Show NotesSometimes the best careers are the ones you never planned.

Aakin Patel went to school for geology. He spent years studying plate tectonics and doing computational modeling. The plan was academia.

But grad school revealed something important. The academic life he imagined wasn’t the reality he wanted.
So he pivoted. He took his Unix skills from graduate research and landed a job as a system administrator. Just temporary. Just while he figured out his next move.

That temporary job turned into a 20+ year career in technology and cybersecurity.

In This Episode:
Aakin shares his journey from geology to becoming a cybersecurity consultant who advises governments and organizations on strategic implementation.
He talks about working at Brookhaven National Labs, dealing with the unique security challenges of international scientific research, and building cybersecurity programs before the field had its current name.

The conversation digs into the skills that matter most: problem-solving, communication, and the ability to bridge technical and business worlds. Aakin explains why being able to “dumb things down” is actually proof you understand something deeply, and why teaching others became crucial to his leadership success.

You’ll also hear about the day his boss literally put him on a plane to management training, why he initially hated it, and how that moment changed his career trajectory.

Key Takeaways:
– Career pivots don’t have to be permanent disasters—they can become opportunities
– Problem-solving skills transfer across completely different fields
– Being the bridge between technical and business teams is a superpower
– Learning to communicate complex ideas simply is a leadership essential
– Technical burnout is real, and strategic roles can be the answer
– Teaching others tests whether you truly understand something
– Your ability to build and lead teams matters more than any single technical skill
– Reputation and relationships open more doors than resumes

About Aakin Patel:
Aakin Patel is a cybersecurity consultant specializing in strategic implementation for governments and organizations. His background includes geology and geophysics research, Unix system administration, and cybersecurity leadership at national laboratories. He’s built security teams from scratch and helped organizations implement security programs at strategic levels. His mixed background gives him a unique ability to translate between technical complexity and business needs.
TranscriptionManuel Martinez: Welcome everyone, my name is Manuel Martinez, and this is another episode of Career Downloads, where each episode I basically hit the refresh button and bring on a different guest to learn more about their background and their experiences, to help uncover any actionable advice that you can use as you’re managing your own career. So for today’s episode, I’m very excited. I have with me Aakin Patel, and he is a consultant in the cybersecurity space. We’ve had some conversations about, you know, some of the things he’s done earlier on, how he kind of got into, you know, this field, and just the things that he’s done along the way. So I’m interested to kind of get to know him and how he managed his career a little bit more. And with that, I’ll go ahead and introduce Aakin. I appreciate you coming on, Aakin.

Aakin Patel: Thank you, it’s good to be here.

Manuel Martinez: So one of the things that I kind of start with all the guests is if you don’t mind telling me just a little bit about where you grew up, and then eventually kind of what led you either into the technology field, some people, you know, they fall into it later on. So maybe you started in a different career field. So again, just kind of a little bit of that background about yourself.

Aakin Patel: Oh, yeah, so I grew up in the Northeast US in the New York, New Jersey area. I went to college actually for geology and did graduate work in geophysics. And I did a lot of simulation modeling as a part of that because I was studying plate tectonic processes. And, you know, so I did a lot of computer modeling. I got very skilled at like, you know, like Unix systems and like Linux systems when they started coming out and doing some on the programming side, doing some computer modeling. And at some point, I realized that I didn’t want to go into academia, which is where my degree was leading. And kind of as a stopgap measure at the time, I decided to just go out and get a job as a Unix administrator while I figured out what to do with my life. And that’s kind of how I fell into the Unix side of things and kind of grew into cybersecurity as natural evolution roles from that.

Manuel Martinez: And when you went to school to kind of study geology, obviously you didn’t want to go the academia side, but what is it that you originally were kind of that attracted you into that field and thought, oh, I want to do something in this area?

Aakin Patel: So I’ve always liked like the earth sciences. Like I find them fascinating. I actually very much thought for a very long time that I do want to be a research scientist. So it was like the realities of grad school and seeing like the in-depth look of how that worked and what my long-term, how my long-term career would play out that I realized it wasn’t the path I wanted to proceed down. It was the way it played out in reality. So like I don’t regret doing it. Like I really liked studying that. And it’s kind of like a great like set of background knowledge to have. But like once I realized it wasn’t for me, like I pivoted to something that I could do. And that worked better for me.

Manuel Martinez: Yeah, that’s a good point because a lot of times, I mean, especially when we’re that young, right? Or when we’re starting our career, I’ll say, we think that it’s going to be one where we have this grand idea of how it’s going to be and it doesn’t turn out that way. And understanding it’s okay to kind of pivot. So then you decided, okay, I want to do something in the meantime. And you got into Linux system administration. And obviously you didn’t think like, oh, I’m going to make a career at this, at least not at that point. So what is it that you started doing there and kind of start to build that skill set to say, okay, I’m going to at least for now be a good Linux sysadmin?

Aakin Patel: So I had to learn Linux system administration and Unix system administration to do the simulation modeling I was doing in grad school, right? Like I worked on Sun Spark stations and then DEC alpha workstations to do a lot of computer modeling. And the DEC alphas ran Linux and the Suns ran Sun OS and then Solaris. So I became good at Unix just as a part of that. So it was like an easy, I could put that on a resume really easily saying, hey, I’ve done all this stuff and get a job doing that. So that was kind of like an easy transition for me while I was looking to go out and kind of figure out, like a stop, I actually just figured I’d be doing that for a year or two, then refresh and then come back into academia. And I just, after a year or two, I was like, I don’t really want to go back. So I didn’t.

Manuel Martinez: Did you think that, okay, maybe I’ll pivot and go somewhere else as opposed to staying as a Linux sysadmin? You’re like, okay, I don’t want to go back into academia. That’s not the area for me. Did you think, okay, let me kind of see what this Linux administration does for me or were you kind of exploring other opportunities?

Aakin Patel: I wasn’t really sure I was keeping an eye out, but like my first job, like when I switched out was working just off Wall Street in New York City, working on like bonds trading systems. And while a cool job that paid fairly decently, it involved like a two and a half hour commute each way just because of the traffic around New York City. And I rapidly realized that I was doing like 15 hour days that I didn’t want to be doing. And then I got like a different job and I kind of lucked into a job at Brookhaven National Labs, which is one of the department energy national labs, national labs. And they did a lot of very interesting like research projects and like, it was like a very cool facility to work at. And they hired me interestingly because of my mixed background, right? Like they wanted someone with that academic background who was also skilled in technology because it was like a science and research facility and they kind of needed someone who could bridge the two worlds, like the worlds of the academics and the scientists working there with the technology needs and the technology directors of the IT department there that served those scientists. And that’s kind of how I landed in that role. And that was a cool enough job and a cool enough place that I was actually pretty happy staying there for a long time.

Manuel Martinez: And it sounds like it probably kind of met a little bit of, like, hey, I’m doing this Linux administration, which you seem to kind of like, but it also gave you some of that research that while you didn’t want to go into academia, it sounded like initially like, hey, this fascinates me. I want to kind of do a little bit more of that research, but not really be like a full-time academic researcher.

Aakin Patel: Yeah

Manuel Martinez: And having both of those skillsets and being that bridge, one of the things that you kind of told me is there were areas that you weren’t proficient or knowledgeable enough. And it was kind of, you know, you were thrown into this role. So kind of tell me a little bit more about that.

Aakin Patel: Yeah, so when I first started, like in the technology field, it’s very weird. Technology environments are very complex and kind of grow organically most of the time. They’re not very well planned out when they first start. And so if you go into a new technology environment, it almost always takes you like several months, sometimes even like a year to like actually get like a good grasp of the environment, like, you know, really understand it. And a lot of the products they were doing were so critical and so expensive that they didn’t want someone new coming in and just like messing things up, right? They’re like, they don’t want you risking downtime. They don’t want you, you know, messing things up. So they’re like, look, your job to start off with is just to learn the environment, you know, learn how it works. But meanwhile, we have this issue where we deal with very intelligent people, very smart people, like all the scientists, and they have their own way of doing things and they don’t want us to tell them how to do things because we’re not scientists. So what we want you to do is be like the bridge between us. We’ll tell you what you want to get done, and you’re going to go talk to the scientists and sell them on it, and they will listen to you because you have the science background. And I thought they were crazy because I was like a 23-year-old kid at the time, you know, trying to tell these, you know, science, like, well, world renowned scientists in their field, like how to do things. But, like, no, it was actually true. That’s actually why they went and hired me is because of their academic background. And they would send me to go talk to the scientists and I would learn about their research, which was really cool, and I could understand their research because it meshed with my background. And, you know, talking to them a little bit about it and then kind of just be like, hey, so we’re doing this on the IT side of things. At first they’d be like, well, we want to do this. I’m like, well, this is a good idea because of this. And they’ll be like, well, if you say so, Aakin. [laughter]

Manuel Martinez: I mean, that had to be a weird sensation, right? Like being that young, you know, again, these accomplished scientists and for them to say, well, if you say it’s okay, then we’re good to go.

Aakin Patel: Yeah.

Manuel Martinez: Is that because they knew that you had kind of both understanding of the IT side and the academic wasn’t so much like, oh, well, this guy knows it all, but they’re like, oh, he understands our business.

Aakin Patel: Our perspective. Yeah, exactly. So these guys, they were very intelligent, right? A lot of times, like, if they wanted to do something on the Linux side, they’d be like, I’m just going to figure out how to do it myself and do it. And they would do it. Like they would get their system set up and they’d work on it and they would work. But that’s not great from an enterprise perspective, right? Like that’s not great from the perspective of a centrally managed organization and like a place where you have hundreds and thousands of projects and everything being its own little enclave, it’s kind of a little bit of a nightmare. So as they went to move more and more to, I guess, more centralized set up and more organized and managed set up, there was a lot of pushback from the scientists because they’re like, well, we’re perfectly capable of running it our way. And who are you to tell us that? But because I was approaching it from also having an academic background and I would like explain it to them in the terms that they wanted to know. And that was really the key, right? Like they wouldn’t accept things blindly. They were like scientists, they would question, they would like, we want to know why. And I understood that. I understood the kind of why that they wanted to know. And I would explain that to them. And that’s kind of why they accepted that, right? If I just came in and said, nope, I’m a scientist too. You’re going to do it this way. They would have been like, piss off. [laughter]

Manuel Martinez: And that’s–

Aakin Patel: And I think a little bit of the awe that I held for them and that I knew the reputation kind of helped a little bit too.

Manuel Martinez: Right. And that’s good because a lot of times– well, in this one, it’s very specific, right? It’s scientists, but that’s no different than just any other business, right? It’s understanding the business. Yeah. I’ve had other guests where we talked about that, like, hey, you can kind of go through and I can tell somebody you’re going to do this. But if they don’t understand what the business benefits are, at least from an executive leadership or people who aren’t in IT, and then being able to translate that the other way as well, right? From the business standpoint, when you’re telling IT folks similar to the scientists and saying, hey, we’re going to do this. But if you explain it, hey, here’s what the business is doing and here’s why kind of like in the technology terms, that’s a big benefit.

Aakin Patel: That is probably the most useful takeaway I’ve had throughout my entire career. Because through a series of events and steps, I ended up transitioning to cybersecurity, actually almost before cybersecurity was like a thing. And I grew from there, I grew to executive level management. A big part of my success in that regard is being able to explain to the business why this technology or this approach benefits the business and being able to explain to the technology why they need to approach things in a way that benefits the business. Because both sides have a like, well, no, this is what makes sense to us. So this is what we’re going to do. And that’s like a perspective on the business side and on the technology side. And they don’t always meet. And being able to bridge that is kind of critical to basically go anywhere outside of the front line, hands on technical level or the hands on business person. I’m a strategic consultant right now. Like I advise small governments, sometimes larger governments and larger organizations on how to implement things at a very strategic level. And I would not be able to do that without being able to speak to both sides of the house and like to be able to bridge that gap. And having that full understanding of the needs of both sides is very, very important to being able to do that effectively.

Manuel Martinez: So you’re in this role. It sounds like you’ve become pretty successful, right? At least both ways of kind of being that bridge. How long were you there? And what made you decide to– I don’t know if you ended up kind of promoting up within, if you decided to kind of look out–

Aakin Patel: How long was I at the DOE?

Manuel Martinez: At the–

Aakin Patel: National Lab.

Manuel Martinez: At the National Labs.

Aakin Patel: I was actually there for seven, seven years, eight years? About that.

Manuel Martinez: But not doing the same role the whole time?

Aakin Patel: I started off in the Unix team. And then I got moved. At some point, they wanted like a full blown dedicated cybersecurity team. They’d started to build one up, and they pulled me into there as their Unix expert. And then I spent most of my time there as a part of that team. And growing with that team, growing with the responsibilities, helping start up like one of our first like pen test programs there, like an internal pen test program doing like log analysis, starting up programs that eventually became things like a SIEM, like a security event monitors. So yeah, so they pulled me into the group that for the cybersecurity side of things, because they needed someone specialized in Unix on that side of things. And that’s how I moved into there. And I kind of grew with that role as that team grew. I stayed a hands-on cybersecurity person, and like an incident investigator and incident responder while I was there. When I– at some point, I left that job because I knew I wanted to leave New York, and I came out here. And then out here, I had a couple of roles with a bunch of different groups for short periods of times, like some with the casinos, with a couple of corporations here, a couple of the federal groups out here, some small businesses for a while. I was doing like some consulting for a little bit, and then one of the people I was consulting with hired me as to lead their technology team because they were starting to– their business started to grow really fast, and they wanted me to help scale it up. So that’s how I ended up on the leadership side of things. And because I was advising them on how to scale it up, and the guys were just like, I need you full time. I can’t have you just doing these few hours here and there. I need you to build this team out for me. What can I do to bring you on?

Manuel Martinez: And a lot of just the skills that you’re gaining– again, this is before cybersecurity was cybersecurity. It’s still security, but you’re building the skill set, working a couple– quite a few years there in that role. And while you mentioned you built your own SIEM, and before it was really a thing, and what is it that started that security practice?

Aakin Patel: Oh. So at the National Labs, it was a very interesting environment. Like the National Labs are very science focused, right? And they have a lot of very cool and high end projects, including particle accelerators. And particle accelerators are very, very interesting in that they’re built to a specific size. They are built to like a physical size, which affects which atom they can spin around at near light speed and smash to get their high energy particle experiments and do the studies on. And these high energy physicists want to study what those effects are, but they want to study it more than just one– like more than just one atom type, right? So at Brookhaven National Labs, they had a particle accelerator. They had multiple particle accelerators, but their big one was one that smashed gold atoms. And it was 2 and 1/2 miles in diameter. That’s how big it had to be in order to spin gold atoms at the speed of light and smash them together. Those are not– that’s not a trivial project to build. And it’s on the orders of hundreds of millions to billions of dollars across– and they need particle accelerators like this for all sorts of different atoms. There is a– I forget which the actual specific organization is, but there’s a consortium of scientists across the world that kind of help plan these out. And they kind of– once a particle accelerator exists, when someone else has got the funding to build another one, they kind of build them at a different size to be able to smash a different atom. And there’s like an international agreement between all the countries to allow scientists to go from accelerator to accelerator to accelerator to do their researches, to do their research. And as a result, there are lots of scientists from all kinds of countries going to all these accelerators, including at our national labs. And we have a lot of very sensitive projects going on in our national labs, and the other countries do their projects as well. So they do their accelerators as well. But also, just because we have this treaty and this agreement does not mean that our respective intelligence departments are not very interested in each other’s experiments, right? So when we would get scientists come in, the scientists might genuinely just be there to do their research. But that doesn’t mean that all their equipment had not been affected by their various intelligence and counterintelligence teams, but they weren’t bringing Trojan software into the environments knowingly or unknowingly. I actually honestly suspect that almost all of them were unknowingly, but it was like a real threat that we had to deal with. There was a lot of very malicious technical activity going on in the network environment just because of the nature of things. And that’s kind of why the cybersecurity teams were stood up, because they needed dedicated people to deal with that and to look for that and detect that and become familiar with how to detect that. That’s before any of these network intrusion softwares were around, before any of these tools to detect the stuff automatically on the network existed, this was like a manual thing that we all did. That and it wasn’t really common enough for these tools to exist. So it was something that every organization that needed something like this, which were the National Labs, for example, would do on their own. And that’s kind of how I got into that role and how those teams got stood up.

Manuel Martinez: Because again, it’s newer, right? It’s not like you can buy off the shelf. You can buy off the shelf software or something that’s kind of tailored. You’re learning a lot of this, I’m assuming kind of through trial and error and just figuring this stuff out.

Aakin Patel: There weren’t any guidelines for it. They were just like, we need to do this. I’m like, all right, I guess I’m going to figure it out.

Manuel Martinez: And I mean, did you find that part exciting? Was it something like going through and saying, OK, I’ve got to figure this out? There’s nobody to rely on. Like, hey, I can’t go ask the person, somebody else, and say, hey, how are you doing this? Because they’re going to be like, that’s not something that we deal with.

Aakin Patel: That was very much the case. Also, this was early enough that a lot of social media didn’t exist. There weren’t social media groups. The closest we had was Usenet at the time. I don’t know if you’re familiar with Usenet. You are. OK, yeah. So we had Usenet, but you weren’t going to be talking about classified level problems on Usenet, right? And there wasn’t other places to go to. There was no big collectives. There weren’t large conferences being– things were just starting to come into existence. So a lot of times, we were on our own, or we’d reach out to other national labs, and be like, how are you doing that? And they’re like, how are you doing that? We want to know.

Manuel Martinez: Right. And I’m sure, because there’s some of that knowledge sharing, but at the same time, they’re like, well, we don’t know. How are you figuring this out?

Aakin Patel: And research institutions have always kind of been– their funding goes towards research. The IT side was always seen as overhead. And so there wasn’t a huge amount of staff there for that. We were a cybersecurity team at our peak while I was there. I think we were six people at our largest for over 15,000 people that were at that facility. And of those 15,000, maybe 8,000 or 9,000 were foreign nationals. Right? So and of those six people, I was the Unix guy. Right. We had a Windows guy. We had a networking person. And we had one pro– someone was a dedicated programming person. And then people focused on the administrative side.

Manuel Martinez: It’s not like there’s a group of you. Like, oh, hey, let me bounce it off the other Linux person that’s here. Maybe it’s the Windows person, but they’re different. But just kind of talking through ideas. That’s interesting. So having developed that, and like you said, you wanted to kind of move out of New York, but then also that had to give you– especially starting out, like you’ve started off as just kind of like a communicator. You’re like, OK, I’ve got the communication skills. Now I’m building the technical skills and the problem solving. Is that part of what also gave you the confidence to say, hey, I want to move out of New York, and I know that I can– if I don’t have the skills, I can build the skills to kind of move out into a different role?

Aakin Patel: I think so. Probably, right? Like, I’ve always– I always prided myself on the ability to learn what I needed to learn. I think it’s what made me a good scientist. It’s definitely what made me a good person in technology, especially starting out when every technology shop was like build it yourself. You know, you do it in-house. If you can’t do it in-house, why are we even hiring you? Right? Like, that was a lot of the attitude back then. Like, and I know that has changed. Like, nowadays, places are very vendor and product focused. But like, that was not the case for a very long time. It was very much, you’re the guy doing this, so it is your responsibility to get it done, and you’re going to have to figure out how and make it happen.

Manuel Martinez: So then when you moved out from New York and you moved into Vegas, did you still kind of find a similar, like– now you’re thinking, oh, I want to get into, like, a security type role? Did you go straight into consulting? Like, what is it that you decided you were looking to pursue now that you have, you know, a couple of years of experience in the tech field and say, OK, I think I want to do X, or–

Aakin Patel: At the time, I was– I think by that point, I was pretty firmly cemented in the cybersecurity role. I did like a lot of the assessments and analysis side of things. I got a role pretty quickly with one of the casinos here, helping with their– on their technical audit. Like, I was their internal technical auditor, and that was a lot of fun and very enjoyable. But yeah, I think, like, since then, I’ve kind of focused on cybersecurity-related roles, and they were in different capacities in the cybersecurity field, but they’ve all been cybersecurity focused since then.

Manuel Martinez: And it was just kind of the– was it more the problem solving of cybersecurity? Was it more the defense, you know, the kind of finding holes? Like, what is it that really kind of made you think that, yeah, I like this area?

Aakin Patel: It was a little bit of all of it. OK. But also, like, my perspective of cybersecurity is that, like, you know, from my background, I became really good at the Unix side of things, and then I moved into cybersecurity for Unix systems because I had the skills and the knowledge to be able to look at systems and be like, these are where the holes are. This is how we fix it. This is how we approach the problem in a better way. I like the idea of approaching the problems in a better way. I like– a lot of my roles since I moved out here were not cybersecurity, just like it was a pure cybersecurity thing, but like cybersecurity as, like, an advisory to the technology department as a whole, like getting involved in every project, helping architect all the new projects that are going in, helping design them to be better from the ground up. And like, that is interesting to me, right? Like, being able to, like, understand the full scope of what’s needed for a project, saying, this is how– this is the initial plan to build it up, but like, if we do it in this way, it’ll be better. It’ll be more effective. It’ll serve the business better. It’ll be more secure. Being able to put all those pieces together and, like, optimize it and strengthen it is very interesting to me. Like, there is that solving the puzzle option. There is that gaining a better understanding, seeing how everything works, seeing how all the data flows together, and making it function in, like, the best way it can is kind of where the real appeal of the field is to me.

Manuel Martinez: So then you’ve– sounds like you’re doing a bit of a consulting, and you kind of touched on it earlier, as they were tired of you kind of just doing it on the side and said, hey, we want you to kind of do this full time. In that capacity, are you– when they ask you through that, are you kind of interviewing it? Are you interviewing for that role? Or is it more you’ve kind of established yourself, your knowledge, your credibility, and it’s more like, hey, we want to kind of–

Aakin Patel: In that particular case, the CEO of the company just approached me and said, I want you to do this. And I initially turned it down a couple of times. And then the number got really good. And so I was like, all right.

Aakin Patel: And that’s, I think, because he’d seen– they approached me to help solve a problem they were having with their operations. And he really liked my approach to solving the problem. And then I helped them solve more problems. And he was like, I like the way this guy approaches problems, the way this guy solves problems. And he saw the direct impact on his business and that let him do a project turnaround that would take his guys normally– his guys would normally take three to four days working like 12-hour shifts to go from one project to another to switch their systems over to being able to just run like an automation script and be done and be good to go. He saw the direct financial impact to his business. So it made sense for him to be like, I want to scale my business. And I need someone with that skill set to help me scale correctly.

Manuel Martinez: And when you mentioned you turned it down a couple of times, was it originally because of the financial? Were you not so interested in the type of role? Because there’s a lot of times where I’ve heard from different people where they’ll be approached like that, like, hey, we want you to apply. Or even if you apply and you get the role, it’s the negotiating tactic. And maybe it wasn’t a tactic, but understanding like, OK, was the role not interesting enough? Or was it like, hey, for what you’re asking me to do financially, this doesn’t make sense.

Aakin Patel: There’s a combination of a couple of things. One, like, having done the few things that I’d done there, I knew that the scope of work was huge and that there was a lot involved. And I didn’t want to commit to all of that initially, not for the funds he was offering. And two, one of the most interesting things about the national labs is the sheer variety of projects that go on there. Like, there’s everything from chemistry projects to medical to biology, laser science, magnetics, high energy physics, everything. You’re not going to get bored because there’s so much stuff going on. I didn’t want to just commit to one business’s problems at the time because it’s kind of limiting the scope of work and limiting the scope of interest. And I wasn’t super excited about that. But when he said– he was like, the number got good. And he was like, I’ll give you full reign to start up an IT department, run it however you want. You got full authority to do everything, build it up from the ground up. That’s pretty interesting to me. And so the project became a lot more interesting. And the conversation became appropriate. And I was like, all right, I’m down.

Manuel Martinez: So then now building a team in an operation that’s something that many people don’t get to experience. So I’m curious what we’re– there’s good from that, right? Because you get to do it your way. But there’s also challenges and things that you’re like, man, this isn’t going how I planned. So I’m just curious, what were some of–

Aakin Patel: The biggest challenge– I think the biggest– this all have been true in every single case where I’ve had to build a team from the ground up, which is more than once is financial. Once a business starts tallying the cost of what’s actually involved hiring skilled IT people, and technology projects can get pricey. And there’s a payoff, but the payoff could be a couple years down the line. And for a business looking at that, they’re like, we could just keep on chugging along the way we’ve been chugging along instead of making this huge outlay up front for a payoff three years down the line. That’s not– that’s a hard case to sell. And that’s– once I realized at that level that this is what– like my work was, it was kind of enlightening. And I had to actually pivot a lot. And I had to learn a lot. I was used to being a hands-on guy, and making all the solutions, right? And I feel that this is a challenge that every single person who goes into management or leadership from a technology role encounters and has a very hard time, almost always you get promoted into those roles because you are very good at what you were doing. And what you were doing was being hands-on problem solver. And then you get promoted to management or leadership. And your job is to no longer be the hands-on problem solver. And it’s hard for you to let go of that internal identity, right? Like, your identity is being the problem solver. That’s what you’re good at. And your job is now no longer to problem solve. It’s to make it so other people can problem solve easier. And that’s a very different set of skills and a very different shift in mentality. And I’m sure I messed up a few things until I actually got the hang of that. But one of the things I realized pretty quickly is that, like, you pointed this out earlier. Like, I’ve always been in roles where I have to learn a new technology, learn a new thing, learn a new skill set fast. I realized that my skill set was no longer learning about technology. The things I needed to learn was learn how to deal with people and work with people better, and learn how to deal with organizations and work organizations better in a way that they function better. And the optimization I had to do was not at the technological level, but at the organizational level.

Manuel Martinez: Understanding that you had to learn that, is that something that originally you probably kind of fought against a little bit? And the reason I ask is I was in that role, right? Well, I was that hands on. I became a manager where I was still hands on. Like, I was more of a, it was a small team, and I was still a lot more hands on. But once they kind of started asking me to, you know, hey, we need you to be more of, like you said, more of the facilitator, help them solve problems. You need to kind of interface more with the business. I fought against that, right? Like, I didn’t mind learning how to communicate with people, but at some point, I was, you know, there was that internal struggle. And I ended up going back to, you know, actually move to a different role and said, you know what, this is not for me. Turns out it just wasn’t for me at that time. Like, I was still probably too young or I just, I wasn’t done doing a lot of the kind of hands on work. And I went that way, but it sounds like you kind of embraced it. So I’m just curious, is that something?

Aakin Patel: So I don’t think I initially embraced it, right? Like, I started, I was still doing a lot of hands on stuff. And I think the CEO saw it pretty quickly. And he had a lot of issues. There were problems working for him. But in many ways, he made the right calls a lot of the times. That’s why he was a successful businessman. When he saw that issue, he showed up one day and he was like, here, like he handed me and they were like two plane tickets. And I’m like, what is this? He’s like, you’re going to Georgia tomorrow. I signed you up for a management class. I’m like, I’m not going to Georgia tomorrow. He’s like, oh, yes, you are. You know. And like, he realized the issue was that I was still trying to do projects. And he was like, I don’t want you doing that. That’s not your job. You have these people do that job and you need to hire more people do that job. I need you to run the department. And he like thrusts me like hard into management training. And like, on the plane right there, I thought about that for a second. I was kind of pissed, but I was like doing it like this is what my boss wants. You know, I got to do it. But on the plane ride there, like I thought about it for a little bit. I was like, no, he’s right. That’s actually my job. My job is different. It’s not what I thought. You know, I don’t know if I would accept it knowing that. But this is actually my job now. And I can like quit or I can actually do a good job at this job. And so I went through the class and with that perspective. And from that perspective, it was actually pretty interesting learning about it. Because I made a point of thinking about it as I would about computer systems and just trying to draw all the correlations. And then it made sense in my brain. And… so it actually ended up being a pretty interesting class because I was able to relate it to my experience and thinking back about– like, I don’t think I consciously processes at the time. But it kind of meshed with my role at Brookham and where I was like the intermediary. I wasn’t working on technical projects to start off. I was working on making the technical project easier to happen, making it easier for the technical team to do their projects by being the intermediary between them and the scientists. And I was like, that’s kind of my role now, is to be the intermediary between the tech team and the rest of the organization. And from that perspective, it became a much more fun and challenging project, a much more fun and challenging and interesting job to do. And I spent a lot of time– like, I went to a bunch of classes. But I got a lot more value out of a lot of books on management. And some of them were like absolute garbage. And some of them were very full of like trite sayings that made me grow and roll my eyes. But most of them had a couple of kernels of wisdom in them. And I would just take that and ignore the rest and go from there. And I think I realized fairly quickly that everyone has their own management style. And I thought back to the managers I really liked and the managers I really hated. I made like a be like this, don’t be like this list. And I just tried to focus on that. And the people I hired, I paid attention to them when they would say– so I’m going to say something that’s not like super kosher, but is actually true. The tech field gets a lot of very interesting personalities. A lot of them are very fixated, a lot of very single-minded, very focused. And not all of them have the best social skills. This can be a detriment or it can be an advantage. Right? Some of them will straight up tell you how it is and not in a nice way. But they are being utterly honest. And you have to embrace they’re being honest. And look at their feedback and be like, what part of this feedback is useful? What part of it is garbage? I had people like that. I had people just be like, no, that’s stupid. And this and this and this. Right? And looking at that, no, the stupid comment is not actually helpful. But some of the things they were saying were dead on. And that’s what I needed to focus on. Right? Because my job was really to let them work better. And what they were telling me was what I was doing was not letting them work better.

Manuel Martinez: And you mentioned that you kind of fought it a little bit and you’re pissed originally when they hand you the ticket. And it sounds like he knew wanting to hire you and then also kind of buying those tickets and forcing you to go into this management. Sounds like he probably saw something in you and says, hey, he can do this. Now, the approach, most people would be like, wow, that was the wrong approach to kind of take. Right? He could have talked to you or whatnot. But do you think that in that moment and then at that point in your career, that’s the approach that you needed? Or would you have been open to it if he would have sat you down and said, hey, I think we should look at getting you into management classes and talked through it as opposed to saying, you’re going on a plane and you’re going tomorrow? Because again, different times, different situations. I know that there’s times where I would need that type of, no, you’re going. And not have the time to think about it. And there’s other times where, wait a minute, no, I need that week or let’s have a couple conversations about it.

Aakin Patel: I would like to think that if he’d approached me with a normal conversation, I would have accepted and paid attention. But I don’t know.

Manuel Martinez: Yeah, I mean, it’s just one of those things.

Aakin Patel: I do know that he saw that I was able to get his team to work better than he had been able to get his team to work, so he appreciated that. And I do know that a large part of that was because when he talked to me about that problem, I was like, you just don’t know how to talk to technical people. I know how to talk to technical people. Let me go talk to them. And that wasn’t wrong. I went there and I told them, and I was like, hey, this is what we need to do. This is why. This is why it makes sense to do that thing, even though it may not be the most optimal technical approach. And they were like, all right, fine.

Manuel Martinez: You said it, right? A lot of times it’s just that people want to know from both sides. If you force somebody to do something, they don’t want to. But if you explain to them why, and even though– help them understand, well, why would we do this if it’s not, again, the optimal way? But again, they just want that understanding. Oh, oh, I get now why we have to do it, even though you and I both know that’s not the best way to do it. But for this situation, we do, and here’s why.

Aakin Patel: Yeah.

Manuel Martinez: OK. So you’ve built this team up, and it sounds like you’ve– are slowly learning what your management style is. You’re getting good at– and I like that approach of using that technical approach of kind of filtering, just doing everything else that you’ve done from a technical standpoint. And what is it that now– again, we don’t have to go through every role that you’ve ever been in, but now, what’s that next step? Because you mentioned you were in leadership. You spent building up a bunch of different teams. Is that kind of what you thought? OK, I’ve built this skill set. It’s obviously a good skill set to have, and being able to kind of talk business, talk technical, build teams. And did you think to yourself, this is what I kind of– at least for now, this is what I want to do. I want to be that person that comes in and either builds a team or restructures them.

Aakin Patel: I definitely– yeah, absolutely. That is the thought I had, and that is the thought I still have. And it’s like the thought that kind of drives a lot of what I do. I do love doing that sort of stuff. It’s very rewarding. It’s kind of cool to see a project in an organization go from very small or minimal or nonexistent to a fully functional, well-optimized, well-functioning team. I’ve really liked doing that in the past. I’m kind of doing that right now sort of in a different capacity, because I’m focused on starting up my own business, but I would like to grow to the point where I have a team working under me, working well on the consulting side and on that side. And I would love to actually be able to build up a team to do that sort of work and focus on running the team versus being the consultant myself.

Manuel Martinez: And what is it that you end up liking about that? Because I’ll tell you, I mentioned management earlier in my career, and I was like, nope, that’s not for me. And it wasn’t until later on– I can’t remember if it was an event or a person, but at some point, I started to switch. And it probably– actually, I think about it, it might be around the time that I started teaching. So I would teach part-time. And that’s where I started to kind of develop more of the understanding and more of a passion of like, oh, I like doing more of the leadership type stuff. I was OK being hands-off, because now I realize that it was more impactful and I could have a greater reach. Instead of me doing it by myself, if I can work with a team of three, four, or five people and help them be successful, there’s a lot more– it scales a lot better, and there’s more impact, as opposed to just me trying to do it all by myself.

Aakin Patel: The impact is a big part of it. There’s a few other factors. One is, like, I mentioned that I like being involved with a lot of different projects, right? I like the variety. And that is, frankly, easier to achieve at the strategic level than the tactical level. If you’re hands-on, you’re a tactical person. When you’re in a more advisory capacity, you’re being more strategic, you’re involved in a lot more things. And that is super interesting to me. I like seeing how all the projects interact together to make the organization function as a whole. And to be perfectly honest, a decent chunk of it was also burnout. Like, I had a lot of technical burnout, and I don’t think I’ve realized it for a long time. But being able to shift into leadership roles, being able to guide other people, use my knowledge, especially when I had people who were new to the field, I could be like, you know, like, teach them, you know, like, teach them, guide them, mentor them, as well as, you know, help them grow their skill set without actually doing the hands-on technical work myself, kind of let me feel like I was pulling on all my knowledge, drawing on all my knowledge, and not doing the things that led to burnout. Because at some point, like, I think a lot of people just hit that point, and I had hit that point, and I don’t think I even realized that I had hit that point.

Manuel Martinez: And when you say the burnout, it was the burnout of just being tired of doing the day-to-day work, or it was just like, you know, just overwhelming, just, I know what you’re talking about, where I don’t know that I’ve experienced burnout, but maybe there’s that moment in time where you’re just like, I’m tired of doing this, right? And maybe I took it as more of a, like, I’m tired, and maybe it is more burnout. And once I started to kind of teach and get into more of those, you know, even if I wasn’t like a manager, but like more leadership roles where I was like, hey, I was the lead engineer, the lead architect, like, getting into those, and you’re helping other people, that energized me, and I was like, this is what I want to do.

Aakin Patel: I think it’s, yeah, like, I think you kind of nailed it, right? It was a lot of getting tired of doing that day-to-day stuff, like, and like, a lot of those hands-on things, like, even like the things that used to be exciting, like when I used to go do incident response, like, we’d detect malicious activity, I’d go, I’d grab the box, we’d do forensics on it, and I’d write them on ports, and like, that was super exciting to me to be able to do that. When I worked with counterintelligence groups to do a lot of work there, like, it used to be super exciting, and then after a while, it just became a grind, and I was tired of that grind.

Manuel Martinez: Now you’re doing a lot of this, and you mentioned you started to kind of have contracts, and what is it that kind of led you into eventually kind of starting your own consultancy? Is it because you’re moving on to projects? Did you go from, like, okay, I don’t want to be hired on, I want to do more project role to kind of fill that need of, I want to do different things?

Aakin Patel: After I left that company, I got hired on, I started looking for, like, government-specific work, because I really liked the time I had at the National Labs. Like, I liked, I wanted that level of variety, right? Like, I didn’t want, like, that small focus of that, that one small business. I wanted that large variety, and, like, the National Labs had that variety because they functioned like a small city, so I looked for other groups that functioned like a small city. So I started applying to a lot of the local government jobs out here, and I landed a role at the airport, and the airport is absolutely a small city, right? I landed, like, the cybersecurity role there, and that was, again, it was like a build-up the cybersecurity team, which I was super excited by, and the airport has got so many projects. And so that kind of led to a little bit of everything that I wanted, right? Like, I got to build up a team, I got to work on a very large variety of projects, I got to work in, like, the environment I kind of enjoyed, like, back in the government space, and that was kind of how I ended up. So, yeah, I was there for a long time. I was at the airport for seven years, and then I built up that team. We had, like, a good, strong team. We were pretty functional, we were well integrated in the environment by that point. When I started, they looked at me, and they wanted, they made it very clear that they wanted me to start up the team, right? They were like, “We don’t really, we know we need this, we don’t really know how,” and I spent the first two months building up a plan, and then the next six years enacting that plan. But at one point, it became time for me to leave the airport, and I ended up going to the state, and I was the head of the Office of Cyber Defense Coordination there, and that was really cool, because it was coordinating cybersecurity across all the local governments within the state of Nevada. So I got to work with all the cities and all the counties and all the large governmental organizations and non-governmental organizations, some of the utilities, and, like, everything that was going on in the state, I got to be involved in, that was super cool.

Manuel Martinez: Being in these types of roles, especially, like, with such a large environment, you’re doing a lot of data gathering, right? Because you’re understanding what they’re doing to kind of help put together, but also, how do you approach having to build a vision of kind of what this looks like moving forward? Because a lot of what you’re doing, it sounds like, you know, yes, I have to understand, I want the variety of projects, you’re getting all this information, but also, at that level, you’re the person, right? Or you’re within the small group of people that are putting together the plan for how we’re going to move forward. So what’s that process like of saying, “Okay, here’s how we’re going to put a plan together when there’s nothing”?

Aakin Patel: So for me, the way I approach it is I try to– I will initially start deep diving in, get like a very– as comprehensive a picture as I can about what the current state is. I look at the current state and I’ll be like, “If I was building this up, what would I do differently?” Try to, like– and then be like, “What do I think would be the ideal end state, combine that with what I would do differently, kind of make like where we want to be page, where we are page, and then just roadmap to, you know, like build up that map.” Be like, start doing little– figure out these are the key steps to get there and like what little project can we do that’s opposable to get there? What’s– what can we do immediately? What do we have to do as a priority? What can we put off further down the line?

Manuel Martinez: And earlier on in your career, right, you became– you were that sole person, right? So you had to come up with the idea or you had to go through. But now, you know, with– I wouldn’t even say social media, but just with teams growing, with IT becoming a little bit– a lot more prevalent, are you also leveraging other people to figure out what that future state is? Are you researching on your own? Like, just curious, you know, I understand how you get through the assessment of like, “Hey, this is the current state.” But as far as a future state, like what goes into saying, “This is where we want to get to,” and is it just experience?

Aakin Patel: A lot of it is experience. I will build up what I think would be good based on my experience, and then I will throw it out there. I’ll talk to everyone who’s like a stakeholder in that, be like, “This is what I think,” and I will let them tear it apart. And they will. They will always tear it apart. And when they’re tearing it apart, you got to sit there and listen. Because sometimes they’re tearing it apart just because it wasn’t their plan. And sometimes they’re tearing it apart because it’s a colossally bad idea. Right? And like, there’s elements of both in like everything. If you want to put out a plan there, you are not the subject matter expert. You got to remember that. Like, you’re not the guy that runs these systems day to day. They will be like, “This can’t happen because of this.” Right? You need to put that into the plan. You have this like, “If this is a stopping block, you got to work around that stopping block and find like an alternative.” In the audit industry, there’s a term compensating control. It’s when you have a change that you know is– when you have a setup that you know is not good, but you can’t change it for whatever reason. So you have some other plan in place to accommodate for that problem existing. The difference between the vision you create and the final vision will always be what sort of compensating controls can you put into place to address all the stopping blocks that everyone can see. Because people are very good at seeing stopping blocks. Right? You throw a plan out there, people will be like, “Oh, no, we can’t do that because of this.” Immediately. That’s cool. You want to know all the stopping blocks because you don’t know the stopping blocks. Let them throw out all the stopping blocks and then work for a plan around them. And then keep on doing that until they say, “All right, I think we can make that work.”

Manuel Martinez: And you make a good point there because you will get those stopping blocks a lot easier than you’ll get the solutions. Everybody’s quick to say, “No, no, no, and here’s why.” But understanding, okay, going back to what you said earlier about filtering, “Okay, I’ve got to filter.” Is this really a stopping block or is this just– They’re saying this because they’re trying to stop this because again, it’s not their idea or maybe they just don’t like it. It’s supposed to, “Oh, it’s really something that won’t work.”

Aakin Patel: When there’s a stopping block, find the root cause. Okay. And the root cause isn’t always what you’re told it is.

Manuel Martinez: Got it. So, now you’ve gone through and you’re doing all this and what other area of… What other skill set are you picking up along the way? So, again, you are a data gatherer, you’re a visionary. So, now you’re getting back into the public sector, you’re going from the airport now over to the state and working with these larger entities. So, the problems, they’re not getting smaller. They’re getting bigger.

Aakin Patel: And now politics is in the way. And at this level, almost all your problems are political. A lot of people acknowledge that’s what we should do, but we can’t do it because of this. And this will be some political cause. It’ll be, “I can’t spend money on that because this is… If I don’t spend money on this instead, I’m not going to get reelected.” You know, or…

Manuel Martinez: These funds have been allocated for something.

Aakin Patel: These funds have been allocated. We can’t make new funds. It is not a part of the campaign message, so we’re not going to waste time on it. All kinds of things. When you get to a very local level, it’s even like other issues. There’s times where it’s like, “We cannot do business with this group because of this thing that happened 15 years ago.” You know, there’s a lot of stuff like that. And, like, grudges get held on. Especially at the political level. There’s… And that… Building up that list of relations and that, like, knowledge of what’s what is kind of where a lot of the data gathering happens now. Right? I’ve been in this field long enough that a lot of the technical data gathering is almost instinctual at this point, but learning about the political challenges and how to navigate that is kind of where my focus is these days and, like, learning how to… Learning what needs to be done and how. Right? Because it’s not always, “This is the plan. This is the right answer.” I’ve put out solutions where people are like, “That’s absolutely the right answer and we can’t do it.” And if we need to do it, we’re going to have to do it like this long, super circuitous way, circuitous way, and it’ll be three years down the line, but we’ll get there. And, like, that’s kind of where I’m at these days.

Manuel Martinez: So what is it that ultimately leads you to say, “Okay, I’m going to kind of start my own business. I want to do the consulting and kind of, you know, do things the way that I want to”?

Aakin Patel: Part of it is that after I left the state, I saw a need for a thing that needs to exist. That politically can’t. And I want to create it. I’m kind of driven for it. It’s something I tried to do when I was with the state. And it just was not feasible to do just because of the reality of how things have to operate. Right? It’s not even that people are opposed to it. I think most people agree that it was a good idea. But it just wasn’t feasible to do, and I kind of want to do it. And that’s kind of how I’m going about it now. That’s one of the core projects of my consulting group. And then I’m taking on a lot of other business to fund things while I get that up and get that running, get the buy in for that, because that’s one of those super long-term things that will take a while to get going.

Manuel Martinez: So it sounds like it’s more of a continuous– and I see a theme throughout this whole thing is, you are really a problem solver. And it sounds like, okay, you came up to a certain point and you’re like, “I can’t do this internally. There’s a roadblock. How do I do this? Oh, if I consult–” Again, it’s not going to be instant. It’s not like, “I’m a consultant now. We can make it happen.” But it’s kind of, okay, I have the ability to make positive change, a positive influence, but I have to do it this way, even though it’s still going to take, again, that’s still two to three years.

Aakin Patel: It was made very clear to me that doing it internally was not an option. And I need to stop with that, so.

Manuel Martinez: So now up to this point, I mean, we’ve covered a lot within your career. Is there anything that I haven’t asked you or any part of your career that maybe we kind of skipped over that you think, like, “Hey, this is a good lesson,” or kind of looking back over my career, something that I wish I would have known or a challenge that, you kind of overcame.

Aakin Patel: I’ll let it ponder, and I might come up with something, but…

Manuel Martinez: Okay. So then I guess the other thing is what… I’ve asked you a lot of questions. Is there anything that you kind of want to touch on? You just think, “Hey, this is important. I want to kind of just summarize my career. I want to talk about this thing that… Maybe a little bit more about what you’re working on. I want to kind of give you the opportunity.”

Aakin Patel: So I will say this, actually, because I serve on a lot of advisory panels for some of the colleges here, and I’ve mentored a bunch of students and a lot of people looking to get into cybersecurity. And there’s a lot of people looking to get into cybersecurity these days. Get your toehold in however you can. But the real secret to advancing in this field and advancing well is you have to become a subject matter expert at something. Like, cybersecurity is realistically an advanced career choice. And people are getting into it from the beginning right now because we’re at a time when there’s a lot of empty roles and not the skill set needed for those empty roles. But in order to be effective at cybersecurity, in order to see the holes in a system and know how to fix them, you have to understand that system really, really well. You can’t see the holes without knowing what should be there and what isn’t there. And that’s true no matter what part of cybersecurity and whether you’re in policy or you’re in networking or you’re in Windows systems, Unix systems, you’re in IoT, you’re in pen testing, whatever you do, you need to become an absolute expert in that field in order to advance further. Because the higher up you go in the career ladder, the more you’re expected to have a very broad and very crystal clear vision of what the field is and what you want it to be. And you can’t do that if your idea of the fundamentals just isn’t there.

Manuel Martinez: And you bring up a good point is there’s a lot of these entry-level cybersecurity roles that are vacant. And I’ve had people that go through it like, I’m having a hard time. They’re asking for so much. And the reason is– and I didn’t kind of put two and two together until as you’re speaking through it– those are like cybersecurity roles are a little bit more– they’re higher level in the fact that you have to have a base knowledge of something. And I think that’s true in probably any area. Even if you’re not going to go into cybersecurity, if you want to try and progress up, you have to find something that you become very proficient at. If you’re not the expert, you’re very good. So that you can be able to talk about that. And then the other thing is be able to talk to others. So for example, I was primarily in infrastructure. So servers, storage, that was kind of my wheelhouse. Now, I dabbled a little bit in networking and things of that nature. Can I configure a router for you? Can I go through and set up a network for an enterprise? No. But I know enough about my field to be able to talk to the netw