March 6, 2020
Alumni Spotlight: Thomas Graham
Thomas Graham, vice president and chief information security officer (CISO) for CynergisTek, is a proud alumnus of ECU and the College of Business (COB). He received his BSBA with a management information systems (MIS) concentration in 2007 and his MBA in 2010. He wasn’t done, then. He went on to obtain a master’s in information security, and he is in the final stages of a Ph.D. in information assurance and security.
As a CISO, he’s responsible for all security-related issues around CynergisTek’s information. This is quite a Herculean task, but he still finds time to give back to the COB and the future leaders the College is preparing.
We recently spoke with him about his experience and ongoing relationship with the COB.
How did the College of Business prepare you for your career path?
While the education I received in the classrooms at ECU has been truly beneficial, I feel like I actually learned more from talking to my professors outside of the classroom than I ever did inside of them. This is because COB professors took the time to speak with me and to get to know me as more than just a student. I could meet them in their offices and talk through real-world problems, not simply something we were reading about in a textbook.
Whenever I started to try and give time back, I did it for the COB because I feel more at home here; I feel the value and the ability of the students coming out of the College is really strong.
When did you know you wanted to give your time back to the College of Business?
To be a little selfish, the better the students do in school, the better they do in their careers, and therefore, the better my degree looks. All joking aside, this was something I knew from the beginning. Anyone can write a check for $5, $100, etc., but the knowledge and insight provided by alumni cannot truly be quantified.
Once I got into the business world, I worked with my Charleston-based company to establish a recruitment program with the MIS department. When the students came into the company, I did my best to help them and point them in the right direction. I think at one point, 10 – 15% of the Charleston workforce were ECU grads. Some stuck around, and some went on to bigger and brighter things.
Why do you give to the College of Business?
As a nontraditional student, I had a family to support upon graduation. I didn’t have the monetary means to help the COB. So, what could I do? I can provide insights from the real world. I can tell the students and faculty, “Here’s what we’re seeing, and here’s our advice” that will benefit the students and possibly open them up to new opportunities in the job market.
How does giving of one’s time benefit the College of Business?
I think my interaction with the College can help the MIS department keep its curriculum current. You don’t want the curriculum to target what is required today. You want it to target what will be needed for tomorrow. I want to help the College stay on the cutting edge as opposed to the bleeding edge.
Why would you recommend other COB pirates to give their time to the College of Business?
Giving of your time and intellectual knowledge, no matter how you decide what that looks like, can benefit one student or 50 students in the real world. Selfishly, the better the students coming out of ECU, the better your own degree will look, as I mentioned before. However, one of the mantras, while I was a student at ECU, was around service — service to the community, to each other, to yourself and to the University. By providing just a small portion of time back to ECU, you may provide information that a student may not otherwise have known. You may be able to validate what a professor has been talking about all semester long in class. Or, you may even provide insight to a professor that helps her or him communicate their lesson plan(s) just a little bit better.
What’s the last book you read and why?
So, I am probably an anomaly in the business world. In my off time, I try not to read a book about my profession or generally the business world as I am inundated daily with articles and news clippings about different items. Between this and the reading I have had to do for my Ph.D., I try to decompress in some way as I do feel you should allow your mind to relax. I am trying to think of the very last book I read, and I am drawing a blank. It was, however, not business related. It was probably more sci-fi fantasy.