bio

Nina D'Amato is the Chief of Staff for the Department of Technology for the City and County of San Francisco, a $140M department that provides 23 IT services to 60K consumers. She oversees the Strategy, Performance, Governance, and Communications teams-as well as special projects. A US Marine for 23 years, Nina has served her country at home and abroad, including as a Department of Defense Congressional Fellow. At the City of San Francisco Nina has implemented the City’s first real-time performance dashboards for decision-making, marshaled funds for regional BCDR investments, and has created a new model for customer input into shared IT services. Nina is passionate about advanced technologies and continuously seeks organizational improvement, A strong leader with a dedication to excellent services, Nina is often asked to speak as an industry expert, including keynotes at the annual Splunk conference, Deep Learning and ML conferences, and Women in AI events. 

Why did you get into cybersecurity?

I am a retired US Marine who now oversees various portfolios as the Chief of Staff for the City of San Francisco's Department of Technology. Previously, I worked the defense technology portfolio as a Department of Defense Congressional Fellow for Senator Bob Casey of Pennsylvania. It was there I was introduced to DARPA, emerging security technologies, and the new dimension of warfare - information. Being exposed to that research it was clear that as fast as technologies were being built and deployed, the means to protect them had to be more thoughtful, more sophisticated, and equally lethal. Today, in our cities, cybersecurity is the fast growing portfolio. Cities are global targets for ransomware and that motivates our teams to ensure that the City of San Francisco is capable of protecting constituency data, ensuring financial transactions, and, ultimately, being digitally resilient in the growing threat landscape. 

More about Nina's work.

I oversee strategy, governance, and performance for the San Francisco Department of Technology. We are an internal service provider.

Nina's Cybersecurity Tip

Train your people, they are your strongest defense!