use AI, how we put guardrails on it, where we use it, and obviously, government legislation is going to be way behind, just like everything else.
Amy:But yeah, Well, thank you for that. I love those stories, even though they were slightly disturbing.
Dinah:But you know I'm sorry, no, no, I love it. Yeah, well, thank you for that. I love those stories, even though they were slightly disturbing, but you know I'm sorry.
Amy:No, no, I love it. It's actually a great way to look at AI. We don't think of it as not being able to answer a question, so it's a very good example of that. And you know, if you're just a regular lay person not involved in the space, using it, not recognizing that it can actually not answer the question, it's good for us to know that.
Dinah:Right, yeah, yeah, especially when it's put in charge of things that you know can greatly impact, you know, our humanity itself. Yeah.
Amy:Well, thank you so much for being here and thank you for being our very first guest. I enjoyed being in the studio. It's quite a lot of fun. I do prefer interviewing face to face, so when the option's available, I'm excited that we now have that option.
Dinah:So yes, welcome back to the post-COVID world.
Amy:That's right.
Dinah:Exactly so where we can do things in person again.
Amy:Yay, and I look forward to watching your many retirements throughout your life. I'm sure you're going to do fascinating things in the future.
Dinah:Thank you, thanks so much for having me.
Amy:Thank you. Voices of Leadership is part of the Bespoke Productions Hub network of independent podcasters. If you are interested in partnering with us as a sponsor or if you have a podcast of your own, please visit bespokeproductionshubcom for more information. No-transcript.
