bdb97cee_2013_Board_Elections___OWASP__Josh_Sokol
[Candidate] Bio [Josh Sokol] 
Josh Sokol began his involvement with the OWASP Foundation over six and a half years ago. At the time, he was a newly hired Web Systems Engineer, working at National Instruments, and one of his teammates encouraged him to attend an OWASP meeting due to his active interests around Information Security. After just a single meeting, Josh was hooked. Soon, thereafter, Josh began helping the OWASP Austin Chapter Leader with scheduling and facilitating the meetings at National Instruments. His friend ended up taking over as President of the chapter and Josh became his VP. Several years later his friend was looking for someone to take over as President of the chapter and Josh was the natural choice. After fulfilling his obligations as Treasurer of the Capital of Texas ISSA Chapter, Josh took on the role of President of OWASP Austin. Josh installed a strong leadership team around him and worked with them to grow the chapter from a meeting average of 10-15 people to a consistent 40+, created monthly sponsored happy hours to help the community network, began weekly study groups to aide members in learning different topics, and co-founded the Lonestar Application Security Conference (LASCON) in order to make the OWASP Austin Chapter entirely self-sustaining as well as one of the largest financial contributors to the OWASP Foundation. After two years of serving as the OWASP Austin President, Josh handed the reigns over to another member of his leadership team and joined the OWASP Global Chapter Committee. Within two months of joining, the committee appointed Josh as the Chair. While serving on this committee, Josh fought for the rights of the Chapters. He helped to re-write the Chapter Handbook and created several new initiatives with the goal of helping maximize the potential of all OWASP chapters. Josh served as the Chair of the Global Chapter Committee until the committee structure was eliminated by the OWASP Board in late 2012. Josh continues to be an active member of the OWASP Austin leadership team.In his professional life, Josh has spent the past three and a half years employed as the Information Security Program Owner at National Instruments where he handles all vulnerability management, risk management, security architecture, security training, and security policies (among many other things) for the company. He has presented on security topics at BlackHat, OWASP AppSec USA, BSides Las Vegas, MISTI InfoSecWorld, and many more and is currently developing a free and open source risk management tool. Josh lives in Austin, TX with his wife and four daughters.
2013 Board Elections - OWASP
Josh Sokol