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Technology isn't built by companies. It's built by people.
Random Access Memories (RAM) is where technology gets personal. Host Jake Bernardes sits down with founders, CISOs, engineers, operators, investors, and community builders to explore the stories behind the products, the pivots, the failures, and the moments that shaped their careers.
Whether we're talking cybersecurity, AI, startups, leadership, or life outside the office, every conversation asks the same question:
What shaped the person behind the technology?
New episodes every week.
Presented by Hubscale.
Hello and welcome to another episode of Random
Access Memories with me,
Jake Bernardes. This one I'm really
excited for.
This is a conversation that I had in
London,
think like, gosh, was it last year?
Last year, I think, when I ended up going
to the event where Joe was speaking,
sat next to Prathiba, and we talked a lot
about her job,
her career, what she does now,
and then also a bit about the kind of,
what's it like from the other side of a
breach when you're not the person
in the hot seat or in the dock,
but also the person having to deal with
all that kind of stress
and behind the scenes. So I wanted to try
and have this conversation when
we authentically asked.
What's it like in a family setting and not
what's it like in a workplace setting?
So thank you Joe and Prathiba for joining
me.
I really appreciate it. If you want to
start by just introducing yourselves,
I always ask the same three questions.
Who are you and what do you do?
That kind of thing. And then what's your
hobby?
And then who is your hero, your idol,
your inspiration? Whoever wants to go
first,
I don't care. Let's go ladies first.
Okay. ~ hi everyone. My name is Prathiba.
I'm Joe's wife. ~ my hobby I'd say is
cooking and mostly fusion cooking.
and my hero ~ has always been my
grandmother.
~ she was a homemaker but she helped her
community around her and
When she passed away, there was a whole
group of people outside thanking
her for all the different things that
she's done for their lives.
So she's always been my hero. That's
awesome.
That's cool.
I can validate that one. I've I've heard
Prathiba talk about
her grandmother a million times,
and I wish I could have met her.
so my name's Joe Sullivan and I'm
Prathiba's husband.
And I ~
Haha.
~ my favorite hobby is skiing.
And in fact, so much so that ~ when we
met,
Prathiba didn't know how to ski.
And she is now a double black diamond
skier since I've dragged across many a
slope.
and now she loves it too, thankfully.
I do. well now looking down
Who's your hero?
on us is a poster of Abraham Lincoln that
I got when I was
Hmm.
my first year out of I my first job right
out of school,
I went to Washington, DC for training and
I went to the Lincoln Memorial and
I got a two-dollar poster and I've had it
by my desk ever since for
the last ~ more than thirty years.
And it was because you know, I went to law
school and the reason I went
to law school is because I'd read all
these books about Abraham Lincoln when
I was growing up.
And I didn't actually know any lawyers.
I I don't think I'd ever met a practicing
lawyer before I went to law school,
but it was just like what what Abraham
Lincoln stood for and the
way he had practiced law was what I had
read about.
And so that was ~ he was definitely an
inspirational driver for my
That's interesting.
I read two books in COVID that define my
two heroes.
One of them is Lincoln and the second is
Alexander Hamilton,
both from books and then mainstream media,
one that had a movie about him and one
that had obviously a musical about them.
But it's interesting. Yeah, I found two in
American Founding Fathers,
I suppose to be. How did you two meet?
You talked about how you became skiers,
but how did you meet?
We met professionally. ~ we ~ it was
funny,
I was ~ working as the CSO at Cloudflare.
I joined in twenty eighteen and when ~ at
that time Cloudflare
was a small private company and it w but
it was growing fast and
I think had aspirations. And so I joined
in twenty eighteen reporting to the CEO,
Matthew Prince. And
He had given me the mandate to come in and
build
a world-class security organization.
And that's something that I had done twice
before at Facebook and Uber.
And so I came in in 2018 and I got a
subscription to LinkedIn Recruiter
and was working really hard to try and
build the best possible security
organization. And ~ I think it was in
~ summer of 2019 that I messaged Prathiba
in LinkedIn and said.
I see that you work in cybersecurity.
Would you consider s leaving your company
and coming to my company?
And she said, ~ actually,
I I decided to stop ~ my job and I'm going
to Stanford Business School.
And it was really strange because at that
time I was ~ halfway done with preparing
a talk on how security leaders don't
really understand business.
And I would like to introduce some
business concepts.
Because I had come to the conclusion that
I'd effectively,
after 25 years in cybersecurity,
developed a an MBA through osmosis of you
know reporting to business executives
and being in the in the exec room.
And so long story short,
we ended up meeting and creating a program
where we did training
for cybersecurity executives on ~
understanding business.
And and we took a cohort.
of up and coming CISOs here in the San
Francisco Bay Area.
And we would meet with them once a month
and and spend some time going through
business concepts with them and talking
through things from different angles.
So we were doing that ~ professionally
until COVID
hit and then then we left off.
We were not in touch anymore and then we
got back
in touch when I was finally moving to Palo
Alto,
the neighborhood that he lives in.
~ I wanted to meet him to ask about
schools and things like that.
And then ~ yeah, and then the rest is
history.
It became a date. It was funny
because ~ we didn't know ~ much like
I you know when you work with people
professionally you don't always ask
a lot of personal questions. And
When she ~ reached out about talking about
schools in Palo Alto in her email,
she said, My ex-husband and I are moving
to Palo Alto.
And I like, Did you say ex? I was I was also
going through
a divorce at that point. I'd already ~
separated and was ~ in
the process of finalizing a divorce.
And so ~ we met for coffee to talk about
schools and
Yeah. So we are we always say when people
ask in one sentence,
and the rest is true.
we met on the famous dating app,
LinkedIn.
You'd
be surprised how many people meet on
LinkedIn and end up getting married,
I think.
Yeah. Lots of people tell me you should
never tell that story because
it sounds like you're trying to find a
wife on LinkedIn.
And I was like, no. I always have to tell
the long version.
to get around
the problem. But Prathiba, talk to me from
your side.
Like, Joe's obviously a known individual.
So when you took that job, like,
I'm assuming you did some Googling.
Like, how did that work in your head?
tell me about that kind of thought process
from your side.
Yeah. I I don't know, I just looked at him
as a person and he and when we
met and we talked about things we would
talk for the whole hour about
just different things and he was just so
easy to talk to.
And I don't think he was the person that
say it he was portrayed in
the press or anything. There was a whole
different angle about him that
I saw ~ during our our meetings.
And I think everybody sees the same thing
when you meet Joe in person.
He's just a different person from whoever
~ whatever they portray of him.
So
It was a you know, we would just spend the
whole forty-five minutes,
it would go by so quickly and I'd look
forward to our next conversation
and ~ that's how it was. And then ~ as
much as he,
you know, he's in the cybersecurity field,
I'm probably very not risk averse.
So I didn't care about all the things on
on press.
So talk to me about that. Like you say
it's obviously very different.
So you'd obviously formed a kind of
conceived idea from what you'd read.
You said you'd read the press,
he was different to the press.
So talk to me about that. Like what did
you expect and what was different?
It's kind of like.
Yeah.
~ well I d like just to be fair,
I don't think I specifically thought much
about what was in the news
or anything like that. Like when I met
with him,
I saw a genuinely authentic person trying
to do the right thing.
and you know, I always knew what was said
there was not the truth.
~ so
It's just it was a human to human
connection and that's all it was.
And so yeah. I ~ I I have now come to
the conclusion that there's a version of a
person online and there's a version
of a person who's in reality. So yeah.
Interesting. I guess I can turn that
question about you.
You talk about LinkedIn dating,
but we're not saying LinkedIn dating.
So you've obviously, how does that feel as
a person where obviously there
is a version of you online, but I know you
as well.
Yeah.
It's not a fair reflection for you all,
right? But how do you deal with that when
you meet people,
especially in like a romantic scene?
There's a difference in a work one,
but how do you deal with that from a
romantic setting when people have seen
stuff
that you're like, well, that's not me.
Yeah, it's a good question. I don't
think I don't think we thought of
I don't I don't know, maybe I didn't think
about it too much.
I mean I had been in a a long term
relationship and had a family and
and she did too, and we were both kind of
coming out of that.
And it was pan it was the middle of the
pandemic.
We started dating it in the summer of
twenty twenty one.
And ~ you know,
we were just in this like weird world
where
You know, everything was like a Twilight
Zone factor in pandemic era.
And I think I think I
got the benefit of Prathiba having not
grown up in the United States didn't maybe
fully appreciate when I said, you know,
I'm under indictment.
Ha
does that mean?
Well, you know, it was kind of a weird
thing where I I had gotten indicted in ~
2020 and you know this case is
pending,
but I'm still working full time as the
chief security officer at Cloudflare.
So it's the pandemic, but I'm I'm working
full time.
She's working full, you know, I guess she
was working full time ~ because
she had graduated from business school and
was is was working at at a company,
I think. And ~ so it was like neither one
of us
Like we look back at it actually
happily because neither one of
us spend time in dating apps. And we have
too many friends who talk about
the unpleasant experience of living in
dating app life.
And so somehow we avoided that.
Is it, Prathiba, is it difficult?
obviously I'm assuming like you'll have
had conversations at home where Joe's
indictments going on and you're thinking
this is all taking the piss,
like none of this is true. Like,
is it hard hearing the other side of the
story but not really being able
to like do anything with it? Just being
able to like,
because people form opinions, right?
But you can't go and argue them in the
world.
That's part of the legal problem here.
Yeah, it's ~ that definitely was a pretty
difficult chapter 'cause ~
one of the things that happens on a daily
basis is you see stuff in
the press and then there's actually
industry gossip of people talking about
him in a different way on LinkedIn or
whatever other social media.
And so you're hearing all of those things
and initially it's definitely like
a shock to the system to like,
you know, about be at the other end of it.
~ and that's not normal. I mean,
even if you're an exec, you're
facing long hours and you know your
husband's not home traveling that's
one thing but ~ having ~ having this sort
of ~ environment where it's
hostile outside is a different
circumstance altogether.
And so one of the things I think we did at
home was we didn't come back
and we and we didn't come back and just
talk about all the things that's
happening.
We compartmentalized. So at home it was
just a home atmosphere.
We talked about things that mattered like
what's
on with this kid or like what's happening
at school or you know date nights
and we kept all the traditions as well
like we kept our vacations,
we kept birthdays, ~ we had dinners ~ with
our kids and and so
it was a completely home atmosphere.
It was compartmentalized and that I think
helped a lot because we're more than that
case and we have a whole life together.
So ~ I think that was one of the ways we
coped at home.
you
Yeah, that's that's a good point because I
~ like I was coming
to the relationship with three teenage
daughters and she was coming with
a I think nine year old son. And
so ~ when when you're coming when you're
coming to
the world with with kids, you you're think
of obviously we
We were we were more focused on making
sure our kids were supported
and happy with our relationship than
thinking about a lot of other things like
the case. and also ~ I was probably
foolishly optimistic about how
the case was going to turn out and may not
have projected the total gravity
of the situation. ~ even like accepting it
myself.
Like if I go back to 2020 before
we started dating,
like my lawyer
When I did get indicted, I think it was my
lawyer and Matthew Prince both said
to me, You were irrationally in denial
that this was you were gonna
get charged because I didn't believe I was
gonna get charged because
I didn't think I'd done anything wrong.
And then once I got charged, I didn't
think I was gonna lose the trial because
I didn't think I'd gotten any I'd done
anything wrong.
And so I just kept believing that in the
end,
~ people are gonna figure this out and
this is all gonna go away.
I have so many questions, I'm gonna do the
reaction.
I'll come back to the kids, because the
kids interest me.
Prathiba, you said you were kind of naive
to indictment and stuff,
I'm assuming not all
of your family and friends were
at the time when you said you were dating
a guy that they could Google
and they said he's being indicted in
federal court.
Did anyone tell you like, what the hell
are you doing?
This is not a good idea.
You know, that was the most shocking part,
Jake. Like, I know my parents are are
from,
you know, traditional India and I'd have
expected them to say,
like, you know, what are you doing?
Step back. But they were so supportive.
My mom said every day and I'm from a Christian
family,
my mom every day would say, I'm praying
for Joe and hope.
~ you know everything works out for good
and all my friends were supportive
~ as well in fact they all wrote letters
for Joe ~ as they've seen
him at home and so I had a lot of support
from my community and I think that helped
a lot and I probably take that for granted
a little bit.
~ and when you ask the question it just
strikes me it could have gone the other
way.
so that was one thing that went very well.
The other thing that went very well was
you know we're a blended family.
~ you know and all of our kids just got
along so well ~ and that need
not have happened either so ~ we also take
that for granted a little
bit and the funny thing is they have so
many things in common one of
the things was ~ all four were vegetarian
kids which ~ and and
No.
and we're not vegetarian which is yeah
yeah
Oh really? That's a bit of a nightmare.
Let's
stay on the kids thing. Cause I've seen a
few places where you've
put like my daughter texts me to say she
just heard you've been arrested.
Right? how is that? Cause teenagers aren't
like little kids,
right? They've got access to social media.
They have friends who are probably
horrible.
Like how was that with your children?
Like an initial first phase when you're
talking about what's happened,
trying to explain it, their reactions,
what they're probably facing in school or
with their friendship groups where your
name is all over the newspapers,
all over the press.
How was that? Because that must be hard to
be a parent there.
Yeah, honestly I think it's natural as a
parent to when things happen,
you put your kids first and you've you put
you like like
I remember like when I when
I lost the trial ~ and the jury came back
and said guilty
my first reaction, you know, stand sitting
standing at the ~ defense table
was my kids in the front row and my
daughter who's away at college
who couldn't come for the sentencing,
~ watching on video, I think watch or
watching on audio yeah,
watching on Zoom. ~ and and thinking like
about them more than myself.
~ but ~
But to flip it around, they ~ honestly
they were great.
~ all three of the girls were in terms of
they just
~ nothing changed. And I and I think about
it back to I I tell this story sometimes.
Back the day that I ~ maybe in some ways I
went through probably three
really hard days. One was the day
that I got fired from Uber in
2017, the second was when I
got indicted,
and the third was when I lost the trial.
And in some ways the one that hit me the
hardest was the one
in 2017 when I got fired from
Uber,
with because it just became so far out of
left field and surprised me.
And I'd never been knocked down like that
in my life.
And ~ and I didn't know how to react and I didn't feel supported
by a community the way I did later when
the other things happened.
And the day that I got
~ fired I had been been planning we were
up in in the mountains because
it was Thanksgiving and we were on
vacation and I had told
the girls that we were going to go for a
hike.
And so I got fired and you know my
immediate reaction
was I need to get a phone. I knew I need
to start figuring out how to deal with
the situation. But instead I went hiking
with my daughters.
And
We were out hiking and I had a a a water
bottle that I was carrying,
but I didn't have a pocket or a place
to put it.
So I put it I tucked it in the back of my
collar ~ for a little bit.
And I always remember my eldest daughter
was hiking behind me and she said,
"Unemployed man camelback." Like I was
literally been fired
Hahaha
publicly on the front page of like every
newspaper of the world.
And an hour later my daughter's making a
joke about it.
And we could laugh. And that was
everything.
in ages.
You know, it's like you can shut out the
world when you have kids like that.
And you can just ~ and and also when
they're teenagers,
their world is also is also a very
competing priority for them.
You know, the stress of being a teenager
in today's world with the academics,
the social stuff, the online stuff,
just their own lives, I I think.
~ pulls them back into it. And so we were
able to find a balance and almost have
a sense of normalcy most of the time.
I think when you go about,
people have asked the stupid question,
if you went about with doing it different,
I'm more interested in that one.
What surprised you most? If you reflect on
that period,
what surprised you most about yourself?
Either weak or strong, like something that
you didn't expect.
I think ~ the ability to compartmentalize
and get back onto life.
Hmm.
You know, I ~ I think about like after
losing you know,
after getting fired and after losing the
trial and I went I I jokingly refer
to those as like the two times I went into
like Grizzly Adams hibernation mode.
You know, I ~
Like after I got fired from Uber,
I look at the I look at my badge photo
from when I started at Cloudflare
in 2018 and I'm shocked that
they hired me because I had a full beard.
It was like I it was like I wanted to like
hide and not
be recognized and and and like project to
the world that I had like checked
out or something. And ~ you know.
I think before I actually started at
Cloudflare I did shave it off
and come back to a normal person.
Thank goodness. Yeah. ~ Yeah,
Come back off the mountain. Yeah.
I think one of the things that was
surprising for me about him,
And I think this incident kind of probably
lays it out very clearly.
It's we lost the trial, first day,
we were coming out, and we had two cars,
like us in one car, and the kids had
brought the kid mobile.
And so we were both in cars.
We were going on the one-on-one highway
and we were like literally racing each
other, rolling on the windows,
looking at each other and laughing.
And this was right after we lost the trial
and we didn't know what
was gonna happen to
Hmm.
And we came back home, we cooked,
we laughed. And that part was,
you know, it's surprising to think.
Like in that moment, it was it was like a
different reaction from what
~ one would normally expect. But I think
to his point,
it's that ability to compartmentalize,
but also like how strong we are and
resilient we are as humans.
And we had this belief ~ throughout that
we're gonna be just fine,
like
just always. That was always the
underlying thing.
Like no matter what, we're gonna be fine.
~ and we during the period between ~
losing and sentencing,
we had this whole period where we had to
look at things like what jail
he might end up in and what's gonna
happen.
'Cause we both didn't couldn't really
think of a career.
So this is my next question. So I think
like most of us in the industry think that
the eventual sentencing is still crazy.
And I could say that as someone not American,
they can't do anything to me, right?
But I think Joe says, honestly,
that he went in quite naively,
but you probably didn't right.
So at some point, it must have crossed
your mind.
He might go to prison. Like processing
that,
Yeah. Yes. Yeah.
I'd be told to be that big. That has got
to be horrendous if you're thinking your
spouse might go to prison.
Yeah. ~ it was after after losing the
trial.
We had it was a we lost the trial and like
the verdict was in May 4th
so the verdict was at the
beginning of October and
the sentencing wasn't until the beginning
of May.
So we had a long period of time where we
were in this like ~ limbo
long time.
of not knowing what's next.
I ~ had to leave Cloudflare after losing
the trial.
That was something we'd agreed well before
that if I did because
it would. Some customers
dropped Cloudflare because Cloudflare kept
me ~ pending the trial. ~ and I didn't
want that,
and the company didn't want to have to
deal with the attention of
of me going through a sentencing.
But so after
after the losing the trial, we we had this
extended period of time where
I wasn't I wasn't able to work at the
company.
So I had to actually face it much more.
We were very frustrated with the
legal team that we had after
we lost the trial because they had,
I mean literally to the time of the
verdict,
they were saying that we were gonna win.
~
And and we and we really limited the
defense we put on because their view
was we don't even need to put on a
defense,
you know. and so we had a lot of
frustration.
Yeah.
~ but they then, you know, asked after we
came out of the trial and they
said you know, we started talking to the
government like,
can we reach an agreed sentencing position
between the two sides?
'Cause there's always negotiations in
these in in cases like this.
And
We couldn't because the government said
they were gonna come in and argue
for I think 23 of prison.
And so we that's what we had in
the back of our head
to get back to your question,
we were thinking about like the
government's gonna go and argue that
I should get 23 years in prison.
And so that's when we started talking to
like we found people who'd been through
these processes, people who'd been to
prison.
We were talking to lots of people trying
to figure out like
What's the difference between the federal
prisons in California versus
the federal prison in Oregon versus the
one in,
you know, Florida? And why would you,
you know, why do why do we see some people
choosing to go to prisons
in Oklahoma and other you know,
we we just had to go deep into all these
things and figure out like it's Yeah.
Yeah. We just turned into action mode.
It was it was two things. It was okay,
Yeah.
~
What what are the chances that we can
minimize this whole situation?
Like, what are the best options and
outcomes for us?
That's one. And then if the worst does
happen,
~ how do you how do we cope with it and
what do we do?
So those were the two things we were
working on.
So on the sentencing front, we found so we
were ~ we had
the ability to provide one last argument
to the judge on why it should
not be prison. And so we worked on that a
whole lot.
Like ~ we got so much data.
On you know the judges' verdicts in the
past.
So I I was I jumped in, I'm a data person,
so I jumped in on all the analysis and
like what is the right argument
and position to have, and we started
directing the lawyers on what they should
say.
~ it the thing flipped around,
and you know, we started taking control
over the whole legal argument and so on.
So that was our action mode, and then
That's,
action mode is great, I guess the question
for you is,
were you confident? Because you're there
sitting otherwise thinking,
I've now got three teenage daughters that
I'm going to have and my son,
a blended family, and I'm going to
effectively become a single parent
for some period of time, which is at this
point unforeseen because
the government's just saying, we're going
to go for prison.
We're not going to say, what's that
outcomes going to be like?
I get the action. I get that kind of takes
your mind off things,
but I can't believe that there isn't you
going to bed at night thinking about this.
Yeah. I mean, I was beginning to think
about how do I get to prison?
How do I get to see him? Should I become a
paralegal?
Gosh.
~ so I get to see him more often.
And how do I balance the time between
being at home with the kids
and going and seeing him in prison.
Mah-
So I started having a whole plan for
that.
She actually ~
someone that we are friends with had gone
through ~
a process ~ strangely similar where he ~
started dating someone right before they
went to prison and he's an attorney and he
said,
Well, I was able to go visit every day
because I'm an attorney.
And she and so she said to him,
Wait, so if I was a paralegal,
would I be able to go visit whenever I
want?
You were literally planning
for this in terms of like changing your
career to make sure you had the access.
Gosh, that's insane.
Yes. Yes.
Yes. She was like she was like,
would you hire me as a paralegal?
I'll gladly switch me a paralegal if I
could 'cause you know,
like if when you research and you realize
like standard visitation is like once
a week and on this narrow scope.
Yeah.
But if you're a part of the person's legal
team,
you can go see them every day.
Yeah. And which is what our friend had
done ~ with his now wife.
~ and so ~ she was literally like in she
was in full action mode,
I'll say that. We both were.
Yeah. We're not ~ we're not people who
like sit around and say,
Woe is me. We're people who think like,
okay, what can I do to control or change
my situation?
We don't like the world dictating to us.
I think that time was the scariest
time of my life because it was
the time I most felt like someone else has
control of my life.
The judge. You know, he the judge could
make a decision that could fundamentally
change my life. And that's a really scary
thing and something that I
I'm used to being a person who feels
comfortable like taking risks you know,
I started working when I was 10 and was
had two jobs in college
and and sometimes three, and believed that
like I could take care of myself.
And and to be in a situation where the
banks are shutting down my accounts.
And homeowners insurance is canceling and
car insurance is canceling and
Yeah, I forgot about that bit.
my 401K is sending me a check and
saying,
You you know, if you don't deposit it in a
different 401K,
the government's gonna fine you for take
withdrawing your money early.
You know, I was dealing with all these
things and it was just like it felt like
so much less in control of my life than
I'd ever felt before.
Yeah.
And ~ yeah, the other thing that was also
going on through our heads is like,
what are our children seeing?
Like what are we doing as role models for
them in a situation where it's a tough time?
They're looking at how we're handling
crisis,
they're looking at how we're reacting to
the world when people say
bad things about us and about him,
and like they're looking at us the whole
time on how we're handling the situation.
And that was also an important thing for.
us to set that example for our kids that
we love no matter what and you know
~ that he's more than his worst day or the
worst comment in the press
and the worst case scenario and so that's
another thing we you know
we were grappling with and making sure
that our kids see the best version of us.
We we tried really hard to live a
normal life with our family during this
all if it's possible. I'll give you a a
concrete example.
~
Our second daughter, during the trial
it was her senior year
in high school and ~ her school has a
father daughter thing, she was going
to an all-girls school and they ha have a
father-daughter dinner dance that
I would go to every year with my daughters
and
the dads of the senior
girls are ~
required to do a dance in front of the
whole school.
And the dance was scheduled for exactly in
the middle of my trial.
And I had to do two dances of like five
minutes long.
And and we're talking about like BTS like
dances,
like serious. ~ the
dads hire
a choreographer and dance to the music
that the kids like.
And it's a lot of work and and the dads
meet and prep every Saturday
for like a month and a half and
Wow.
you get these videos. And so during my
trial,
I would deal with the trial and then at
like nine o'clock, and also your daughter's
not supposed to see that you're preparing
for this dance or know anything about what
the music's gonna be or the dances are
gonna be.
And so I
I I'm in the middle of trial and at ten
o'clock at night I'm pulling
out like the dance steps and trying to
find a room where I can be
by myself and practice these dance moves.
Yeah. And the funny thing was you know,
when the trial there was like some cases
of witnesses saying all sorts
of things about him and I asked him,
like, Are you doing okay? You know,
there's all of these th things that the
person said and he's like,
No, I was just practicing my dance moves
in my head.
I wasn't paying attention to what's
happening.
I was
And ~ yeah, and so I look at the video and he
was one of the best ones because you
remembered all of his steps.
I guess it gives you focus, right?
I
mean, here's a thought for you.
So you said your grandmother was your hero
at beginning Prathiba
right? And my grandmother and grandfather
are very much mine.
And when they were young, my grandfather
was a prisoner of war twice,
in fact. So unlucky that he escaped from a
prison of war camp and
got taken back into a prison of war camp
only like literally months later.
My grandmother was told that he was dead.
She was pregnant at the time with her
first son.
She was told he was dead. And he turned
up at the door one day and knocked
on the door. She'd had her first child and
she didn't even know he was alive.
They turned back up, right? And they had
to deal with this whole challenging
period.
Now, she always told me that the strongest
relationships are forged in fire.
she said, they were married for like 50 years or
something,
55, 60 years or something crazy.
And she said it's because they went
through hardships together.
And I'm an advocate for like, think that
relationships are formed when things
are challenging. Now you've talked a lot
about compartmentalizing and trying
to stay separate from trial and children
and trial and relationship.
But do you think...
that going through this made your
individual relationship and your
relationship with
your kids stronger because of what you
went through.
Yeah, ~ a hundred percent. I think seeing
somebody
in their worst moments and how they are,
and you know, they're still love you,
they still love you and you still love
them in that worst moment.
There's something about that. ~ not
necessarily in the happiest moment
or when you're out on a date, but like
when you're in that moment and
you still love each other, then you know
that.
that person truly loves you, right?
Like no matter what. And they're gonna be
with you no matter what.
And they're your rock. ~ and I think
that's how it is for us,
right? Definitely. Yeah.
If you could go back to the darkest
moments,
do you think that now you tell yourself
different advice than you did at the time?
Or do you think that you kind of live in
the moment anyway,
there's nothing you can go back and
change?
Like, what would you go back and tell
yourself over your shoulder as a ghost?
I think about this and it's one thing
in particular.
It's that we have this real sense that
like Prathiba described,
when it came to the sentencing,
after losing the trial, we moved from
passive mode to active mode.
I I look back and I feel like for the
first few years,
Mm.
you know, f the the part before I met her
and the part after we were together going
leading up to the trial, where we just
kind of I just kind of
Let the lawyers do their thing.
It's weird. I I used to be a lawyer.
I used to be a federal prosecutor.
I understood that world. But ~ to go back
to ~ the person I looked up to,
Abraham Lincoln had this famous quote,
~ which I don't remember the exact
phrasing,
but it's basically like the lawyer who
chooses to represent themselves
has an idiot for a client. ~ meaning like
you shouldn't you know,
Hehehe
because you you shouldn't represent
yourself because you
you get emotion, you know, your personal
emotions get in the way.
~ and I think I was overly mindful of
that.
And and I was very paralyzed by the whole
thing.
Like I think back to like the the version
of myself I was during the first parts
of the case and up through losing the
trial.
I don't recognize myself.
I was a very passive person. I was very
deferential to my lawyers.
I just like I just hoped for the best and
and tried to stay out of the way.
And when it came to after losing the
trial,
we decided, the two of us, that we were
gonna win the sentencing.
And I look and I believe we won the
sentencing because the two of us
went into it together. And it didn't
happen instantly after losing the child.
So we lost the child at the beginning of
October.
At the end of October, a good ~ a couple
of good friends called us and said,
come spend a weekend with us. And we spent
the weekend with them
and they basically said, stop moping,
get off your butt, get back to life.
And I don't think they were
saying like go take over
the sentencing yourselves. They were
saying like get back to life,
go do things. And so we came back,
I remember because it was Halloween
weekend,
and we came back on the first of November,
and we just like we decided I need to get
going and do something.
I started reaching out to all the
non-profits that had always wanted
me to work with them and that I'd worked
with in the past.
~ just I needed to get busy thinking,
get my brain going. And then we it this is
exactly when the Ukraine stuff
Is this when the Ukraine stuff started
too?
Yeah.
We talked it over on
that weekend after our friends just kind
of gave us the a bit of a kick in the
pants.
And we went for this really long hike,
the two of us on the last day that we were
there with our friends and
we left them and went for this hike.
And we talked about it and we said,
I'm gonna go do the I'm gonna try and find
some place to volunteer.
we talked it out and I just like I had
been very active in kind of like three
areas
as a volunteer in the past. You know,
one I had been helping with some Ukraine
stuff,
but more I had been helping in
cybersecurity mentoring people and
~ child safety stuff. And
I'd worked with a lot of diversity
groups and cybersecurity as
I was building my team. So I when we came
back,
I started reaching out to the different
groups and seeing if I could help them.
And ~ unfortunately none of them wanted to
be associated with me.
All the ones that had bugged me for years
and that I had done stuff with,
~ they just like they said, We can't be
associated with you,
like it'll impact our fundraising and
stuff like that.
The only people who didn't care about my
brand at that point were
the people in Ukraine who had
Bigger issues of concern.
Yeah,
they've got bigger concerns than the news
stories about Joe Sullivan.
So I guess then what I'm taking from you
is if you'd go back,
you'd have got more, your advice yourself
would be get active
and more involved earlier.
Yes. Take don't don't leave your your
life in other people's hands.
Like you gotta take control and
we did that.
Yeah.
We really aggressively did that with the
case.
~ we we we feel like we had a huge impact
on the sentencing because
Make sense.
of ~ we were we didn't proactively go out
and ask for for hundreds of letters,
but we were supported with it and
ended up having hundreds of people send l
like I always joke that this we
we I got to experience my own Irish wake
during the during that extended period
I know what you mean.
because of ~ all these letters that kept
coming in.
~ that people wrote to the judge.
Yeah we we we submitted a hundred and
eighty six or something like that letters
to the judge and one was signed by 60
people,
another signed by 40 people, another
signed by thirty so like hundreds
of people wrote letters.
And then we we had a bunch of letters we
didn't even submit because they were more
generic and we we thought they would like
distract from the impact
of the other ones. So we did we did those
things.
We were very active in saying what we
wanted in the ~ you know,
in our legal arguments for a change.
We were Yeah, and I knew the judge like
the back of my hand.
I read every one of his former cases,
like I understood what worked and what
didn't work.
At the end of the day, we're all human,
like even if you're a lawyer or a judge.
You socially engineered the judge.
Yeah.
Here's
where we're going here. Prathiba,
what would you go back and tell yourself?
Would it be the same lesson, like do more
earlier,
~ or would it be something different?
I think definitely do more earlier.
I agree with that part.
~ I think another ~ another aspect I think
for me would also be like be okay with
getting help from the community,
you know, like you know,
just as people who are very individualists
were pretty good at like,
you know, ~
being strong on the outside. But ~ every
time that it's a call from
a friend and they ask like how are you
doing,
it actually made a difference.
And to be okay and be more vulnerable with
your friends,
family, you know, that's another thing I
think I would tell myself that it's that
it's okay to get help. Yeah. That's I that
that really resonates with me.
So really, it's valuable lesson.
I think that I I'm bad at asking people
for help and
I even in even in these situations,
I don't think I was very good at it.
But when I started asking for help,
it was amazing to see how many people
stepped up.
Yeah, the community stands together,
right? One last question. ~ Have you seen
the movie About Time?
You should go and watch it, it on your
list,
watch it tonight. It's a movie about a
family where the men are able to time
travel,
Yeah.
right? And they're able to go back in time
and relive things.
There's a bit of a butterfly effect,
but it's a brilliant movie. It's probably
my wife's favorite movie.
And one of the interesting things about it
is towards the end,
when he goes back and relives moments,
he says that when you come back into the
present,
you're able to be grateful for things that
happened then that you're not able to,
that you wouldn't be able to get for
otherwise,
right? It's about learning from your
experience and seeing what you're grateful
for.
I guess that's my question is now,
It's kind of done, it's over. Like,
what are you grateful for now?
What do you realize you're grateful for
that you didn't know you were then?
Like, what realizations have you had?
It's so funny you say this because just
this week when we were at church on
Sunday,
I told him, I came out and I said,
~ one of the things I was gratitude and
just
how ~ how I just like feel this gratitude
that we're in this place
at this time when, you know, he could have
just been coming out of prison right now.
And like there's so many things we're
grateful for for that time.
And actually even this conversation is
helping remember that,
you know, my family and friends,
not one of them looked at me and said,
What are you doing with this person?
Like every one of them was like support
supportive.
So there's so many things we're grateful
for and and and I think the main thing
is family for me. ~ yeah.
Hmm.
Yeah, ~ I'm I'm grateful for for Prathiba
being there with me through it all.
Like that that period where I was able to
take control,
I wouldn't have been able to do it the
same way without her.
Because you just go through so many
emotional ups and downs when you're
in the middle of something like this.
And ~ sometimes you just need a shoulder
and ~ other times
you need a kick in the pants and ~ and
other times you need some clapping and
like having a partner through it who was
really in it with you may meant a lot.
So so I would say that's number one.
Number two was definitely family.
~ we had so much family support.
I have six brothers and sisters.
And but they all live on the other side of
the country.
We live in California and they're up east
coast and Europe.
But And they all visited during trial.
You know they were there in the court.
So we had a we had a constant rotation of
family coming out and supporting.
And then like the cybersecurity community
~ was outstanding.
You know, it's a people go into
cybersecurity ~ not because they think
it's
the most lucrative profession.
They go into it because it's a profession
that I think a noble profession.
It's people who
want to help other people. You know,
we get to use technology, but we do it in
the service of of protecting people.
And it shows in that community in times
like this.
Hmm.
~ the last thing I'll say on this,
you know, what are you grateful for?
I thought Prathiba was going to say
something different,
which is she more than once has said to
me,
going through this was the best thing that
ever happened to you.
Yeah. It just ~ it completely changed the
way we look at the world.
And I don't like
Some of the lessons are best learned
during hard times and the lessons
we learned from going through this is just
it's changed our perspective.
It's you know it's changed how we looked
at the world and what
our priorities are and who our friends
are.
Like friends are the ones who stand by you
when there's nothing
to gain from standing by you. And we know
who those people are now.
~ and we just like there's so many
intangibles.
So I'm I'm actually grateful for that
experience that we
went through together and I'm happy that I
was around for that experience.
~ I think that there's this one scene that
sums it
all up when we when I talk about gratitude
and what we're grateful for.
is when we won the sentencing and we came
out,
like the whole courtroom was filled with
friends and people from the community.
When we won the sentencing, there was like
a little bit of a press and
we came out and the whole hallway was
filled with,
you know, people from ~ his old eBay
colleagues and Facebook colleagues
and people from the community.
And when we came out they all clapped and
it was like,
you know, you're supposed to be quiet in
the courtroom.
But that didn't necessarily take place.
And it was literally like a movie scene
where we came out and there's just
hundreds
of people standing and clapping.
And I think that kind of sums it up.
Yeah. That was the final climactic
conclusion.
I feel like that's also a great place to
end ~ on quite a deep
and philosophical thought. Is there
anything I should have asked you that
I didn't ask you? I ask every guest the
same thing.
I think you got some of the highs and some
of the lows,
that's for sure.
That was always the aim. Thank you very
much for your time.
And I think that one thing that I can say
is that you talk about
the community strengthening you.
I've seen and I've you speak in a lot of
places.
You've given back a tremendous amount of
community.
There's a lot of us who have learned
things about cyber insurance
and ensuring yourself and how to deal with
breaches and personal communications
and communication plans that none of us
had ever thought about before.
So I think you have given back in
bucketfuls what the community gave you in
support.
So thank you as well. And thank you both
for sharing in quite an open
and authentic way.
I'm grateful we had this conversation.
So if anyone wants to learn any more,
can reach out to Joe and Prachi by
LinkedIn,
hopefully not in a dating approach and
learn more about the stuff they
Yeah.
do in Ukraine too. They do a lot for
Ukraine to raise technology
and computing equipment into the Ukraine,
which I think is really important as well
that we try and ways
to get back ourselves. But otherwise,
thank you both very much. It's been an
absolute pleasure on my
Thank you, Jack.
Thanks, bye bye.
Yeah.