In this episode, Dr. Rebecca Wynn welcomes Jason Elrod, Chief Information Security Officer for MultiCare Health System. Jason talks about his unique path into cybersecurity leadership and the habits he uses to protect his energy and avoid burnout. You will learn the 1440 Golden Rule.
Guest: Jason Elrod, CISO, MultiCare Health System
Website: https://www.multicare.org/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/thejasonelrod/
Website: https://www.limitlesscyber.com/
Host: Dr. Rebecca Wynn
On ITSPmagazine 👉 https://www.itspmagazine.com/itspmagazine-podcast-radio-hosts/rebecca-wynn
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Episode Description
In this episode of Soulful CXO, Dr. Rebecca Wynn speaks with Jason Elrod, Chief Information Security Officer for MultiCare Health System, a healthcare organization in the Pacific Northwest. Jason shares how his early programming experience and people-first mindset helped him rise to leadership without a traditional college degree. The conversation covers the leadership struggle of balancing ambition with energy and the habits that make long-term success possible. Jason discusses the importance of clear communication, setting boundaries, and taking time off to avoid burnout. They also discuss challenges with common hiring practices in cybersecurity and offer advice for those looking to break into the field. This episode is a reminder that protecting your energy is essential to effective leadership.
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Resources
Adapting Without Compromising Integrity: A Leadership Lesson in Security & Politics
Sustaining a Feedback Culture: Advanced Techniques and Real-Life Examples
How to Be Successful in Navigating a New Organization
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/how-successful-navigating-new-organization-dr-rebecca-qgquc/
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Leadership Struggle: Habits that Protect Your Energy | A Conversation with Jason Elrod | The Soulful CXO Podcast with Dr. Rebecca Wynn
Dr. Rebecca Wynn: [00:00:00] Welcome to the soulful CXO. I'm your host, Dr. Rebecca Wynn. We are pleased to have with us today, Jason Elrod. Chief Information Security Officer for MultiCare Health System. Previous roles include Head of Security and Chief Security Architect at Stutter Health for 10 years, where he and I first met. Welcome to the show.
Jason Elrod: Been a hot minute. appreciate it happy to be here.
Dr. Rebecca Wynn: Jason, background is really fascinating, and you had programming, you went to Harvard,
Can you walk us through your career and how you got to be the wonderful Jason I know today?
Jason Elrod: that's a loaded question right there for sure. I will take the wave back machine on, on, on this one. I can say I wrote my first computer program in 1979 because my father at the time was a programmer for the Department of Justice and he had all these fun things that had lights on them and be bops and fingers and things.
So I just had to get involved with that. It goes way back. It goes way [00:01:00] back. But interesting is, early career. I didn't want anything to do with technology. I did it. I thought, yeah, something you did. It was a hobby. something fun, but I wanted to do things with people, be more involved and be involved in, in, in the people relationship aspect of it.
initially I didn't want to do technology. I just had it, it was a given. And, but eventually I, I found that those are the jobs that I always tended to, to land in because it was a very unique skillset, especially back when I would say mid eighties when I first became a professional technologist.
I've been doing it for over 35 years. I guess is where it's at. And for 30 of that or so it's been in IT leadership roles and the last , 25 or so have been specifically focused on security. And a lot of that was out of desperation instead of inspiration initially. But now I find that it's just, it fits.
I love it. It matches [00:02:00] my defender mindset. I can get in there and apply my skills as a humanistic nerd, provide value protect, and assist in the world. it's a fantastic dynamic industry, so I really appreciate it.
Could you talk a little bit more about how. You can start this career and then go ahead and get your degree so you did mention the Harvard thing, but I'll have to go back I didn't have a college degree through most of my career.
I got my bachelor's degree in 2016 then I went on To Harvard to get my master's degree I was a security leader for a long time without having the paper, to back it up.
people need to realize most barriers in careers or life are artificial. We make 'em up. Yes. Some jobs you're gonna say, thou shalt have a. Medical degree to be a doctor. Thou shalt have a law degree But outside those very specific, I would say, niche talent profiles, we often [00:03:00] we're often our own worst enemies begin to sell in way of ourself and say, I can't do X, Y, or Z until A, B, or C is done.
And when you get beyond that. There's nothing that can stop you. a lot of ways people admire the problem of, I don't have a degree, or this experience or that experience. a lot of times I just say, noted.
And what can you do now? Use that to motivate you. to get you in the space, our success is based on our habits, what we do daily and what we think we're capable of. when we expand that and we dive into it, I don't think there's any limit really to what anybody can do.
a lot of people thought I had a college degree. But never knew it, that it didn't until one point I said, Hey, you know what, I'm gonna use this, I'm gonna use the educational reimbursement. And they're like, what do you mean? And I'm like, I think I'm gonna get a degree.
And they're like, what? You don't have one? And I think That's important. believe in yourself and just get after it it's, been an [00:04:00] interesting ride
Dr. Rebecca Wynn: So you talked about starting out and then getting into leadership. How did that progression go?
Where did you start and then was it that you had a mentor or a sponsor who said, Hey, here's a job opening. I think you'd be good at it. How did you go through that to even go from being a worker bee to leadership, especially without, like you said, without having a degree,
Jason Elrod: I think I mentioned I've been doing it for a long time, but I didn't really want to initially.
I wanted to connect with people. that's key. folks who are attracted to STEM careers tend to want to do things that are more technical, black and white math programming. It's either working or it's not people are not that way.
There's always a gray area, between an analog and a digital world. And because I was so interested in actually wanting to connect with people, the people side of it, and had the technology skill, it was a fortuitous convergence, they'd say, we've got these network engineers, we've got [00:05:00] this team of programs, we've got this people, and we have no idea what they're saying.
Nobody's fluent in nerd. I need somebody who can translate between nerd and English and even better if you can go nerd English and business, have I got a job for you? And so it was that ability to be that Rosetta Stone, I think, in a lot of ways to communicate both the folks that were more analytical, more black and white, more in the technical world with the folks who weren't necessarily, that really gave me my first opportunity.
In there. So embracing both sides of those equations. The EQ with the iq, which I think is really what is needed. So if you've got a lot of EQ and you've got some folks that you've gotta deal with that are very IQ centric, school up on that, but vice versa. If you're in a very sort of iq, I would say, centric sort of world or job space, and want to lead learn it.[00:06:00]
Learn the human component, the analog component and that's what served me well. Then I had some opportunities in there because what would happen is it would, I would be with the IT team they'd say, tell these people this because they're not understanding
I'd go tell them what they were saying and they go, go tell them this is what we're saying. I go back and tell them this is what they're saying. And in a lot of ways, that really is your job as a leader, isn't it? Like how do you translate the wants, the needs between your stakeholders on both sides of that equation?
I was very lucky. I do believe luck is when opportunity meets preparedness and that we make it ourselves. Again, didn't have a degree, di didn't really have that leadership intent necessarily, but I really did want to have that connection and that was the probably single most impactful thing that launched me into leadership because I, I literally.
Quit three leadership [00:07:00] jobs so I could go be an individual contributor in three different jobs. within six months of every job that I joined as an individual contributor, I ended up being the A, a supervisor or manager in that role for the same exact reason.
Dr. Rebecca Wynn: Now, one of the challenges that I know that people seem to have a love for cybersecurity don't innately have the background on paper to be able to get through the door. How do I get through the door?
How do I get past HR and other people like that so I can at least have an audience with the person so I can show them my skill sets? How do you work through that when you're trying to hire people or mentor people?
Jason Elrod: that's a good question. A couple of ways. one is the candidate side and one is the hiring manager side
I'll start with the hiring manager side It's my job to go to my HR partners, the recruiters and express, Hey, this is what I'm looking for and this is what I mean when I say this is what I'm looking for.[00:08:00]
I'm not looking for necessarily that, that, that degree I'm not because, I, it'd be ironic to require one when I didn't have one for a long period of my career. I'm interested in the personality of the folks and their ability to walk the talk
Can you leap logical levels? Can you describe, Hey, here's the solution. Here's how I would design it. implement it, operate it, support it. this is how I would take that solution. This is how it, this the capabilities provides, which leads, how it would support strategies or visions or goals in the organization.
So really working closely with your recruiter to understand what all those things mean. Say, Hey, I'm looking for somebody that understands this big picture and has these atomic skills or these detailed skills. They need to be a forensic examiner. able to do soc, they need to be able to work in an instant response.
They need to do vulnerability management. be specific about that. Very point skills, but the fact is, I, I wanna get somebody who's motivated to do [00:09:00] it and understands the bigger picture. And then we scale into it it's my responsibility and I think it's a responsibility of every hiring manager in cyber to do that.
Make sure that people you're working with understand what you're looking for and not just, CISSPs and five years experience for an intro role. it's impossible. give them hints like when I say this. This means this to me.
Words mean things and these are what they mean to me for these requirements. one, there's responsibility to the hiring manager. So two, I love cyber I want to get involved I'm gonna encourage everybody to do that. It's very dynamic and it's very interesting, but I'll also say it can also be a very exhausting career.
It doesn't stop. how do you get into that network? Network with folks. Talk with people, connect apply for every job do internships. Get a mentor, a network. Get that referral. maybe in your current organization they don't have a security [00:10:00] function.
Step outta your box and provide more value in that space. the more value you provide the easier it is to have that title of cybersecurity analyst, incident response pen tester, prove you can do it, not just you have the skillset, but that you can provide value with the skillset, networking, providing value, and don't stop.
Dr. Rebecca Wynn: , One of the things that you mentioned resiliency. Today we see a lot of people in technology, other fields too.
burning out, finding ourself not resilient, and then we end up having to take a career break mm-hmm. For a long period of time, just because really we're depleted. How do you keep yourself from being depleted?
Jason Elrod: Gosh, yeah. That enforced sabbatical sometimes happens. So that's a good point.
Paid time off. Take time off. And [00:11:00] I think it's a lot of people say if you've got vacation, take vacation. It's a very American thing to just work. And by the time you a lot like retire. Or leave a, a particular job, all of a sudden you've got 200, 300 plus PTO hours that you never took, but you're now burned out and you now are leaving maybe a job that, that you could have been a, a longer term success at, but you've got a toxic relationship with the amount of work you put into it and dedication you put into it and, and whatever that is.
Um, and, and you got burnout. You know what? Catch burnout as soon as you can. Stop it. Take PTO.
Take a moment. Take a moment for yourself because you need to be at a hundred percent. If you're gonna give a hundred percent, and I think that's a nuance there. If you say, Hey, show up every day, give a hundred percent. If you don't have a hundred percent in your batteries, let's say you're at 80%, 75%, guess what?
A hundred percent is? A hundred percent is 75% [00:12:00] is 75%.
Dr. Rebecca Wynn: I thought you didn't do math.
Jason Elrod: I did. I've got people for that. But the point being is if you're not fully charged. You're not gonna be able to give a full charge, so go do it. If you really want to be successful, you really want to go to that next level.
Take time for yourself because that's part of it. So I think that's a nuance. People live like I just drive and if, if you slow your battery slowly, go down from 99 to 98 to 97, you just drive every day to 96, 92 to 90 to 80, you drive, drive, drive. By the time you get around that 75% level. You were used to producing results at a hundred percent or maybe 90%, but now you can't because your level is a hundred percent to use at 75%.
So you start to burn out because you can't even achieve what you know you've achieved before. Solution, take time. Take your PTO, do it. There's only so many ways [00:13:00] I can say it's just, just do it.
Dr. Rebecca Wynn: I've been on where I've taken PTO and then it's like it's nonstop emails, calls and stuff like that. That ends up starting to be today and being down further my career super red flags.
Because if you don't realize that when I say I need to take PTO means I should have taken PTO probably six months ago probably. and that's definitely, I tell people at Danger Zone and I try to remember that for my people saying, you know what, if you don't get a phone call directly from me, you know what?
There's nothing on fire and even there was something on fire, obviously on PTO you can't help, Unless do you find that that is, you have to be the owner of that as well too? Or it just gets run over
Jason Elrod: People will take whatever they can and it's not because people are bad, everybody's busy.
So the more you're willing to give, the more people will take. And if it's a hundred percent all the time. A hundred percent of the time, you're not gonna have any time [00:14:00] 'cause somebody else will take it. So you are a, you're the writer of your story, and if you're not the hero or heroine with that story, you're a bit player in somebody else's story.
So it's incumbent on you to be the author of your life. And in a lot of ways that's a good example. Hey, you know what? I'm taking lunch. Text me if it's an emergency. My phone is off. How do you text me? Good luck. Find somebody who knows where I am, text them, they can come get me. You, you have to have those key constraints in place.
You have to set those, those barriers up so that you know that when you get too close to them or that you're bouncing against them, careening against your own barriers, that it's time to take the step back. Slow down a little bit. 1,440. That's how many minutes are in a day. Nobody gets more.
Nobody gets less. You can't beg, borrow, steal, save. You [00:15:00] can't put some on a credit card that's it. 1,440. It's how you use it every day that determines your results. The prioritization, the focus, and there's no difference between me and, and the, the CEO, the leader of a country, we all have the same amount of time.
Dr. Rebecca Wynn: Jason. Unfortunately, our time has totally flown by.
Jason Elrod: Hey, thanks. thank you very much. It's a great pleasure. Always awesome to talk with you, Rebecca.
Dr. Rebecca Wynn: thanks Jason.
Jason Elrod: Dito.