REGISTER

PANELISTS

Colleen Flaherty
Senior Editor of Special Content at Inside Higher Ed

Colleen Flaherty, senior editor of special content, previously served as Student Voice editor for Inside Higher Ed. Prior to joining the publication in 2012, Colleen was military editor at the Killeen Daily Herald, outside Fort Hood, Texas. Before that, she covered government and land use issues for the Greenwich Time and Hersam Acorn Newspapers in her home state of Connecticut. After graduating from McGill University in Montreal with a degree in English literature, Colleen taught English and English as a second language in public schools in the Bronx, New York. She earned her M.S.Ed. from City University of New York Lehman College as part of the New York City Teaching Fellows program.

Sara Custer
Editor in Chief at Inside Higher Ed

Sara Custer became Inside Higher Ed's editor in chief in March 2024. Before joining Inside Higher Ed, she was editor of Times Higher Education's (THE) Campus, a collection of daily resources designed for higher education faculty and staff members to learn, share and connect with colleagues at universities and colleges worldwide. Prior to that, she shaped THE’s online presence as its digital editor, helping to launch THE’s newsletter strategy and overseeing daily, weekly and monthly publications. From 2012 to 2017, she served as editor and senior reporter at The PIE News, covering the international education industry. Sara grew up in Cushing, Okla., and earned a B.A. in English literature from Loyola University Chicago and an M.A. in international journalism from City, University of London.

Aviva Legatt, Ed.D.
Founder of EdGenerative

Dr. Aviva Legatt is the founder of EdGenerative, where she advises university boards, presidents, and systems on AI governance and adoption strategy. A Forbes contributor and affiliated faculty at the University of Pennsylvania, she writes the Higher Ed AI Playbook Substack, read by presidents, provosts and cabinet-level leaders on how institutions are deploying AI. Through the Substack she maintains two open, regularly updated resources for higher-ed leaders: the “AI Usage Policies in Higher Education Handbook,” a curated database for benchmarking institutional AI policy against peers, and the “AI Use Cases in Higher Education Handbook,” a catalog of validated, real-world AI implementations across the sector. Both are free and available through the Higher Ed AI Playbook. She is also the creator of the AI-Ready Institution™ framework and author of Get Real and Get In (St. Martin's Press).

Josh Callahan
Systemwide Chief Information Security Officer (CISO) for the California State University (CSU)

Josh Callahan serves as the systemwide chief information security officer (CISO) for the California State University (CSU). He assumed the systemwide CISO role on July 31, 2023, after serving as the information security officer and chief technology officer at Cal Poly Humboldt. Josh held technology and information security leadership positions at Cal Poly Humboldt beginning in 2005 and previously worked as a systems and network engineer at CSU Monterey Bay. With nearly two decades of leadership in higher education technology and cybersecurity, Josh has been an active contributor to the Higher Education Community Vendor Assessment Toolkit (HECVAT) initiative since 2018, supporting the advancement of shared practices for third-party risk management and security assessment across higher education. His work focuses on strengthening cybersecurity resilience, risk management, governance, and collaborative security programs throughout the CSU system and the broader higher education community.

Hsiawen Hull
Chief Information Security Officer for the California Community Colleges Security Center

Hsiawen Hull is the chief information security officer for the California Community Colleges Security Center, hosted at College of the Canyons, where he leads cybersecurity strategy across the largest higher education system in the country—116 colleges serving 2 million students. With nearly 28 years at College of the Canyons, Hsiawen has spent much of his career growing the next generation of security professionals. He runs a mentorship program supporting more than 30 students and helped build a student Security Operations Center where analysts do real work protecting real institutions. Hsiawen has also been developing and deploying AI agentic tools to strengthen how the security center detects and responds to threats—a meaningful part of how the CCC stays ahead of an evolving threat landscape. He is a member of the ISC2 Advisory Board and recipient of the 2026 MS-ISAC Innovation & Best Practices Award. He has represented the California Community Colleges at the EDUCAUSE Privacy and Security Conference and works closely with the California Department of Technology, Cal-CSIC, and peer systems across the UC and CSU.

Eric Chien
Fellow of Security Technology and Response at Symantec

Eric Chien is a fellow of Symantec's security technology and response division, where he leads teams of engineers and threat hunters investigating the most significant emerging cyber threats. He was one of the lead authors of Symantec's groundbreaking Stuxnet research and remains one of the industry's foremost authorities on that threat. Over his career, Chien has led Symantec's threat hunting, attack intelligence, efficacy strategy and machine learning protection teams—developing threat intelligence, ML-driven detection techniques and protection technology strategy to defend against evolving attacks. He regularly briefs customers, industry analysts, media and government stakeholders on the threat landscape.