Meet the leaders: Katherine Mansted

Katherine Mansted is the executive director of cyber intelligence at CyberCX, Australia’s largest cyber security company. Here, she lets us in on the one mantra she has applied relentlessly to her career. 

What is the best piece of feedback you’ve received?
Work smart, not hard. The mantra of my late law school professor Terry Gygar, it’s something I’ve applied relentlessly in my career. There’s no moral superiority in being “busy”.

What are you most proud of in your career?
Building a region-leading intelligence capability, CyberCX Intelligence … our team and leaders are more than 50 percent women, challenging expectations in an industry that averages around 25 percent female representation.

What advice would you give to anyone juggling work and other life commitments?
I wouldn’t presume to give them advice! 

But what I can do as a leader in a workplace is to embrace people’s passions and priorities in and out of work. Simply put, a 9 to 5 today should not look like a 9 to 5 from the noughties. WFH must be here to stay and is important for creating flexibility. Presentism is just bad culture. And part-time or career break chapters need to be seen as the norm, not a question mark.

What keeps you awake at night?
Australian leaders of different political stripes have said that Australians are facing our most dangerous strategic circumstances since the end of World War II. That’s a profoundly dire assessment …

Perhaps more than at any point in history, the choices we as private citizens and business leaders make every day can help Australia’s national security. What narratives do we engage with on social media? How do I seek out trusted journalism? Are we taking our cyber security seriously?

Who is the best leader you have ever worked for and why?
I’ve had the privilege to work for some of Australia’s top thinkers and doers: a High Court judge, a Cabinet Minister, leaders in universities and the cyber industry. Every one of them has pushed me to places I’m uncomfortable with. Offered me a job I didn’t think I could do. Set me a place at a table I didn’t think I was qualified to be at. Encouraged a career 180 to a totally new field. 

[Great] leaders back you, even when you don’t fully back yourself. And sometimes, great leaders encourage you to move on, even if they’d prefer you to stay.

How are you using AI in your life?
Personally, mostly for writing limericks and making recipes that comedically miss key steps!

Professionally, while the ‘good guys’ are using AI for exciting purposes, my job involves finding out how the bad guys are using AI to cause harm. 

Recently, my team at CyberCX uncovered one of the world’s largest networks of fake social media accounts … The network, which we called Green Cicada, was creating and spreading divisive political content via up to 8,000 fake X accounts … this let them conduct global disinformation at a scale, pace and low cost previously unimaginable. 

If you were elected Prime Minister what is the one thing you would change?
The relationship between ministers and the departments they lead. Physically, there’s a gulf between MPs, who are mostly in their electorates or the labyrinth in Parliament House, and departmental leaders and their staff, who are mostly in departmental buildings across Canberra. Intellectually, ministers can be insulated from the bureaucracy by their political advisers.