Connecticut’s cybersecurity leadership is shaped by executives working across banking, insurance, AI governance, and resilience-focused security roles. These women reflect different paths into the field, from building security programs inside financial institutions to advancing trusted AI frameworks and leading security functions inside major Connecticut-based organizations. Together, they show how the state continues to produce cybersecurity leaders with influence across both established industries and emerging areas of digital risk.
Suzette Leal — First Vice President, Chief Information Security Officer and Corporate Security, Ion Bank
Suzette Leal serves as First Vice President, Chief Information Security Officer and Corporate Security Officer at Ion Bank, based in Naugatuck. Her current leadership role is rooted in a financial institution where she has steadily expanded her responsibilities from Information Security Officer and GLBA Officer into the top security post. With more than two decades in the financial industry and roughly 20 years of information security leadership experience, she brings long-standing banking security depth to the state’s cybersecurity landscape.
Pamela Gupta — Founder & CEO, Trusted AI
Pamela Gupta leads Trusted AI, a Shelton-based company focused on AI governance, trust, and risk. Her work sits at the intersection of cybersecurity, privacy, governance, ethics, and AI accountability. Her background includes building security programs in earlier CISO and information security leadership roles, founding the ISC2 Connecticut chapter, chairing the Northeast Annual Cybersecurity Summit, and developing the AI TIPS framework to help organizations operationalize trustworthy AI. She brings a distinctive Connecticut profile because her leadership extends beyond traditional enterprise security into one of the most important emerging risk areas in technology.
Maria McNeil — Director, Information Security, The Hartford
Maria McNeil is Director of Information Security at The Hartford. She has built a long tenure inside the company through progressively senior security roles, moving from Information Security Specialist to Manager and then Director. Before The Hartford, she also held security and compliance-related roles at Pfizer and in consulting, giving her a background that blends information security, IT quality, compliance, and enterprise program work. Her career reflects the kind of steady, internally developed leadership that remains central to Connecticut’s insurance and security ecosystem.
Michelle D. Syc — Senior Director of Cyber Security, Travelers
Michelle D. Syc is Senior Director of Cyber Security at Travelers, where she leads third-party security due diligence and helps shape the strategic roadmap for the enterprise vendor security function. Over her years at Travelers, she has progressed from Senior Security Review Technologist to Director and then Senior Director, building deep experience in third-party risk, information security governance, cross-functional collaboration, and enterprise decision support. Before joining Travelers, she held security and compliance leadership roles at ADNET Technologies, CohnReznick, and Kostin Ruffkess & Company, with earlier experience at Cigna, giving her a career path grounded in both consulting and in-house risk leadership. She also brings strong visibility in Connecticut’s cybersecurity community through speaking engagements, published commentary, and membership in the Connecticut InfraGard chapter.
Where Connecticut’s Cyber Leadership Is Expanding
Connecticut’s cyber bench is growing in ways that go beyond traditional security titles alone. These leaders are shaping cybersecurity through banking, insurance, enterprise security, business resilience, and AI governance. That mix gives the state a distinctive profile, with leadership strength in both legacy regulated industries and newer areas where trust, oversight, and digital risk are becoming just as important as technical defense.
Explore more profiles of the amazing women shaping cybersecurity across numerous industries in our Women’s Month collection.