Iowa’s cybersecurity leadership spans enterprise software, financial services, state government, higher education, advisory work, and large-scale architecture and risk programs. The leaders in this feature are working across very different environments, but they share a common focus: building security programs that can support growth, manage risk, and keep pace with increasingly complex technology estates. Their backgrounds reflect a mix of operational security, governance, infrastructure, compliance, and executive leadership across both public- and private-sector organizations.
Eric Anders — Chief Information Security Officer, Workiva
Eric Anders is chief information security officer at Workiva, where he has spent more than a decade progressing through the company’s security organization from senior security engineer to information security manager, director of information security, senior director of information security, and now chief information security officer. His career reflects a long internal build in information security governance, paired with earlier experience as a senior security consultant at Security PS focused on application assessments, penetration testing, and code reviews.
Ryan Wood — Chief Information Security Officer, VGM Group, Inc.
At VGM Group, Ryan Wood serves as chief information security officer, leading a risk-based cybersecurity strategy that spans security operations, compliance, accreditation, quality assurance, and broader information security leadership. Before joining VGM, he was director of information technology security and systems engineering at Krause Group, where his remit covered security engineering, identity management, application security, asset security, security operations, incident response, governance, risk, compliance, and systems engineering across a large retail and enterprise footprint. Earlier roles at Kum & Go, Aureon, FBL Financial Group, Jacobson Companies, and ADP added depth in infrastructure, SIEM, virtualization, policy development, vendor selection, and enterprise systems administration.
Shane Dwyer — State Chief Information Security Officer, Iowa Department of Management
Shane Dwyer is the Iowa Department of Management’s chief information security officer, bringing experience across state government, healthcare, higher education, and military operations. Before joining Iowa in 2021, he served as chief information security officer for the Wisconsin Department of Health Services and earlier as senior director for information security and privacy officer at Minnesota State University, Mankato. His background points to long-running work in public-sector cybersecurity leadership, organizational risk management, privacy, and large-scale security strategy.
Jeff Franklin — Virtual CISO, Heartland Business Systems / Professor of Practice, Iowa State University
Before moving into academic and advisory work, Jeff Franklin spent more than a decade as chief information security officer for the State of Iowa, later also serving as deputy chief information officer and interim chief information officer. He then became chief cybersecurity officer for the Iowa Secretary of State, where he focused on election security, following a long stretch helping shape the state’s broader cybersecurity strategy and emergency protocols. Today, alongside his role as professor of practice at Iowa State University’s College of Engineering, he continues that leadership work through virtual chief information security officer and senior consulting roles built on a career spanning state government, election security, and multi-state cyber coordination.
Matt Raveling — Assistant Vice President, Enterprise Architecture, Principal Financial Group
Matt Raveling recently transitioned into the role of assistant vice president of enterprise architecture at Principal Financial Group after serving as chief information security officer for cloud security and leading identity and access management, data security, and artificial intelligence security. Before that, he led identity and access management, data security, and cloud security for seven years and earlier served as director of information technology, where he helped redesign a record-keeping platform supporting more than $100 billion in assets and introduced scaled agile practices across multiple teams. His path at Principal reflects a leadership profile that bridges cybersecurity, cloud transformation, identity, data protection, and enterprise architecture.
Kip Peters — Executive Partner, Security and Risk Management, Gartner
At Gartner, Kip Peters works as an executive partner in security and risk management, advising chief information security officers and senior security leaders across industries on their most important priorities. His background combines advisory work with direct operating experience in government, financial services, startups, higher education, and the military. Earlier in his career, he served as the first chief information security officer at FBL Financial Group, where he created and led the company’s enterprise information protection function, and before that he was also the first chief information security officer for the State of Iowa, establishing the executive branch’s information security program.
Security Leadership Across Iowa’s Public and Private Sectors
Iowa’s cybersecurity leadership includes executives building programs inside software companies, insurers, retailers, financial services organizations, universities, and state government. Across those settings, the common thread is the ability to connect security strategy to governance, resilience, modernization, and business performance. The result is a leadership bench that reflects both deep technical experience and broad enterprise responsibility.
Explore more profiles of the leaders shaping cybersecurity across numerous industries in our CISOs to Watch collection.