Indiana’s cybersecurity leadership bench reflects a mix of enterprise security, insurance, higher education, healthcare, manufacturing, and large-scale technology operations. The women in this feature show how cyber leadership in the state is built through different paths, from formal CISO roles to global security services, vulnerability management, and platform security leadership. Some are protecting highly regulated environments with broad operational scope, while others are helping shape mature programs focused on resilience, threat reduction, and business alignment. What connects them is range. Together, they show that Indiana’s cybersecurity influence is not confined to one industry, but spread across the kinds of organizations where trust, continuity, and disciplined execution matter most.
Julie Cornwell — Associate Director of Security, Cybersecurity & Risk, NCAA
Julie Cornwell serves as Associate Director of Information Security, Cybersecurity & Risk at the NCAA, bringing a leadership style rooted in servant leadership, collaboration, and practical risk alignment. Before joining the NCAA, she served as Chief Information Security Officer at Indiana State University and earlier built deep operational experience at Caterpillar across cyber threat intelligence, data loss prevention, and security engineering-related work. Her background reflects a strong understanding of adversary behavior, evolving threat landscapes, and the role of intelligence-driven defense in protecting critical assets. She stands out for combining technical security operations experience with a people-centered leadership approach that ties security priorities closely to enterprise mission, culture, and risk tolerance.
Jane Harper — V.P. and Sr. Director Global Security Services, Liberty Mutual Insurance
Jane Harper is V.P. and Sr. Director Global Security Services at Liberty Mutual Insurance, with more than 15 years of experience leading global programs across insurance, financial services, and healthcare. Before joining Liberty Mutual, she held senior information security leadership roles at Eli Lilly and Company and Henry Ford Health System, covering security, privacy, risk management, and business engagement. Her profile reflects hands-on and leadership responsibility across major security domains, from architecture, penetration testing, and forensics to incident response, governance, risk, and compliance. She stands out for her ability to build, operationalize, and optimize information security and risk management programs while remaining a relatable, people-focused leader.
Layla Wall — Director of Attack Surface Reduction, Edgewater Federal Solutions
Layla Wall is Director of Attack Surface Reduction at Edgewater Federal Solutions, where she leads vulnerability management operations supporting a large NIH environment spanning 27 institutes and centers. Her work includes standardizing processes, driving risk-based remediation, managing executive reporting, and leading teams focused on vulnerability management, web application scanning, database scanning, secure configuration management, data loss prevention, and compliance reporting. Before joining Edgewater, she held senior threat and vulnerability management leadership roles at Illumina, Smartsheet, Anthem, and other organizations, building enterprise-scale programs across healthcare, SaaS, and medical device environments. She stands out for her depth in exposure management, operational scale, and the disciplined use of governance, metrics, and threat intelligence to reduce enterprise attack surface.
Andrea Abell — CISO, Eli Lilly and Company
Andrea Abell is Chief Information Security Officer at Eli Lilly and Company, where she leads cybersecurity for one of Indiana’s most important global enterprises. Before joining Eli Lilly in 2023, she served as Chief Information Security Officer at NBCUniversal Media, LLC, adding major media and entertainment security leadership to a career already shaped by nearly 17 years at Lockheed Martin. At Lockheed Martin, her work spanned risk-based governance, incident response and recovery, perimeter defense, patch and vulnerability management, security operations, audit remediation, and enterprise security process improvement. She stands out for the breadth of her CISO experience across highly complex organizations and for a background that combines operational depth, governance discipline, and long-term security leadership.
Where Indiana’s Cybersecurity Leadership Shows Its Depth
The women in this Indiana feature reflect a leadership bench built through operations, risk discipline, and steady program development across multiple sectors. Their work touches athletics, insurance, higher education, healthcare, manufacturing, federal environments, and pharmaceutical security, showing how broad the state’s cybersecurity footprint has become. Just as important, their careers show that strong cyber leadership can emerge through different kinds of responsibility, from intelligence and engineering to governance, platform operations, and enterprise-wide services. That combination gives Indiana real depth in cybersecurity leadership and makes it a state worth watching closely.
Explore more profiles of the amazing women shaping cybersecurity across numerous industries in our Women’s Month collection.