Mara Winn realized that when there’s smoke, there’s fire, when Ukraine’s electric grid fell victim to attacks by Russia. She immediately stoked her team’s work on shoring up protection of the nation’s vulnerable energy resources. As Deputy Director for Preparedness, Policy, and Risk Analysis at the Department of Energy’s Office of Cybersecurity, Energy Security, and Emergency Response (CESER), she is responsible for everything from securing renewables to safeguarding electric substations, in the interest of ensuring the resilience of the America’s energy sector against disruptions from cyber, physical and climate-based vulnerabilities.
Mara takes a holistic approach to risk management, considering both physical and cyber threats. She fans the flames of strong coordination between the Department of Energy and its industry and government partners bringing her 20 years of experience spanning systems engineering, acquisition management, and project leadership across DHS and the private sector, to protecting the sector. Prior to joining DOE, Mara lit the way at the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), where she oversaw national risk management activities to address the nation’s most critical infrastructure threats.
Now she protects the systems that provide the energy for the nation to move forward.