Some of the best security education comes from people who defend real organizations by day and bring those lessons into the classroom by night. The five leaders below have all held CISO seats while teaching graduate and undergraduate students at universities including Georgetown, Columbia, Northeastern, Duke, George Washington, and Texas A&M. Their careers are as varied as their syllabi. One built a technology company and edited computer magazines in Madrid before becoming a university CIO. Another helped design one of the first “last mile” shipping systems for container ships at Maersk. A third started out in IT for an ambulance service, and a fourth pioneered a crowd-sourced threat intelligence platform funded by the National Science Foundation.
Adam Mikeal – AVP & CISO, Texas A&M University
Adam Mikeal has spent nearly 29 years at Texas A&M, starting as a programmer in 1998. He led software development at the university libraries, helping form the Texas Digital Library, then directed IT for the College of Architecture, supporting more than 10,000 students with a staff of 30. He moved into security leadership as associate director of IT risk and policy, then served as data management officer and director of IT risk and identity, overseeing more than 250,000 protected identities. After serving as interim CISO, Mikeal became associate vice president and CISO in March 2023, protecting the largest R1 research university in the country, with more than $1.1 billion in research expenditures and 75,000 students. He has taught as an adjunct professor in the College of Engineering since 2016, leading a senior capstone course he designed, “DevOps and the modern IT team.” He holds a bachelor’s degree in history and music and a master’s in computer science from Texas A&M.
Jim Johnstone – CISO, Kinly
Dr. Jim Johnstone began in IT at Alert Ambulance Service and spent more than eight years running IT operations for emergency medical transportation provider Exceptional Medical Transportation, cutting technology operating costs by 25%. He joined Yorktel in 2010, leading digital media operations for clients including the U.S. Treasury, the FDA, and Merck, then served as vice president of global IT, building an ISO 27001 information security management system and moving the company to a cloud-first strategy. Johnstone became CISO of Yorktel-Kinly in January 2025, leading global cybersecurity, compliance, and risk, including AI governance, and was named an NJBIZ Executive Excellence honoree that year. Since December 2024 he has taught as an adjunct professor of cybersecurity at George Washington University, where he also serves as a doctoral advisor. He holds a Doctor of Engineering in cybersecurity analytics from GWU and a master’s in cybersecurity from Norwich University.
Robert Duncan – Group CISO, Ardagh Group
Robert Duncan began as a software engineer at Maersk in New Jersey, helping design one of the first “last mile” systems that let container ships coordinate with onshore logistics teams in near real time. Over seven years at Prudential, he rose from strategy manager to global head of technology risk, working across London, Hong Kong, and Denver, and he then led cyber security for ANZ’s global markets business in Melbourne. As CISO of Euronext, he oversaw security for exchanges in five countries and met regularly with their regulators, and he went on to spend more than six years as CISO of Direct Line Group. Duncan became Group CISO of Ardagh Group in May 2022, protecting a packaging manufacturer with 65 production facilities in 16 countries. Since 2016 he has taught cyber security and executive response to master’s students, first at Columbia’s School of Professional Studies and now at Northeastern University’s D’Amore-McKim School of Business, focusing on how the concept of “wicked problems” applies to executive-level cyber crisis management. He also speaks regularly at events such as the Financial Times Cyber Security Summit.
Pablo Molina – Interim CIO, AVP & CISO, Drexel University
Dr. Pablo Molina built a technology company in Madrid, edited computer magazines, wrote several books on technology, and taught IT at the Escuela de Hacienda Pública before moving to the United States as MIS manager at the Saint Louis Zoo. He taught at Washington University in St. Louis and the University of Missouri-St. Louis, directed IT at the University of Pennsylvania, and spent 12 years as campus CIO and associate vice president of IT at Georgetown University. After serving as CIO of Southern Connecticut State University and the Association of American Law Schools, Molina joined Drexel University in 2017 as associate vice president and CISO, and now also serves as interim CIO. He has taught at Georgetown since 2008, leading graduate courses in ethics in technology management, managing information security, and AI ethics, and received his second Tropaia Outstanding Faculty award in 2025. He founded the International Applied Ethics and Technology Association, serves on the board of the Center for AI and Digital Policy, and was a Fulbright Specialist researching AI in Switzerland in 2020. He holds a doctorate from Georgetown and CISSP and CIPP certifications.
Richard Biever – Assistant CIO, Duke University
Richard Biever worked in IT at Hewlett Packard and the Georgia Institute of Technology before joining Duke University in 2011 as CISO. Over more than 12 years at Duke, he led its security program, directed identity management, rolling out one of the first enterprise-wide multi-factor authentication environments in higher education, and headed network engineering and data analytics, co-leading the university’s technology response to COVID-19. As CISO and assistant CIO, he built a secure research enclave that meets NIST 800-171 requirements and pioneered STINGAR, a crowd-sourced threat intelligence platform funded by two National Science Foundation grants and deployed across higher education. After nearly three years leading information security policy, risk, and compliance at ElevateBio, Biever returned to Duke as assistant CIO in August 2026. He has served as an adjunct associate professor in the Pratt School of Engineering since 2023, where he created and teaches the cybersecurity fundamentals course in the Cybersecurity Master of Engineering program, with courses on Duke’s teaching record in both spring and fall 2026.
Teaching What They Practice
These five leaders show how classroom and security operations can strengthen each other. Mikeal and Biever have built their careers inside the universities they protect and teach at, while Duncan and Johnstone bring global corporate experience to graduate students. Molina links security with ethics, AI, and policy. By teaching what they practice, they are shaping the next generation of security leaders while defending their own organizations today.
Discover more CISOs securing their organizations:
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- Following the Money: America’s Financial Services CISOs to Watch
- Vital Signs: America’s Healthcare CISOs to Watch
- Securing the State: The UK’s Government Cybersecurity Leaders to Watch
- Keeping the Shelves Stocked: The UK’s Food and Beverage Cybersecurity Leaders to Watch
- Built on Trust: The UK’s Software CISOs to Watch
John Kevin Hao is a news and feature writer covering cybersecurity, technology, and business targeted for professional audiences.