Anna Collard
About
Anna Collard is currently SVP of Content Strategy & Evangelist for KnowBe4 Africa where she drives security awareness across the African continent. She has been working in the cybersecurity field for 18 years: as KnowBe4 Africa’s Managing Director and before that as security architect and consultant, where she has assisted organizations to build their cybersecurity defenses across South Africa, Europe, and the U.S.
Collard founded security content publisher Popcorn Training, now part of KnowBe4, which is a South African company that promotes cybersecurity awareness by using innovative, story-based techniques and gamification to make complex content simple to understand and easy to remember.
She won the Women in Tech Innovations Throughout Africa 2020 Award for Southern and Central Africa and featured in the Top 50 Women in Cybersecurity – Africa 2020.
She also featured in the Top 100 Women in Cyber 2020 globally by Cyber Defence Magazine. Collard holds various security certifications, such as CISSP, CISA, ISO 27001 lead auditor, CIPP/IT and used to be a Visa/Mastercard PCI DSS QSA.
What mentoring means to me
- I’ve spent the last 20 years building my own career, it’s time to give back and help others building theirs
- I’d like to see more African girls joining our industry – we need diversity and build up capacity.
- When speaking one-on-one with a young person who is interested to learn, I’m getting just as much back from the conversation. It’s very rewarding and I learn from them too.
Areas of Expertise
- Security Training