When the TCS New York City Marathon starts on Sunday, November 1, its five-borough course will be celebrating its 50th anniversary. One of the runners on it is a CISO in his own 50th year, running the sixth of seven marathons for a cause close to home. He is not the only security leader who knows what mile 20 feels like. The seven CISOs below run for different reasons: charity, personal milestones, the challenge of going long, and the simple chance to think.
Giles Ashton-Roberts – CISO, Swissport
As CISO of Swissport since 2023, Giles Ashton-Roberts is accountable for cybersecurity across the aviation services company’s global operations. He came to the role after more than eight years at FirstGroup, where he moved from IT service delivery and security director to five years as CISO, and a career that began in systems support. As a technology leader in aviation, he is used to preparation, pressure, and keeping calm when things get difficult, and this year he has put all three to the test outside work. In his 50th year, he is running seven marathons across four continents for the Motor Neurone Disease Association, in honor of his mother, and New York Road Runners has named him to its Team Inspire for this year’s race. Paris and Boston came with a calf injury he ran through, and he followed them with London, Sydney, and Chicago. New York will be his sixth, with Mumbai to close the challenge on January 17, 2027. His goal is to raise at least £1,000 for each of the ten years his mother lived with MND.
Andrea Bergamini – VP & CISO, MiniMed
Andrea Bergamini will be on the same New York course on Sunday, running for Breakthrough T1D. When he announced the race, he added a teaser: anyone who visited his fundraising page had a 99% chance of guessing which company he was joining next. The answer arrived in October 2026, when he became VP and CISO of MiniMed. A marathon runner who uses running to work through problems, he brings a track record of building security from scratch. At Orbia he was hired to create the cybersecurity function from the ground up, reporting to its board and audit committee, before becoming the company’s CIO. Earlier, he established Cargill’s global Cyber Command Center, a team of more than 60 security professionals across hubs in the US and India.
Subra Kumaraswamy – SVP & CISO, Visa
More than 30 years ago, Subra Kumaraswamy stepped off a plane at JFK Airport with, in his words, “little more than a suitcase, a dream.” In November 2025 he returned to New York to cross the finish line of the city’s marathon, in the same month he marked ten years at Visa. He titled his reflection “From JFK to the Finish Line,” and drew the same lesson from running and leadership: success is not about speed, but about staying steady, resilient, and focused when things get tough. He has served as Visa’s CISO since 2022, after leading its product security engineering and security architecture, and co-authored the book Cloud Security and Privacy.
Christine Whichard – Global CISO, IDEXX
As of 2023, Christine Whichard had run more than 17 marathons, 12 of them Boston. In her spare time, she says, she likes to jump into any endurance sport. Her career has covered plenty of distance too. She describes herself as “the master of twists, turns, and detours,” moving from waitressing at TGI Fridays to data analytics, business intelligence, and client operations before taking on cybersecurity at SmartBear, where she became Global CISO and CIO. She has served as Global CISO of IDEXX since April 2024.
Joseph Zhou – CISO (EMEA, Americas), SHEIN
Joseph Zhou is a Boston Marathon runner and Ironman competitor who credits distance running with building the mental toughness he applies to security leadership. A five-time CISO, he now leads security for SHEIN across EMEA and the Americas while running its global security engineering, covering more than 2,000 applications, six public clouds, and more than 100 robotics-driven fulfillment facilities. He describes the problem most security leaders now face as securing a company that deploys AI agents faster than it can govern them. His answer at SHEIN has been to build, standing up agentic AI security operations and a dedicated AI red team alongside its global red team and bug bounty programs.
Michael Coates – CISO, Solana Foundation
The New York City Marathon is one line on Michael Coates’s endurance record, alongside the Chicago Triathlon, multiple half marathons, and a two-day, 200-mile bike ride. His security record runs just as long. He was Twitter’s first CISO, led security at Mozilla, chaired the OWASP Foundation, and co-founded Altitude Networks, which CoinList acquired in 2022. He became CISO of the Solana Foundation in June 2026 and is also a general partner at Seven Hill Ventures, investing in early-stage cybersecurity companies.
Luke Fairless – Technology Director – Cyber (CISO), Tesco
Not every marathoner is chasing a time. Luke Fairless has said he is not very fast, though he can manage a half marathon without too much distress and has done a few full marathons. What he values most is what running gives him: thinking space, a chance to explore London’s green spaces, and time away from his phone and laptop. He no longer runs with music. That thinking time has a demanding job to come back to. After more than two decades at Tesco, he leads cybersecurity as Technology Director – Cyber, and has co-chaired the Evanta UK & Ireland CISO community since 2019.
Same Distance, New Equipment
The marathon has been 26.2 miles for a long time, but almost everything around it has changed. Carbon-plated super shoes, carefully planned fueling, and data from a watch on every wrist have reshaped how people train and race. The fundamentals have not moved: pacing, preparation, and the discipline to keep going when the miles get hard. Cybersecurity looks much the same. The tools keep evolving, from cloud platforms to AI, but the work still comes down to preparing well, pacing for the long haul, and staying steady under pressure. These seven leaders do that every day at work, and some of them do it on Sunday mornings too.
Discover more CISOs securing their organizations:
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- Shared Defence: Cybersecurity Leaders Protecting Research and Education
- Protecting Member Trust: Cybersecurity Leaders Behind America’s Credit Unions
- On the Right Track: Europe’s Rail Cybersecurity Leaders to Watch
John Kevin Hao is a news and feature writer covering cybersecurity, technology, and business targeted for professional audiences.