Middletown, Ohio, United States
A bold, strategic thinker with a builder’s mindset. Someone who thrives on innovation, embraces challenge, and is passionate about creating exceptional products from the ground up. Driven, ambitious, and relentlessly curious, with a track record of turning ideas into impact. Rod is a cybersecurity veteran with deep expertise in content marketing and community development. He's a regular keynote speaker and industry thought leader focused on Security for AI and AI for Security. Beyond his professional life at Microsoft of teaching AI to behave, Rod dedicates his spare time to crafting both fiction and non-fiction books. He's also known for his playful addiction to The Six Million Dollar Man and his proud stories about his grandkids. An experienced cybersecurity professional and best-selling author, Rod has a history of building and selling successful businesses and is a regular speaker and host at conferences, webinars, and live podcasts, where he undoubtedly draws inspiration for his fantastical worlds.
Creating a better informed world through collaborative empowerment.
* Microsoft MDO/MDA/MDI lead for the Security Advisors program - Serve as the product and community lead for Microsoft Defender Security Advisor private communities, connecting Microsoft Defender engineering teams with trusted security practitioners, MVPs, and customer advisors. Drive high‑signal, NDA‑protected engagement across Defender for Office, Defender for Apps, and Defender for Identity to accelerate product feedback, improve customer outcomes, and strengthen Microsoft’s security ecosystem. * Security MVP Program Lead - As the Security MVP Program Lead, I serve as the primary product and community liaison between Microsoft Security engineering teams and the global Microsoft Security MVP community. In this role, I drive trusted, two‑way engagement with top industry experts to influence product direction, accelerate adoption, and strengthen Microsoft’s security ecosystem across identity, XDR, cloud security, data protection, and AI‑driven security solutions. I connect external voices to internal pathways. * Cybersecurity and AI - Senior product leader working at the intersection of cybersecurity and artificial intelligence, helping shape how organizations securely adopt, govern, and operationalize AI at scale. Focused on translating real‑world security challenges into actionable product direction across Microsoft’s end‑to‑end security platform, spanning identity, data, threat protection, and AI governance.
Playing a pivotal role in providing expert guidance and insights to support the strategic and operational goals of the organization. This role involves collaborating with various teams, offering specialized knowledge, and contributing to the development and implementation of key initiatives.
As a Cloud Advocate focused on security, I amplify the valuable activity, participation, content and successes generated by our product teams, our services organization, those in our MVP program, and our customer communities around Microsoft security solutions. I manage product group partnerships and review of technical blockers based on customer feedback and help push requirements to product roadmap.
I advocate for our customers, partners, and MVPs in various ways. I am an experienced, energetic, and hands-on program manager, focused on security and artificial intelligence (AI), I amplify the valuable activity, participation, content and successes generated by our product teams, our services organization, those in our MVP program, our partners and our customer communities around Microsoft security and AI solutions. I manage product group partnerships and review technical blockers based on customer feedback and help establish requirements to product roadmaps. I partner with engineering, business development, marketing, sales and customer success and partner teams and have a proven background in leveraging the work of others to understand and develop solutions & go-to-market (GTM) strategies and drive these strategies from a product, tooling, engineering, and support standpoint to accomplish business objectives.
Co-host of the popular and longstanding The Microsoft Security Insights Show. I manage all aspects of production (pre and post), guest scheduling, marketing, and website development/management.
Co-host of the popular and longstanding The Microsoft Security Insights Show. I manage all aspects of production (pre and post), guest scheduling, marketing, and website development/management.