Gerrie Katz-Wolf

Third generation feminist with decades in the technology sector in information security and cybersecurity

Gerrie is currently working in Cybersecurity Risk and Compliance at Caesars Entertainment.  She joined Caesars from Pearson Education, Inc., a multinational educational company where her responsibilities included the development and implementation of risk and vulnerability assessment programs.  

Before relocating to Las Vegas, she was a Vice President at two financial Fortune 5 institutions (Citigroup and Merrill Lynch) in New York supporting the Chief Information Security Officers’ (CISO) education, legal, compliance and regulatory efforts.  Gerrie worked for the very first CISO at Citi and one of the most innovative CISOs at Caesars.

Her introduction to IT was at the New York City Parking Violations Bureau - working on updating and redesigning parking tickets to reduce keypunch errors and increase process ability rates.

In the 1970s: primarily men in offices; women were mostly clerical assistants and secretaries; computers were beginning to replace typewriters; and media was floppy disks - 8 inches  in diameter with a magnetic coating, enclosed in a cardboard case with the capacity of just one megabyte.

In 1995 a $10 million computer fraud against Citibank appeared to be the first successful penetration by a hacker into the systems that transfer trillions of dollars a day around the world's banks.  Citibank then formed the first Information Security Office that Gerrie is proud to have been a part of.  She is still in touch with a close group of women that she met there - her "old girls network."

Gerrie received her undergraduate degree at Queens College the City University of
New York studying Early Childhood Education and Psychiatric Social Work - that she says helped her to work with executives on Wall Street.

Gerrie is most impressed with the current generation of women in technology and believes that she can really consider finally retiring for the third time.

---

---