Kansas’ cybersecurity leadership spans healthcare, public sector security operations, federal technology work, corrections, enterprise application security, and financial services. The leaders in this feature reflect a mix of hands-on security management, governance, compliance, cloud security, incident response, and large-scale program leadership across both government and private industry.
Kara Speciale — Chief Information Security Officer, Children’s Mercy Kansas City
Kara Speciale is senior director and chief information security officer at Children’s Mercy Kansas City. She brings more than 20 years of experience across risk, internal controls, technology, and security, with a background rooted in both financial services and technology. Before taking on the top security role at Children’s Mercy, she led information security governance, risk, and compliance for the organization, with responsibility for policy, standards, procedures, risk assessments, security awareness, third-party risk management, business continuity, disaster recovery, and security metrics reporting. Earlier in her career, she served as chief information security officer at NBH Bank, was a business unit information security officer at SS&C Technologies, and spent more than a decade at Deloitte in enterprise risk services roles supporting financial services and technology clients.
Avery Moore — Chief Information Security Officer, Jazz Solutions, Inc.
Avery Moore now serves as chief information security officer for Jazz Solutions, Inc. in a remote role, following a long career in information security leadership across federal and commercial environments. His background includes senior security roles at Perspecta and General Dynamics Information Technology, where he managed security teams supporting Federal Student Aid systems, FedRAMP-authorized cloud environments, incident response, vulnerability management, audit support, and authorization-to-operate efforts. Earlier roles at Capitol Federal Savings Bank, SAIC, the National Security Agency, and the U.S. Army added experience in risk management, SOX controls, banking security, intelligence analysis, and security advising.
Nathaniel Cole — Chief Information Security Officer, WorkWave
Nathaniel Cole is chief information security officer at WorkWave. He took on that role in 2025 after serving as chief information security officer at TreviPay, where he previously held the title of director of security. His career has centered heavily on application security, cybersecurity testing, cloud-native security work, and product-facing security leadership. Before TreviPay, he held senior roles within TÜV Rheinland Group and TÜV Rheinland OpenSky, including global head of the Cybersecurity Testing Center of Excellence and chief technology officer for Cyber Security Testing & Certification. Earlier positions at Hallmark Cards, UMB Bank, and Jack Henry & Associates focused on application security programs, manual code review, dynamic and static testing, vendor evaluation, remediation processes, and security engineering.
Mark Abraham — Deputy Chief Information Security Officer, State of Kansas Office of Information Technology Services
At the State of Kansas Office of Information Technology Services, Mark Abraham serves as deputy chief information security officer, overseeing information security officers across cabinet agencies and helping lead the state’s broader cybersecurity program. His work has included expanding security operations center coverage to 24x7x365, launching a security service portfolio, driving an enterprise identity and access management initiative, and helping secure 16,000 endpoints through enterprise-scale endpoint detection and response deployment. Before stepping into state cybersecurity leadership, he spent years at CenturyLink and EMBARQ in roles spanning application security development, business information security, cloud migration, enterprise applications, and technology strategy.
Georgia Schafer — Security Administrator, Kuvare Holdings
Georgia Schafer is security administrator at Kuvare Holdings, bringing a background that spans cloud security, Microsoft 365, Azure, vulnerability management, threat hunting, and enterprise infrastructure security. Before joining Kuvare, she worked at REV Group in senior cybersecurity architecture and information system security management roles, where her work included zero trust controls in Microsoft 365 and Azure, vulnerability management reporting, intrusion detection, and a complex data center shutdown project. Her experience also includes technical and project leadership in the Kansas Army National Guard and earlier systems, infrastructure, and security work across enterprise environments.
Kansas Security Leadership Across Government and Industry
Kansas’ cybersecurity bench includes leaders working in healthcare, state government, corrections, financial services, and enterprise technology. Across those settings, the through line is practical security leadership grounded in governance, operations, compliance, and modernization. Together, these profiles show a state with cybersecurity talent spread across institutional infrastructure, regulated industries, and security-focused technology roles.
Explore more profiles of the leaders shaping cybersecurity across numerous industries in our CISOs to Watch collection.