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AFCEAN of the Month, September 2022

Sara Spencer, North Carolina Chapter
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Sara Spencer
Sara Spencer

Sara Spencer epitomizes the ethos of AFCEA. She is the CEO and founder of SolonTek Corporation, which came online in August 2019. She has been the North Carolina Chapter secretary for three years, keeping detailed notes of all minutes and being a traffic director for all chapter events. On top of this, Spencer has been running her own company, bringing in over $1 million in annual revenue. Spencer is responsible for creating a unique, single pane of glass cybersecurity platform called VALKERIE, which uses artificial intelligence to monitor and remediate threats, as well as manage all stakeholders.

Spencer also developed risk methodologies and risk analysis algorithms to focus on the threats that are most likely to affect an organization’s critical infrastructure. All this makes the data human-consumable so that the decision-makers can make sound decisions on where to get the biggest return on investment on their cyber expenditures.

Spencer has been a highly active AFCEAN and gave her first presentation at a chapter luncheon in January 2020. She is always at the board meetings offering advice and keeping detailed notes of the discussion. She has set up the collaboration tools for the chapter. She was also a key member in coordinating and scheduling keynote speakers and volunteers during TechNet Fort Bragg. She has brought in new members, supported members’ efforts in starting Emerging Leaders and created the LinkedIn social media page to spread the good news about the works of the chapter and its events. She has collaborated closely with the webmaster to update the chapter website and continues to mature these efforts.

Spencer was also a big player in the successful Drone Hack-a-Thon, a two-day TechNet Fort Bragg Symposium and Exposition held for the first time in September 2021 at the Emerging Technology Institute (ETI), located in Red Springs, North Carolina. Hundreds of people, including military personnel, commercial vendors, tech companies and attendees, gathered to discuss innovative technology developments, network, receive feedback from each other and share with high school and college students on behalf of the chapter. Spencer led students in the exercise, saying she knew the impact of these types of events. It can have lasting effects on a person’s future and direction, and it helped her get to the place she is today. “I’m one of these kids … somebody took me under their wing, and I’m happy to give back,” Spencer said.

For her exceptional work and dedication to the chapter, AFCEA proudly names Sara Spencer AFCEAN of the Month.