My story

My Story

From Saint Petersburg to securing the world

A few years ago, I was on a call with a senior executive in Western Europe. When I mentioned my university, he stopped: "Wait — ITMO? That changes things." He didn't ask what ITMO was. He already knew.

When I arrived in Saint Petersburg in 2018 as an Open Doors Russian Government Scholarship recipient, I was a young man from Pakistan with no clear sense of what the next two years would turn into. ITMO didn't make it easy. I'm glad it didn't. The faculty expected original thinking. I learned how to sit with a hard problem until it gave way. I graduated with a 4.7/5 CGPA — but the grade was beside the point. That shift in thinking was the real degree.

When I returned home, there was no clear path. I started small. One early project nearly broke me — halfway through I realized I might not deliver what I'd promised. I chose to figure it out. That pattern repeated many times. Project by project, until I found myself advising the UK's well known judiciary/legal organization (confidential), the National Assembly of Pakistan, Uganda's largest hospital, and a New York institutional fintech firm.

Today, I serve as Virtual CISO for an international BPO company, leading simultaneous ISO 27001:2022 and SOC 2 Type II certification — and I mentor the next generation entering cybersecurity.