Tennessee’s cybersecurity leadership community extends well beyond any single sector. Across retail, manufacturing, paper and packaging, housing, higher education, and advisory practice, the state has developed a strong bench of security executives whose experience spans prograe building, enterprise risk governance, operational technology, and board-level engagement. The leaders in this feature reflect that breadth, with backgrounds that connect technical depth to strategic influence across some of Tennessee’s most recognizable organizations.
Thomas Ratz — Senior Vice President, Technology and Chief Information Security Officer, Dollar General Corporation
Thomas Ratz has led enterprise information security, disaster recovery, and quality assurance at Dollar General Corporation since 2007, overseeing those functions across a Fortune 150 retailer with more than 190,000 employees, 20,000 locations across 48 states, and revenues exceeding $40 billion. His approach to security is grounded in the principle that mature security programs should drive compliance naturally, rather than treating compliance as the primary objective. That philosophy, sustained across nearly two decades at one of America’s largest discount retailers, reflects both the operational scale of the role and the strategic orientation required to keep security aligned with a business that operates at that level of complexity.
Elias Oxendine — Vice President, Information Security, Privacy, Network, IT Operations, IT Services, Enterprise Architecture, and Quality Engineering and Assurance, Tractor Supply Company
Elias Oxendine brings more than thirty years of experience in cybersecurity, technology, and enterprise risk to his role at Tractor Supply Company, where he regularly briefs executive leadership and board-level stakeholders on cybersecurity posture, material risk exposure, and resilience metrics. His responsibilities span information security, privacy, network operations, IT services, enterprise architecture, and quality engineering, giving him one of the broader remits in Tennessee’s retail technology landscape. He also advises cybersecurity SaaS businesses on AI-driven workflow automation and business intelligence through a separate consulting engagement, and is actively pursuing board of director roles where his expertise in cyber risk governance and digital oversight can strengthen institutional resilience.
Lana Davenport — Chief Information Security Officer, Sylvamo Corporation
Lana Davenport has served as CISO at Sylvamo Corporation since the company’s formation in 2021, building and leading a security program that spans cloud security, OT security, vulnerability management, incident response, risk management, data security, endpoint security, and enterprise compliance across a global paper and packaging manufacturer. Her background includes deep experience in DevSecOps and infrastructure security, and she holds CISSP, GSLC, and ITIL certifications. Operating in an environment where operational technology security sits alongside traditional IT risk, her profile reflects the kind of integrated technical and governance leadership that industrial-adjacent manufacturing environments require.
Darrell Jenkins — Chief Information Security Officer, Clayton Homes
Darrell Jenkins has spent more than thirty-two years at Clayton Homes, progressing from software developer through IT manager, IT director, director of shared service solutions, and senior director of enterprise technology operations before stepping into the CISO role in 2018. That arc gives him an institutional depth that is genuinely rare: he has watched the organization’s technology environment evolve across three decades and now leads the security program responsible for protecting it. He holds CISM, PMP, ITIL, and CSM certifications, and his security leadership is grounded in the operational realities of a large, vertically integrated housing manufacturer with complex technology dependencies.
Paul Connelly — Professor of Practice in Cybersecurity, Belmont University
Paul Connelly brings one of the most distinctive career trajectories in Tennessee’s security community: he began at the National Security Agency, spent nine years building the first cybersecurity program at the White House under three presidents, then six years building a regional cybersecurity audit and consulting practice at PricewaterhouseCoopers, before becoming the first CISO at HCA Healthcare, where he served for more than twenty years. He now teaches cybersecurity and business technology strategy at Belmont University, serves as an independent director at Fortified Health Security, advises the board of the Organ Procurement and Transplantation Network, and mentors CISOs as a faculty member at IANS Research. He has supported the rise of forty members of his teams into CISO positions across his career, a contribution to the profession that extends well beyond any single organization.
The range behind Tennessee’s cybersecurity leadership community
What stands out across this group is how different their paths have been and how much those differences matter. Long institutional tenures, government and advisory backgrounds, operational technology experience, and decades of enterprise programme ownership all show up here. Together they reflect a cybersecurity leadership community in Tennessee that has been built through sustained, substantive work across some of the state’s most consequential organizations, and whose influence extends into the boardroom, the classroom, and the broader profession.
Explore more profiles of the leaders shaping cybersecurity across numerous industries in our CISOs to Watch collection.