Kate Bjelde ’15
Major: Sociology
Minor: Business

Counterterrorism was the most prominent international security issue when Kate Bjelde ’15 graduated from Concordia and that’s what she studied during graduate school at King’s College London. After completing her master’s degree in terrorism, security, and society, she thought she’d spend her career in government in counterterrorism, too, until a tip about a position in cybersecurity brought her on a whole new career path — facilitated by her studies at both Concordia and King’s College.

Bjelde, who grew up in Eden Prairie, Minnesota, attended Concordia following two years at a small college in Illinois, where she studied anthropology and French.

“I have a pretty long family legacy at Concordia, so I was missing out on being part of that and transferred,” she said.

Her anthropology coursework counted toward her new major at Concordia, sociology, and she took up business as a minor. She sang with the Chapel Choir, making many good friends and participating in the Concordia Christmas Concerts she had seen every year since she was a child. She joined the Family Weekend Committee and served as an Orientation Leader her senior year.

As a member of Concordia’s Student Government Association, Bjelde learned the ins and outs of dealing with bureaucracy, working effectively within an existing system to accomplish organizational objectives — knowledge that would prove crucial in her current position as strategic advisor to the assistant secretary of defense for cyber policy.

“It helped me understand that the process can serve a purpose,” she said. “Practicing that approach and learning to flex that muscle … Things will take a very long time unless you put in the work to make that process work for you, and I think the Student Government Association provided an avenue to learn how to do that at a very approachable level.”

After grad school, Bjelde took a break, applying for positions in counterterrorism in the knowledge that government jobs often have lengthy hiring processes. Unexpectedly, a friend from high school reached out to Bjelde, suggesting she apply for a position as project coordinator for cybersecurity projects at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard Kennedy School.

Bjelde applied and accepted the job.

“What a fantastic learning experience and really, just a master class for me,” she recalled. “I was surrounded by so many experts, but I also learned about the role of academic institutions in influencing policy and how to network and build a network of really interesting humans that I might want to talk to in the future.”

She spent a year in Boston, enjoying the position and the snowy winters, and then the National Geospatial Intelligence Agency called her about one of those positions she’d applied for earlier. She accepted the position and stayed in it for nearly two years. Deciding she needed a broader portfolio, she took a job working for Thomson Reuters Special Services, supporting a number of different organizations throughout the government. Her broad portfolio there included working for the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, better known as DARPA, the organization that created the internet.

“That got me thinking about some of the things that I had started thinking about when I was working at Harvard,” Bjelde said. “And that just got me really interested in getting my foot back in the door in government and seeing if there were any possible opportunities to work in a cyber or cyber-adjacent role.”

Technology is changing at a pace that doesn’t allow us to be stuck.

While Bjelde had been diversifying and honing her skills, so had her colleagues, including her original supervisor at Harvard, who had become the principal cyber advisor to the secretary of the army. In subsequent assignments, their paths crossed again — when there was an opening on his team, she interviewed for the position and began working in the Pentagon.

Eighteen months into that role, she had the opportunity to serve as strategic advisor to the newly confirmed — and the Department of Defense’s first ever — assistant secretary of defense for cyber policy.

She completed that rotation in February. As strategic advisor, Bjelde served as a trusted advisor to the assistant secretary on a range of programs. She managed the special projects portfolio, gathering the right experts together and producing work for the White House, the secretary of defense, or the deputy secretary of defense. In addition, Bjelde helped ensure that the DOD is making progress meeting the expectations set forth by Congress in the National Defense Authorization Act.

The third part of her job involved working with the public, ensuring that when someone in her office agrees to speak at an event all the legal and ethical requirements are met and all related content released to the public is checked.

“You don’t have to be a subject matter expert to work in the field,” Bjelde emphasized. “It’s really an enabling job that I play. I am not developing the policy. I am making sure that the humans who have that expertise can come together and solve hard problems in a room, and then I can take on some of their tasks.”

She loves her work.

“There are so many challenges that we have yet to figure out how to solve, which makes it a really ripe environment for innovation, for creativity — for trying a different way of approaching the problem,” she said. “It’s not stuck in the status quo in the same way as other problems that we face because the technology is changing at a pace that doesn’t allow us to be stuck.”

Learn more about cybersecurity programs at Concordia.

^{Editor’s note: A version of this story was originally published in the .}