Illinois is home to a cybersecurity leadership bench that stretches across healthcare, higher education, industrial assurance, and aviation. The women featured here are helping secure environments where trust, safety, privacy, and operational continuity are all mission-critical, from hospitals and universities to global enterprises and one of the world’s largest airlines. Their work reflects the breadth of modern security leadership: board-level risk oversight, privacy governance, cyber resilience, incident response, and the ability to align security strategy with complex organizational goals.
Shefali Mookencherry — Chief Information Security Officer and Chief Privacy Officer, University of Illinois Chicago
Shefali Mookencherry serves as Chief Information Security Officer and Chief Privacy Officer at the University of Illinois Chicago, where she leads information security, identity and access management, and privacy across the university. Her role spans strategic and operational leadership, from governance and policy refinement to incident response, security operations, HIPAA remediation, FERPA-related collaboration, and the protection of institutional data across academic, research, and healthcare environments. With more than 20 years in higher education and more than 30 years in healthcare, including 17 years in senior management, she brings an unusually broad perspective that combines cybersecurity, privacy, compliance, healthcare technology, and large-scale operational leadership. Her background also includes prior CISO leadership at Edward-Elmhurst Health and deep consulting experience in security, reimbursement, compliance, and health IT transformation.
Angela C. Williams — Senior Vice President & Chief Information Security Officer, UL Solutions
Angela C. Williams is Senior Vice President and Chief Information Security Officer at UL Solutions, where she leads the company’s global information security program with responsibility for identifying, evaluating, and reporting risks while ensuring the confidentiality, integrity, availability, privacy, and recovery of information assets. Her leadership style is grounded in building cyber maturity in phases: reinforcing foundational capabilities, scaling the program, and then optimizing and measuring progress. Before UL Solutions, she served as CISO at Hillrom and held senior cybersecurity leadership roles at Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan and Wayne County. That background gives her a strong mix of healthcare, enterprise, and public-sector experience, along with a clear record of linking security strategy to broader business transformation. She also serves as Advisory Board Chair for ChicagoCISO and is active in mentoring and supporting the next generation of women entering cybersecurity.
Jill Rhodes — Senior Vice President & Chief Information Security Officer, Option Care Health
Jill Rhodes is Senior Vice President and Chief Information Security Officer at Option Care Health, where she oversees information security and data governance for a major healthcare organization. She is known for building information security environments from the ground up with a focus on governance, people, process, and technology, and for fostering an organization-wide culture of security rather than treating cyber as a narrow technical function. Her background is particularly distinctive: she is a lawyer, former U.S. intelligence officer, and former Foreign Service officer with an LL.M. in National Security Law. Before Option Care Health, she served as CISO at Trustmark and held senior federal leadership roles involving intelligence community cloud strategy, data exploitation, education, policy, and national security. That combination of legal, intelligence, and enterprise cyber experience gives her a rare ability to connect security, privacy, governance, and mission resilience at the executive level.
Nidhi Luthra — Vice President, Cybersecurity and Compliance, and Chief Information Security Officer, Baxter
Nidhi Luthra most recently served as Global Chief Information Security Officer at Baxter, where she led cyber risk, resilience, regulatory assurance, incident response governance, and the secure adoption of GenAI and connected technologies across a Fortune 500 medtech enterprise spanning pharmaceuticals, medical devices, and consumer health. Her work has focused on translating technical risk into operational and financial impact, positioning cybersecurity as a business enabler and trust function in regulated healthcare and technology environments. Prior to Baxter, she held senior cyber leadership roles at Abbott, AMITA Ascension Health, Presence Health, and Stericycle, building a track record across manufacturing, healthcare delivery, and enterprise operations. Her experience stands out for its combination of enterprise security leadership, crisis readiness, regulatory credibility, and the ability to support transformation, integration, and growth in environments where trust directly affects market access and enterprise value.
Deneen DeFiore — Vice President & Chief Information Security Officer, United Airlines
Deneen DeFiore is Vice President and Chief Information Security Officer at United Airlines, where she leads cybersecurity and digital risk efforts for one of the world’s largest airlines and helps strengthen resilience across a sector increasingly viewed as critical infrastructure. Her profile stands out for the way it combines enterprise security leadership with broader aviation and national infrastructure relevance. She has emphasized cyber resilience, operational continuity, and aviation cyber safety, placing her work at the intersection of business risk, public trust, and transportation security. Beyond United, she also serves on boards including the National Infrastructure Advisory Council, where she advises on securing national infrastructure, and she is active as a mentor and sponsor for the next generation of cybersecurity and technology leaders.
Why Illinois stands out for women in cybersecurity leadership
What makes Illinois especially compelling is the range of sectors its cybersecurity leaders help protect. This is a state where cyber leadership is shaping outcomes in healthcare, research, product assurance, and aviation alike, showing how the role has expanded far beyond technical defense alone. The women in this feature represent that evolution clearly: leaders building resilient institutions, guiding critical risk decisions, and helping define what modern cybersecurity leadership looks like across Illinois.
For more Women’s Month cybersecurity leadership features, visit CISO Whisperer’s Women’s Month collection.