Southern California CISO Community
Executive Summit
November 18, 2026 | The Waterfront Beach Resort
November 18, 2026
The Waterfront Beach Resort
Collaborate with your peers
Get together with Southern California's top CISOs to tackle shared business challenges and critical priorities facing your role today. Participate in this one-day, local program with peer-driven topics and interactive discussions with your true C-level peers.
Join your peers to discuss the most critical issues impacting CISOs today:
Elevating Security Leadership Through Business Influence in the Resilience Era
Positioning AI Governance as a Foundation for Trusted Innovation
Modernizing Exposure Management for an Autonomous Future
Southern California CISO Governing Body
The Governing Body Co-Chairs shape the summit agenda, ensuring that all content is driven By CISOs, For CISOs®.
Governing Body Co-Chairs

Matt Crouse
Solar Turbines
CISO

Trina Ford
iHeartMedia
SVP, CISO

Nemi George
Pacific Dental Services
VP, Information Security Officer

Arthur Lessard
Universal Music Group
SVP & CISO

Diana Lovati
AEG
CISO

David Tyburski
Wynn Resorts
VP, CISO
What to Expect
Agenda
Gartner Keynote Session
Prepare Your Organization to Adapt Safely — Whatever Comes Next
CEOs and boards increasingly see digital and AI technologies as critical to growth despite ongoing market and geopolitical disruption. By intentionally embedding security into digital and AI solution delivery, CISOs can better prepare the enterprise to innovate faster, build resilience and recover more effectively from disruption.
Join this keynote to explore:
- Maturing the security operating model to better enable business strategy
- Building governance that enables secure, scalable digital delivery
- Elevating the CISO as a strategic business leader and growth enabler
Executive Boardroom Sessions
Rethinking Security for the Age of Agents
Agents are becoming the biggest opportunity in the enterprise, and the biggest adversary. They read your data and act under borrowed identities, at a speed no human review process was built to match. The old question in security was how to keep bad actors out. The new one is more complex: how do you create and manage the biggest risk in your own enterprise, the agents you deployed on purpose?
Join this session to discuss:
- Establishing a framework where data, identity, and agent security operate as one system
- Shifting from asking whether you can trust your agents to determining what access they can be trusted with
- Balancing innovation and risk by creating visibility needed to understand agent activity
AI in the Security Stack — Build, Buy or Extend?
As AI and agentic capabilities rapidly become embedded across the enterprise, security leaders face a critical decision: build custom capabilities, buy purpose-built platforms, or extend the tools already in place? The stakes go beyond technology selection—impacting speed, control, talent strategy, risk management, and long-term resilience. Organizations that get this decision right can accelerate innovation and security outcomes; those that get it wrong risk creating new complexity, cost, and operational blind spots.
Join this session to discuss:
- Build vs. buy as a competitive advantage decision, not a technology decision
- The tradeoffs between control, speed and operational complexity
- Where agentic capabilities belong in the security stack, and who should own them
Keynote Session
The Heart of Resilience — Leadership in a Dynamic World
Today’s cyber landscape demands a new rhythm for leadership. More than just tactical expertise, CISOs must elevate into true business partners who prepare their organizations not just for the threats of today but for the threats of tomorrow. Effective security leaders influence change, foster resilient teams, and, at the heart of it all, put people first even as technology evolves like never before.
Join Elliott Jones, CISO of Kaiser Permanente, as he shares his perspectives and stories on:
- Navigating the evolution to the modern day CISO
- Championing resilience with insights on the changing threat landscape and a focus on business continuity
- Cultivating adaptable teams and future‑ready talent to advance the security mission
Breakout Sessions
Strategic Cyber Leadership — From Trust to Action
As organizations race to adopt new technologies and navigate emerging risks, CISOs face a growing leadership challenge: driving action in the absence of certainty. Whether entering a new organization, taking on an expanding remit or leading through transformation, success depends on building trust, navigating competing priorities and creating alignment before a crisis forces it.
Join this interactive session to explore:
- Building credibility and influence with executives, boards and business leaders
- Creating urgency around emerging risks before they become visible incidents
- Shaping decisions when security and business priorities appear to be at odds
From Noise to Proof — Reinventing Vulnerability Management
Most security programs measure effort — not outcomes. CISOs patch thousands of vulnerabilities and deploy countless tools, yet real resilience depends on proving defenses actually work. Organizations are shifting from assumptions to evidence using autonomous pentesting to view environments through an attacker’s lens.
Join this session to come away with insights on:
- Prioritizing real attack paths and exploitable vulnerabilities
- Closing the find, fix, verify loop with measurable improvement
- Reducing attacker dwell time with offense informed detection
Apply to Participate
Each application is carefully vetted to ensure members meet established criteria, preserving the quality of the network and enabling meaningful, peer‑level discussions among leaders from the world’s leading organizations.
Once you submit your application, a Community Program Manager will schedule a conversation to understand your priorities and interests and complete onboarding, including access to year‑round community events.
Location
Venue & Accommodation
The Waterfront Beach ResortValet Parking is COMPLIMENTARY
*Please pick up a validation sticker at the registration desk.
A block of rooms has been reserved at the The Waterfront Beach Resort at a reduced conference rate. Reservations should be made online or by calling (714) 845-8000. Please mention So Cal Executive Summit 2026 to ensure the appropriate room rate.
Deadline to book using the discounted room rate of $339 USD (plus tax) is October 26, 2026.
Community Program Manager
For inquiries related to this community, please reach out to your dedicated contact.
