Holly Foxcroft

One of the Tech Women Celebration 50 - women changing the ratio of the tech workforce

Holly Foxcroft is Head of Neurodiversity in Cyber Research and Consulting at Stott and May Consulting. She has been diagnosed with both ADHD and autism, and both of these diagnoses were made in adulthood.

Holly is a Royal Navy veteran, serving for six years before leaving to build a career in cyber recruiting. Her son was dignosed with autism in 2014 and Holly has become a champion for neurodiversity in cyber and a campaigner for change.

In her present role at Stott and May, Holly is working on the development of policies in best practice, guidance, training and consulting around neurodiversity in cyber, and better supporting neurodivergent cyber professionals, not just through the recruitment process, but through effecting cultural change and challenging biases in the workplace.

And those biases are still very much in place. What doesn't help is the depiction of neurodivergent traits as shorthand for someone with poor social skills. Negative stereotypes around communication ability, the ability to concentrate or manage heavy workloads are still doing a lot of damage, and it is these sterotypes that Holly seeks to break down.

In addition to campaigning to have those with neurodivergent traits better supported within the corporate realm, Holly also campaigns for better cyber education for school age children. Plenty of cyber criminals have neurodivergent traits. It is becoming increasingly well recognised thanks to the work of people like Holly that when childen begin using the internet at around six years or younger, that a combination of neurodivergent traits, parents who aren't as clued up about the risks of the internet as they could be, and an education system that doesn't begin to address cybersecurity until university level is a recipe for poor outcomes.

Holly continues to work to facilitate changes of policy that would be more likely to encourage some of these individuals into white hat roles and for a more diverse, creative and ultimately more effective cyber security workforce.