David Lee’s story isn’t polished—and that’s the point. In this candid conversation, he reflects on the moments that tested him, the businesses he built (and closed), and the personal growth that came from adversity. From learning the hard way to valuing mentorship and team empowerment, David brings vulnerability, strategy, and insight to the mic.
He also shares his take on where identity is heading, why the data layer needs attention, and how we can all show up with more humanity in tech.
Disclaimer:
The views expressed in this episode are solely those of the guest and do not represent the opinions of their employer or family.
00:00 Intro to Identity Heroes & David Lee
02:59 David Lee’s Journey into Identity
06:09 Career Evolution: IAM and Beyond
08:57 Entrepreneurship and Lessons Learned
12:01 Communication: The Overlooked IAM Skill
14:59 Navigating Setbacks & Pivotal Moments
18:06 Future of Identity & Growth
31:01 Embracing Reflection in Career Paths
34:40 Finding Clarity Through Adversity
39:58 Representation and Connection in Identity
41:54 Empowering Teams with Limited Resources
45:36 Measuring Success in IAM Programs
49:31 Identity, AI & What’s Next
David Lee [00:00:00]:
I’m gonna give credit to Marcus Carey for giving me this gut punch one day, but he said this to me, and I was like. He goes, man, you should do more. Like, you should give back. You should talk more stuff like that. I was like. I was like, yeah, man, I just don’t know how to get started. And he’s walking into the elevator. Perfect scene out of a movie, right? He’s walking into the elevator.
David Lee [00:00:14]:
And I said, I just don’t know how to do it. And then he turns around, looks at me, and as the doors are closed, he goes, it’s easy. You just fucking do it. And I was just like, oh.
Mark Callahan [00:00:23]:
And sing. Hey, everyone. On this episode of the Identity Heroes video cast, we’re joined by the one and only David Lee. That’s right, the Identity Jedi is here to join us and talk with us about his vision to the perfect degree in Iam and what that might look like and how it’s actually a little less technical than you might expect. He shared some incredible stories about reframing failure as opportunities for rebound and resilience. And the best part is the stories he shared I don’t think have ever been recorded before. So let’s go ahead and give a listen to what David has to share with us. Welcome to this episode of the Identity Heroes video cast.
Mark Callahan [00:01:09]:
I’m joined today by my co host, Gerry Gebel. And today we’re lucky enough to have probably one of the most recognizable faces in Identity, David Lee, as our guest, the one and only Identity Jedi. Welcome, David.
David Lee [00:01:20]:
Thanks. So excited to be here. Thanks for having me, guys.
Gerry Gebel [00:01:22]:
Yeah, welcome, David. So, Mark, I think we could just turn it over to David, right, And he’ll interview us. Yeah.
Mark Callahan [00:01:28]:
I was thinking at this point, the whole episode, we could just send it that way. And it’s good to go. The shirt says it all. But nevertheless, for those of you all don’t know, we’re going to dig into your story a little bit more from a hero perspective. But the format that we’ve done with the video Cast series so far is that we want to follow that hero’s arc. And you’re great at this because you share both as a mentor, but also in your writing and in your own production work, your story. But we want to take an opportunity maybe to talk to folks who you haven’t spoken to yet. If there’s anybody in the audience who hasn’t met or heard of you yet, but really get that storyline of, like, what’s your origin story? Listen to some of the challenges you might have Faced along the way and learnings that you’ve taken from those.
Mark Callahan [00:02:11]:
The elements of aligning yourself with your super friends, your team of sorts, how do you amplify your own powers and then guidance for what to do going forward. Not everybody has the budget to do all the specialized training that we might have or travel to a events, but areas that you learn yourself. And so kind of taking our audience through that arc. How’s it sound?
David Lee [00:02:31]:
Yeah, sounds great.
Mark Callahan [00:02:33]:
All right, cool. Well, Gerry and I tend to start off the episode as we think about this with the sort of tagline that there really isn’t a college degree for iam. There’s a lot of paths how we all got here. Yeah. Although there is a college degree for computer science, and so we did have that. There is a computer science undergrad. That’s where we started, right?
Gerry Gebel [00:03:00]:
Yeah.
Mark Callahan [00:03:01]:
Now I’m going to do the Wayback Machine. I’m going to play back some of the roles that you’ve had since just so that our audience can get a feel of that art and they connect the dots and go through it. So don’t worry, I’m not going to go through all the companies, but really just kind of the roles and see what sort of trajectory we took. All right, so. But as we think about the path that you took, as you started with a computer science undergraduate, you got out and you really took a software engineering role. You were focused in development, you were a software dev, you were a senior systems engineer. You had a period where you actually started your own business. The first of many businesses, I believe, that you started, went back to become a solutions architect, to become a senior identity strategist, which just sounds so on brand, I gotta say, the director of strategic alliances, a director of product management, chief troublemaker, which is truly to this day, one of the best titles ever.
Mark Callahan [00:03:53]:
A Jedi co founder and president. And now here you are, you’re a Field CTO at Saviynt. This is amazing. Tell us a little bit about the path. I mean, was this a straight line? Did you think you were going this direction or what happened along the way?
David Lee [00:04:05]:
This means so much when you get older. Like this saying of hindsight is 2020 means so much as you get older. Because it’s like when you play it back like that, it’s like, oh, yeah, that’s. That’s health. Right. There was no plan to that whatsoever coming out of college after I got my Comp Sci degree, I fell in love with programming when I got to college. Right. So I wasn’t one of these kids that was programming at 10 or 11, whatever.
David Lee [00:04:28]:
I was just. I liked computers. I thought they were fun. My stepdad used to build them all the time. So he took me to Fry’s as a kid and I was just like, wow, you can just go here and pick whatever you want, build a computer. This is amazing, right? And so I kind of had this curiosity of computers, right? Because I had watched him put them together and I would help him build them. So it was like I wasn’t really afraid of them. I just kind of knew that, like, okay, well, you give it some commands, it kind of does some things.
David Lee [00:04:53]:
So when I was deciding to go to college, it was like, all right, well, I love to debate, I love to talk, I love to argue. So it was like, well, lawyer, right? Or I kind of like this computer stuff. Let’s go do comp Sci. And so I looked at it and here it is, right? It wasn’t some grand vision where I decided to do it. It was just like, I saw I’d have to go to school and then law school, and I was like, yeah, I’m not doing more school. Let’s go comp sci. That’s just four years. I can get in and get out.
David Lee [00:05:19]:
And so that was the decision. So coming out of there, I fell in love with programming. So when I came out, I was like, I just want to be the best programmer ever. And if anything, at that time, I was like, I’m going to be a CTO Chief Technical Officer. Because when I was coming out, I thought that was it. Like, that you were. You were it. You were the best coder ever at a company and they would pay you tons of money to be a coder, but still have, like, this C title.
David Lee [00:05:44]:
That’s how naive I was at the time. And so that was my goal. And my first project was just building some different systems in Java. And I was like, okay, this is pretty cool. And this is going to kind of be the same thing over and over again, right? I’m going to keep having to learn new languages and kind of do this over. And so I was like, all right, well, we’ll see how this goes. And so I end up stumbling onto this project that needed to build this identity and access management system, right? And so the wreck for the job was like, you will be the main developer in building this application that empowers employees to request access and all this. I’m like, oh, dude, this sounds amazing.
David Lee [00:06:22]:
And I’m thinking, like, all the ways I’m going to build this thing, and I Get to learn new things about Java and like, oh, this is it, this is it, this is it, right? So I get into this project and I’m like reading all these requirements and I’m waiting for my access to get granted so I can actually do things. Hint, right? So as I’m waiting, the lead architect comes in and he drops these two manuals on my desk and there’s these Sun IDM reference manuals, right? Yes. For those of you younger at the time, we had all this stuff in these things that we call books and we actually had to like read pages to go figure out how something worked, right? Like there was no Googles and like YouTubes and all that and Reddit, we didn’t have that. So he drops these things on my desk and goes, hey look, I’m going on vacation. I’m gonna be gone for about 10 days. I need you to figure this out, have something up and running by the time I get back. Good luck, kid, welcome to the team. And walks out and I’m like, okay.
David Lee [00:07:12]:
So as I’m starting to read through this manual of what this, this application, I was like, well, they don’t need me to build an application. It’s already built. So what is this? What am I gonna do? How am I supposed to configure this thing? And so that started my career in identity and access manager, right? So that was the Sun IDM tool. I got that deployed. I started like debugging that thing and understanding the backend code and trying to figure out how this thing worked together. And so the way my mind works is I’ve got to understand the bigger picture before I understand one thing. Right now Geolic uses like, if you give me a tool out of the toolbox, I want to understand every compartment in the toolbox so I know what tool I’m using, right? There’s a reason why there’s a hammer in there, there’s a reason why there’s a screwdriver, right? There’s a reason why there’s. It’s my favorite tool.
David Lee [00:07:54]:
I don’t know the name of it, but like needle nose pliers, there we go. I will use those for just about anything, but there’s a reason why those things are in there. And so it’s the same way, like I needed to understand, like, why is this thing trying to do all these things? It’s trying to connect to directories and application systems and what is provisioning and what’s a role and what are policies and why does this matter? And so I just Went down this rabbit hole of studying about LDAPs and access controls and single sign on and certificates and accounts and I’m just like, wow, this is amazing. So this one program can automated control all these things. Well, this is cool. So I kept sticking with it and I learned more about it. So fast forward, you know, I’m on that project for a couple of years and I’m one of the main guys on there. People are coming to me and asking like, how do you set up this workflow? How do you do this? Oh, well, that’s this, that’s this or whatever.
David Lee [00:08:43]:
And I just kind of stuck with it. Right now granted, this was in the federal government space, you know, all those scary three letter organizations. So the problem set was fantastic. If you’re a problem solver and a nerd like me. Like, the challenges were just absolutely amazing. I mean they were frustrating because it was like trying to win a fight with half your eye closed and a hand behind your back and turned around the other way. But like, that’s the fun of it, right? How do I figure out how to get these challenges executed? Which was really fun. So I just loved it.
David Lee [00:09:10]:
So I stayed in it and from there, just kind of rolled from there, right? I left that job and then started doing, you know, consultant work. And I would work with other intelligence agencies and things like that and helping install their systems and you know, you just do something long enough and you kind of get good at it. And so from there I was like, well, I’m tired of the government sector. Like I kind of want to go, let’s go to the private sector and see what this is like. And I’m thinking, right, it’s got to be more challenging, more fun. Government was just very bureaucratic, very slow. And I’m just like, all right, I want to innovate, right? I want to move and kind of do some things right. And so I went to go start my first company.
David Lee [00:09:44]:
It was a software development company. And I had the bright idea that I was going to build an identity and access management SDK and I was going to put it on the mobile phone and what I was going to do was put it all the way down to the OS layer. So that way when you logged into your phone, right, you would log into the phone and it would single sign you into any application because all the authentication would happen at the chipset level and, and it would go out and then authenticate you. At the time there was this chipset that had like the secure element chipset where you could do all your secure transactions. And it was cryptographically secured. And so the things came in and sent back out. And so I was like, okay, cool. But at the time, these chipsets were like really expensive to get access to.
David Lee [00:10:26]:
So here I am trying to start this software development company in San Antonio, Texas. Of all the places I had a couple of mentors tell me, he goes, like, listen, I think this is outstanding, but you need to be in Silicon Valley. Like, why are you here? Get the hell out of San Antonio. Like, there’s no way you’re going to get this kind of done here. And one angel investor actually told me, he goes, I can’t tell you the name of the company. He goes, I can tell you you’re onto something because there’s a lot of companies looking at this. But I’m going to tell you you’re going to fail. And here’s why.
David Lee [00:10:51]:
It’s not because you don’t have the right idea. It’s not because I don’t think you can build a team and actually do it. He goes, you’re not funded enough. There’s companies that are spending hundreds of millions of dollars trying to figure this out. He goes, they’re just going to out resource you, right? So I don’t think I’ve actually ever told this story in a recorded form here at first.
Mark Callahan [00:11:08]:
That’s what everyone comes here for. You hear stories here at first. This is great. Keep going. I love it.
David Lee [00:11:13]:
So fast forward a couple of maybe about like six to nine months later and Apple makes a very interesting acquisition. They acquire a company that has a chipset that includes a secure element. Right? Which leads to why we now have face ID and fingerprint scans. Well, it’s fingerprint scan first. Well, such ID and then face id because at the time how, what I was building is how you were going to authenticate was a fingerprint scan. Now granted, this is back 2008, 2009.
Mark Callahan [00:11:42]:
Because optical rec wasn’t even there yet. I mean, I’m not to date ourselves.
David Lee [00:11:45]:
But yeah, okay, yeah, like nobody was doing this yet, right? And so part of my challenge as this young entrepreneur is I’m trying to take tackle this on because again, this is my engineering days where I’m just like, I don’t need marketing, I don’t need sales, I’m a software engineer. Those guys suck. They don’t know anything anyway. Just give me a bunch of software and I’ll go solve it and it’ll be fine. But finding the hardware, the chipset and to do all this stuff. And then also, like, bringing in this new factor where I was like, you’re going to have to biometrically authenticate into the phone. And my plan was like, all right, I just came from the government. I still have clearances.
David Lee [00:12:13]:
I’ll work it that way. Right? Like, I’m not going to try and put this out to the consumer market. I don’t think they’re ready. So lo and behold, like I said, about nine months later, Apple makes that acquisition. Touch ID comes out, I think, like, in 2010, and then it’s over. By then, I had run out of money. I shut down my little company, and I was like, all right, well, I guess I better take my butt back to identity and make some money here because my entrepreneur chops aren’t up to speed yet. So there you go.
David Lee [00:12:37]:
That’s that story.
Gerry Gebel [00:12:38]:
That’s interesting, though, just thinking back to your entry point into identity. Was that just coincidence that your manager is going out on vacation and you get picked to look at Sun IDM manager at that time?
David Lee [00:12:50]:
I will say part coincidence, but also part lowest man on the totem pole. Like, give the new kid like this because we don’t want to deal with it. It was partly that, like, they were. And it was small team, it was only three of us at the time, and they were developers. They didn’t want to use this system. It was a classic thing where the business bought it and told a bunch of devs, here’s what you’re going to go do. And they’re like, we don’t want to use this thing. And everybody’s like, we could build this.
David Lee [00:13:14]:
We can build this better ourselves. And so give it to this kid. Like, he’ll go figure it out. He’ll spend the hours. And that’s kind of what I did. And then quickly I was able to kind of convince them. I was like, hey, we could build this, but some of this stuff is just better. And it’s already there.
David Lee [00:13:28]:
The time we spend trying to go and rebuild this stuff, we could just deploy this and we could go figure out what else we want to build.
Gerry Gebel [00:13:37]:
Right? Right. So, Mark, I think for our audience here, I think this is really interesting in that you just never know. Some relatively minor thing at the time, at the moment, you don’t think much of. But like you said, David, you know, looking back all these years later, it’s like, wow, that. That was a seriously critical change of direction in my career. That influenced everything after it.
David Lee [00:14:00]:
It really was. Right? And I love that, that aspect. You guys know that I’m a huge, you know, Marvel nerd and just nerd in general with like sci fi stuff or whatever. But, like, think of it as the origin story. Like that really is it, right? Like that decision that day there, right? Because had they not purchased that or had they just said, like, we’re not even going to do this and we’re going to work on trying to build it. I probably never make it into identity. I just end up going down the software route and developing and who knows, like, where that leads to, right? I’ve done this for so long now. I couldn’t think of any other path but doing, like, identity and access management.
David Lee [00:14:32]:
I just love it so much because of all the different things I get to touch with it. I still get to touch business process and change and improvement and all these things. And so it allowed me to grow past just being a tech person too, right? And I don’t think that happens if I just stay in straight coding. Because for those of you who’ve run an identity project, if you’ve been the main architect on an identity project, especially at the times when I was doing it, I’m not going to say when that time was because I already feel old. But there was no such thing as project managers, right? Like, if you were the identity architect, you were.
Mark Callahan [00:15:02]:
You were it, right?
David Lee [00:15:03]:
You were the project manager, the lead coder, the tester, like, everything. And so I had a chance to develop all these other skills by leading these identity projects because I had to learn how to talk to business stakeholders. I had to go be my own business analyst. I had to learn how to sell to executives because I’d have to go into these programs and say, hey, here’s what we’re going to deliver. And most of the time back then when I came in on an identity project, this was at the time where like 70 to 80% of these things failed.
Mark Callahan [00:15:29]:
And I got to be honest, like, this is kind of scary. There’s a 50, 50 chance the rocket’s going to work. You know, you hope it’s going to.
David Lee [00:15:35]:
Work, but that was it, right? And I remember, man, guys, I’ve got so many stories, man. This is. It’s like I should write a book about these things. I don’t know.
Mark Callahan [00:15:45]:
I mean, should we have, like a shameless plug? Is there a book moment? Sorry, keep going.
David Lee [00:15:49]:
It was a project that I was on, and this was probably one of the best projects I’ve been on in my life because we. This project lasted for like two years, and it was this really remote project. That we did everywhere. So Dallas, Houston, Arizona, Germany, right? Like, we were always at these different places kind of running this project. But one of the guys on there told me, he goes, man, you got to look at this like professional baseball players. He was like, hall of fame is batting.400. That means 60% of the time you fail, right? He goes, that’s hall of fame average baseball player. 260, 270.
David Lee [00:16:25]:
Right? You’re only successful 26% of the time. So he was like, just look at it that way. Yeah, we’re coming into this project, and it’s like, we just got a bat. 280, and we’re doing great, right? Like, so even though, like, we’re walking into these projects knowing that at the time, statistics are so bad, it was like, okay, well, what can we do to make it just a little bit better? How do we get to 280? Right. How do we get to 300? Right? And if we’re batting.300, we’re All Stars. And that’s really. Unfortunately, the bar was so low in identity back then. Once you kind of figured that out, I was like, hey, listen, if I can just get you deployed and provisioning things, I’ve won.
David Lee [00:16:59]:
I’m a rock star we can call success, right? And of course, I’m not built that way. I wanted to go and do more, but it was learning all of these things, right, in identity, and so having to sell this and push for different things. And when I saw that companies were like, well, this is just good enough, and I’d be like, no, no, no, no, no. We can do more. Let me explain. Let me show you how if you automate some of your sod detections, right? We can take away so many man hours of how you’re doing these access requests, right? I even. This is back then, which is why I will dig into anybody that tells me, like, I think access requests are complete, absolute waste of time. They’re unnecessary.
David Lee [00:17:35]:
They don’t need to be there. And I was like, you completely automate the entire thing. And people tell me, no, it’s like, I did it with Lombardi Teamworks back in 2005, right? So don’t tell me it’s impossible, right? I did it back then when a simple API call and some JavaScripts and I was able to automate access requests where somebody could go to an application, it would figure out, like, they didn’t have access. It would trigger an access request and Lombardi teamwork, provision the account, come back, refresh the screen, and they never left. And I was like, so if I.
Mark Callahan [00:18:03]:
Could do that back then, why can’t we do it? Yes, exactly.
David Lee [00:18:06]:
You can absolutely do it today. Right. But learning all of these things, right. I think identity just made me such a, just overall a stronger leader, stronger executive because I had to learn how to deal with all of this, how to talk to developers, how to talk to business analysts, talk to executives. And I love that challenge, right. And so that’s when I quickly moved out of like there’s so much more I can do other than just coding.
Mark Callahan [00:18:28]:
I’m hearing obviously all your communications background, the debate side, I mean I think you still could be have a chance at that law degree if you wanted to. But if we were thinking about like that perfect identity related degree, you did have the computer science background. And actually Gerry, if I’m not mistaken, I think David’s the only person who ever actually called in baseball terms CTO and actually pointed that direction and you landed there. Everyone else had no idea where they’re at and you happened to get there. Perfect degree. Is there anything else you would throw in with sort of the mix that you’ve had, knowing what you know today, that would make an ideal candidate just throwing out some topics.
David Lee [00:19:01]:
I don’t think anybody would take this degree. But here’s what I would do, right? Literally this probably be the worst degree. But I would take your first year. I would take you through all the way up to like basic computer theory. So probably to around like algorithms, right? Maybe I wouldn’t do any of the math and diffaq stuff like that. You need to know that. But I want algorithms, data structures, I want you to understand like computer theory. So that would be my first year.
David Lee [00:19:24]:
The second year I take you straight into an MBA course. I want you to learn all business administration, I want you to learn accounting, I want you to learn business administration, I want you to learn project management. Like that’s that whole second year. Third year you’re going to communications, I’m going to teach you how to be a journalist. I’m going to teach you how to write, I’m going to teach you how to research and I’m going to teach you how to defend. Right? That’s your third year. And then your fourth year is literally just, it would be all just kind of like work experience. It’d be two semesters or like what’s the other one like trimesters, however people do it.
David Lee [00:20:01]:
But basically you would have two straight semesters of I’m going to give you a scenario or almost like they do with like MBAs and like you’re going to put in a group go solve this problem, right? And you need to give me a business case, you need to give me how you’re going to go implement it. You need to go and get cost, right? And then I need to see a structure plan of how you’re going to go executed. You get two of those for that year. One semester for one, the other semester for two. And that’s your degree. Now you are ready, right, to go be an identity access management professional. Notice I didn’t say I’m going to teach you active directory. I’m going to teach.
David Lee [00:20:33]:
No, I’m not gonna teach you any of that stuff. You’ll pick that up when you get there. There’s tons of certifications and classes you can go get for that. But if you have those base skills, you know how to communicate, you understand theory of computing, right? Because I think when you understand the theory of computing, most of this technology stuff like you kind of figure out, you know how to build and execute on plans and you understand the business and how a business operates. The single biggest thing that, that, that kills all of us in tech really is that we don’t understand, like we’re still those software engineer nerds. And I love us, I love all of us, right, that we just want to build the perfect piece of software. And we think that when we build that piece of software, everybody will love it, they’ll celebrate it and they’ll love it just as much as we love it. And then we don’t understand that for the most part, business people and the average person still thinks this stuff is magic, right? They still think we carry wands and we do spells and just stuff happens right where we look at it and it’s almost like the matrix.
David Lee [00:21:29]:
We’re like, we just see ones and zeros, man. It’s just a simple. That’s an algorithm, that’s an API. That’s this. That’s all this is. That means nothing to the other average person. It’s still all magic to them. And so we’ve got to understand the way the business looks at it.
David Lee [00:21:43]:
So that way we can go, okay, great business. This is what you want to do. Let me show you how this is going to help. You go and do that. That’s the course that I would build.
Gerry Gebel [00:21:51]:
Yeah, that’s pretty amazing. Yeah, I love that. Instead of just hardcore algorithms and coding and theory for four years and then you’re like, well, I mean you’re an engineer, but you’re Not a you’re not able to talk business, you’re not able to manage a project, you’re not able to talk to people, communicate properly with them other than writing code. Right. So I love that. And it is a theme mark that we’ve hit on a couple times in this video cast series. You know, being able to talk to business and stakeholders is such a big.
Mark Callahan [00:22:20]:
Part of identity management from a journalism and writing perspective. David, you write about this all the time, about the business value of identity and being able to communicate it in a way that’s not ones and zeros, but in a way that matters to me as a member of the legal team or a member of the marketing team where I don’t necessarily speak the same ones and zeros. Why should I care about identity? That’s the thing. One thing I love having read your book, having read and just listen to you a lot, is that you are openly embrace failure. And this is an interesting segue, but bear with me. It’s simply to paraphrase and use your own quote of someone else’s quote, Henry Ford, stating that there really isn’t such thing as a failure. It’s just the opportunity to go at something a second time with a more intelligent decision process. Is there any scenario as you think about the heroic gauntlets that you’ve run, aside from somebody dropping two giant textbooks on your desk and say to figure it out in 10 days.
Mark Callahan [00:23:13]:
Is there anything else along the way that a failure perspective that became a pivotal moment for you in your career that you turned into a true opportunity?
David Lee [00:23:23]:
I’m trying to think of. There’s two that immediately come to mind and I’m going to pick the more recent one. It was founding an ITDR company, right? So some friends of mine, we kind of get together, we talk about coming in. I wanted to completely like re refocus identity and build a different come at it from a different angle and perspective. And so a buddy of mine was already kind of halfway started. He goes, man, come join us, you know, come be the CEO. I was like, great. I jump in there and I’m like, right.
David Lee [00:23:57]:
I’ve learned all these things from the last time that I’ve. I’ve really kind of done this, ready to go do this. So I mean, I’m typical startup CEO, right? I’m pounding down each, you know, VC’s door, like doing pitch decks and pitch meetings here and there, going RSA, chasing these VCs around and just all of the stuff, right. Long story short, right, it gets to a point where it’s just not working. End up having to walk away. And I’ve put, like, a substantial amount of money and time into this, right? And so I look at it and so I walk away and I go, now what? I’ve devoted like a year and a half to this. I don’t really know where to go next or what to do. Do I want to go back and like, do I want to go back to just, like, being implementations, or do I want to go to product company? And at the time, like, nothing.
David Lee [00:24:42]:
Nothing excited me about any of that, right? And it really forced me to take a step back and go, okay, well, what do you want to do? Right? And it’s different from when I was 26 or 27, and I just had all this energy and I’m just like, hair’s on fire. Screw it.
Mark Callahan [00:25:00]:
Three hours of sleep fueled by Red Bull. You can just go, just go, go, go, dude.
David Lee [00:25:05]:
I can live on, like, ramen and whatever. Like, we can do this. I’ll go figure this out, right? I am just going to outsmart and out hustle everything in front of me. A little bit different when you’re in your 40s, right? And I’m just like, yeah, I kind of like sushi and steak a little bit. And it’s nice, like, kind of having not having to figure out how the mortgage is going to get paid. But the biggest thing is, like, what do I want, right? I really had this thing took hold of me a couple of years ago where it’s like when I started looking at and realizing that time is the absolute most precious resource that we have, because it’s this one thing that we get this amount of. We don’t know how much that amount is, and we don’t know how when it’s going to run out, right? And it’s not renewable. I can’t get it back.
David Lee [00:25:45]:
And so if I’m going to spend the time, what do I really want to do? Like, what gets me excited? What can I be happy about that I can invest that time in? And I knew I love solving problems. I knew I loved doing things with identity. And I was like, well, I’m just going to lean into what gets me excited right now. And it’s waking up every day and writing about this stuff or doing a podcast about it or really creating these stories and creating this new medium that we have to be able to get information out there. And I was like, well, I started this media company, so let’s just go with that and see where it goes, right? And I’ll still do identity stuff and talk to them. But I remember I didn’t want to do the advisory portion for so long because I was like, everybody’s like, oh, you should just be. I was like, I don’t want to do that. I was like, why? I was like, because here’s why, right? I was like, because I’m going to be the worst advisor ever.
David Lee [00:26:30]:
Because I’m not going to do your bullshit consulting hours. It’s all going to be firm fix fee. I don’t want to hear about your project. I don’t want to hear about your pro. Like, I’m actually going to give you the truth. I’m not going to be there for 30, 40, 50 days. I was like, I’m going to be there for two weeks because it’s only going to take me an hour to figure out what your problem is, how you need to fix it, and that’s what I’m going to give you. I was like, it’s going to be the no bullshit consulting.
David Lee [00:26:50]:
I was like, and nobody really wants that, right? And my friend was like, yes, they do. Like, just do that.
Mark Callahan [00:26:57]:
Exactly what we want. And in fact, there’s your company name right there. It’s the no Bullshit Consultant. Yes, that’s it.
David Lee [00:27:04]:
And so I just kind of really leaned into doing the things that I want to do. That brought me joy every morning. And so that. That was a pivot about three years ago and that I’ve just really enjoyed. And it kind of brought me. The podcast grew and the newsletter grew, and I was starting to pick up different advisory clients. And like, now all of a sudden, people were reaching out to me and be like, oh, I’ve got this startup. I’d love you to.
David Lee [00:27:23]:
Can you be one of our advisors? I’m like, who are you? Me? Like, I don’t. Like what? Like, I don’t know. But then I started talking to him, and I’m realizing, like, all this passion that I have for, like, all these things that I’ve seen across my life in my career, and I enjoy doing that. And I realized that it’s like, okay, what I enjoy doing most is teaching and helping and telling stories that help people get past where they need to get to. And when I focused on that and I learned how to just lean into, like, what really makes me happy as cliche and freaking. However you want to put it as this sounds, man. It just drastically changed my perspective on life and the things that I see and went after and the opportunities that came to me. Right? Like, the opportunity now, the Phil cto, that wasn’t even a.
David Lee [00:28:07]:
That was nowhere on. It wasn’t even my bingo card for this year. I was like, okay, cool. I’m gonna continue to build out the brand, maybe do some more consulting. I’ll pick up some more clients. And then all of a sudden, this opportunity comes up, and I’m like, well, this is kind of amazing. I was like, okay, well, I get to keep my brand, right? They’re like, yeah, that’s the reason why. Like, part of the reason why we want you to come and do this.
David Lee [00:28:25]:
And I was like, and I’m gonna be an advocate for the customer. Like, I’m gonna sit there and tell them, like, I can help them figure out their problems. But you’re okay if I say, like, the answer to your problem is not buying this product? That’s what we want you to do. And I’m just like, let’s do it right. So that was the biggest pivot, like, really just bouncing back from that failure. As I looked at, and I’ve learned since then not to look at things as failures. Look, I’m still human. I get sad, I get depressed.
David Lee [00:28:49]:
Things don’t work out the way like it hurts. But I knew that, like, that was not. It wasn’t for nothing. There was things that I learned in there that I needed to take, and it was a path that I was meant to go down, and I just needed to have the courage to dust myself up and keep going. And so, yeah, it’s been amazing ride so far, so I’m excited every day of what. What’s coming next and how things continue to go. And, yeah, the next 10 to 15 years should be really, really fun. I got a lot of big things that I want to do that I.
David Lee [00:29:17]:
That I want to accomplish, and I can see them very clearly, and I’m seeing the steps getting closer and closer, so.
Gerry Gebel [00:29:24]:
Well, I can understand that too. You know, having you having run the gauntlet of all the challenges of a startup, you know, trying to fund it, trying to get market fit and so on, you don’t learn that unless you go through it yourself personally. And it just. Like all these labs, all these light bulbs went off, and now that you’re just more prepared now for the next time you. You launch into that, which I’m sure is just in a matter of time. And. But that’s awesome of you to. To share it in that context.
Gerry Gebel [00:29:53]:
Yeah, it was a failure in some respects, but it was a big win and many others.
David Lee [00:29:57]:
Yeah, absolutely.
Mark Callahan [00:29:58]:
And you’re still standing. I mean, that’s the thing again, you’re a buff. And I’m just going to keep giving the plugs throughout just. And listening to you. And as you presented and telling your story in the newsletter, you’re still here. And every single one has been a challenge, but you just keep, as you say, dusting yourself off. And that’s sometimes the hardest part, I think, for our audience is like, you think it’s like one and done. I’m going to have one big failure.
Mark Callahan [00:30:19]:
My career is over. I’m not going anywhere. And it sounds like that’s the opposite. Like. Like almost the more failures, the more learning, the more clarity you had for your path.
David Lee [00:30:28]:
The one thing about failure, what it forces you to do is it forces you to take a step back and look at something. And you have to deal with the emotions, you have to deal with the hurt, you have to deal with the anxiety. All the things come at you. And what that triggers is our fight or flight response, right? And all of that starts to come in. And one thing that comes out of that, it’s a very, very, very clear focus, right? So just in this last year, right, in two years, we’ve seen, like, massive layoffs across tech. Things like that. If we, we. I don’t know if you guys, but I’ve had friends affected, things like that.
David Lee [00:30:58]:
And I’ve also been there, right? So it’s like nothing gives you more clarity than going, holy shit, it’s the 15th, and I got 14 days to figure out how to pay the mortgage, right? Or the kids are hungry and I’ve got just enough money to go get groceries. Like, hey, we got groceries this time. But, like, I don’t know where the next one’s coming from, right? Those type of things. When you have to start making those decisions. And I’m not making light of any of those situations, but the clarity and focus that you get and part of, if you learn to embrace that part, right, Deal with the emotions. Absolutely. But then focus on, okay, I’ve got this clarity now. What do I want to do next? How do I want to control this? How do I want to not always just respond to this? You can’t dictate life on your own terms, but you can have a plan and be ready to adjust because you kind of know what’s coming.
David Lee [00:31:47]:
And so you can start to kind of put that in place. That is the. Read any book about any entrepreneur, about any leadership, success, whatever you want to call it, that is the key. It’s your ability to Respond to that and get up. And I’m not saying it’s easy, believe me. There were days I was on the floor crying, like, not knowing what was going to do next. There was days I just thought, I don’t know. I don’t know what to do.
David Lee [00:32:08]:
Maybe I’m just going to go freak it out. Just go back to work. I’ll just go back to consulting. I’ll just go do whatever. Right? There are days where I woke up and I didn’t know what to do or I didn’t want to get there. So I’m not saying those days don’t come. They absolutely do. It is those days that are the most important, where you find a way to get through.
David Lee [00:32:24]:
I’m just going to send one more email, and that’s all I’m going to do today. If that’s all I can do today, that’s fine. It’s that process of saying, I’m going to get it done. And then you’ll look back and be like, holy crap, how did I get here? I made it. I’m still here. I’m still standing. And that’s the part where you realize that if I can continue to do that, I’ll find myself on the other side where I want to be.
Mark Callahan [00:32:47]:
I love that. And I’m just seeing, like, Marvel Universe, like, as a thing about clarity and foresight and things. I’m just thinking, if there were a character name that you’re developing for yourself, here I just am seeing this path.
Gerry Gebel [00:32:59]:
Wait a minute, wait a minute. He already has one. He’s the Jedi. Come on.
Mark Callahan [00:33:02]:
He is the Jedi. And I was just trying to cross. Now I’m going to get all sorts of hate over this one. But, yes, he absolutely is the one and only Jedi and more. That’s awesome. You know, here’s an interesting thing also, Gerry, David, I’m going to talk about in third person for just a second is if you go through his CV and you look at his LinkedIn, one of the things you’ll find so many people talk about their jobs and their past roles and all the accomplishments they had. If you read David’s, it talks about the team that he worked with, it talked about the customers that he enabled, and it really speaks to that other side, having that empathy and that team vision. And it’s noted.
Mark Callahan [00:33:38]:
It’s really cool to see that it is 100%.
Gerry Gebel [00:33:40]:
And also how much you give back to the industry already, David, through your newsletters, which I read all the time, and your podcasts and everything about that so, I mean, you’re sharing so much of yourself out there, too, which I know the audience appreciates as well.
Mark Callahan [00:33:56]:
This is amazing. I’m with you. Like, you got hit me like, yeah, it’s amazing how transparent you are.
David Lee [00:34:01]:
For us, it’s partly because you never realize the path that you’re on, right. Until you look back and see how far that you’ve come. And for me, I leaned into this a little bit early, and this. I’m going to give credit to Marcus Carey for giving me this gut punch. One day, I was at Cellpoint and Marcus Carey, we were doing some work with him and his company, and he came by the office and, you know, we just got to talking about different things. Right. For me, when I wrote my book, he kind of had. I was already thinking about writing the book, and he kind of inspired me to get it done.
David Lee [00:34:31]:
But he said this to me, and I was like, you should do more. Like, you should give back. You should talk more. Stuff like that. I was like. I was like, yeah, man, I just don’t know how to get started. And he’s walking into the elevator. Perfect scene out of a movie, right? And he’s walking into the elevator.
David Lee [00:34:43]:
And I said, I just don’t know how to do it. And then he turns around, looks at me, and as the doors are closed, he goes, it’s easy. You just fucking do it.
Mark Callahan [00:34:51]:
And I was just like, oh, and seen. Right, right.
David Lee [00:34:55]:
Okay. And all right. Instead of waiting for somebody else to be it or do it, like, I guess I’ll just go and do it. And for me, what’s important? Like, so I graduated from historically black college, university, right. I grew up at a time where, you know, statistics for young boys my age wasn’t great. Right. You were either gonna be dead or in jail by the time you were 18. Like, so a lot of the stuff that I saw growing up was not great.
David Lee [00:35:19]:
Right. There wasn’t a lot of role models. When I got into this industry, there was nobody that looked like me. Like, I was usually the only African American person at any company. I’d be one of one. Right? Hey, let’s go to the diversity meeting. It’s Dave at lunch by himself. Okay.
David Lee [00:35:32]:
This is awesome, right? So the reason why I share so much of this stuff, because I want people come to the space to look and go listen. Sometimes it just takes looking across and seeing somebody that relates to you in some kind of way that goes, oh, well, if he can do it, then yeah, like, so can I. Or just to give you Some comfort. There’s somebody who is also nerdy about identity and they work in this space. I won’t be alone or whatever. So it’s like, fine, I’ll write about it. I’ll show it. And it’s not because I don’t want to be somebody’s hero or mentor.
David Lee [00:36:03]:
It’s just because I want somebody to look and go. I don’t want somebody to overlook the space. Well, I don’t want to go in there because I don’t know if I’ll be accepted or I don’t. That looks uncomfortable. But they’ll look and maybe they stumble across my stuff and go, oh, okay, well, that’s cool. Like, oh, man, he went to North Carolina tea. Or he’s from California or whatever. You find something that we connect to and you go, okay, that makes me a little bit more comfortable.
David Lee [00:36:22]:
Great. Right? Then I’ve done my job. And that’s what it’s for. Because I think we skip over a lot about how much that is needed. Right. You need to. As a human being, you need to look and connect with other people and see something of yourself in those people. Doesn’t necessarily always have to be skin color.
David Lee [00:36:39]:
It’s just got to be something. Right. That’s why it’s fun to talk about the nerdy stuff and Star wars and Star Trek, whatever it is.
Mark Callahan [00:36:44]:
We geek out about Star wars and video games and all the things. Yes, right.
David Lee [00:36:48]:
Because I think we just lose so much aspect of this stuff. We are human beings. At the end of the day, that’s it. Right. And we connect by telling stories. We connect by sharing interest. And yes, I get it’s business and corporate and blah, blah, blah, blah. But at the end of the day, we’re people.
David Lee [00:37:05]:
So you guys know, right. Like, what’s some of the best jobs you’ve had? When you think about it, I guarantee you don’t think about. Well, there was this one hard requirement that I saw. You think about the people that you were working with and how much fun it was because you got to work with them every day. Why was it fun? Because you like those people. You connected with those people. Right.
Mark Callahan [00:37:22]:
And so they’re your people. Right. It’s going to the Cheesecake Factory and ordering the appetizers and having that. That sort of connection. See, I. I pay attention. Yes. Thinking about the people, like being asked to do more with the teams that we have.
Mark Callahan [00:37:36]:
Have you thought about ways that you’re able. I mean, you write all the time about Iam leadership, and it’s phenomenal because you talk about this human element. So I think you’re almost uniquely qualified to speak about how do we help lift up all of our teams when maybe budgets are really tight and we just don’t have that expansion ability to hire more. How do we elevate our team, who we have today? How do we make ourselves better?
David Lee [00:37:58]:
So you’ve got to make the best out of the team that you have, right? And so when you have that, let’s say you look at something, I’m going to get a very, let’s build a concrete example. So I look at something and I go, okay, here’s this identity program. I’ve got three people. That’s it, right? Those are the only three people. And I wouldn’t ask for budget because I really need five. Because we’ve got all this, we’ve got to onboard 700 applications in the next 18 months. And I was like, there’s no way me and these three people are going to get it done. I need to get five.
David Lee [00:38:21]:
And they go, nope, not happening. You got to get it done with three, right? So I can either sit there and go, boo hoo woe us, we’ll never get it done, or I can go, okay, listen, now if you’re in a leadership position now it’s time to have a real heart to heart with those three people and go, listen, this is gonna be tough, but we’re all gonna lean in. How do we all get better? Let’s go find out. Like, we’ve all gotta do more, right? So we’ve all gotta learn just a little bit more about this aspect. So let’s go out and it’s so much better now, right? Let’s go out and hey Julie, go learn everything you can about application onboarding. Go see if there’s case studies, go see if there’s best practice examples, go scour YouTube, Reddit, Quora, whatever. You can go find out about that. Mark, what I need you to do is I need you to get really good at business process engineering.
David Lee [00:39:05]:
We’ve got to find a more efficient way to do this. Maybe there’s some things that we can do to reconfigure how these business process works to help us do this a little bit better, right? Tim, your job is we got to break these things down into different milestones. I need you to kind of handle some of the project management stuff. Here’s how you’re going to do that, right? My job is I’m going to go find any blockers that’s in front of us and go knock those down. But I’m also going to pick up some of the development skills. So when you guys get this, I can help with. There’s some scripting and things we need to do, right? So in that concrete example, it’s right. And it’s just everybody’s going to have to do more.
David Lee [00:39:37]:
So you’re going to have to lean in and understand you first you got to break down your problem all the way down to the tiny bits and pieces of what needs to be done and then go, okay, what skillset do we have? Here’s our deficit. Well, guys, we’re not. Help’s not coming, right? You know what I’m saying? Nobody’s walking through that door to come save us, so we got to save ourselves. So what do we need to learn to go upskill? And then in there at that point it’s like either A, we’re going to have to do it on our own and we’re going to have to do it on the weekends or things like that. Or at least maybe I can go fight for budget to go well, maybe I can get some training budget if they’re not going to allow me to hire more people. That’s the plan and how you dig in and how you kind of learn how to do more. And I would say lean into hopefully the systems that you have. Automation.
David Lee [00:40:16]:
Automation. Automation is going to be your best friend. You get automation by getting better at business process. When you can clearly define what your process is and how you want to get from A to B. Now you can automate it and that’s how you can start to start getting some of this one plus one equals three, five, seven type of thing. Because it’s like, hey, I don’t have the resources and bodies to throw at this, so I got to do it smarter versus harder. And I do that by fixing some of my process and automating.
Gerry Gebel [00:40:42]:
So you answered that question without using one of the latest buzzwords in AI. But I’m sure that can further augment what you talked about there. But AI wasn’t your first answer, so.
David Lee [00:40:53]:
That’S good because it’s. I get down to the fundamentals, man. AI is just a tool that you could use to do all of that. Right? So all the things I laid out, sure. Could you throw them in the chat GPT or could you. I’ve been messing around with N8N right. Trying to build an AI agent workflow. Right.
David Lee [00:41:07]:
But before you even do that, what is the thing going to do? Which meaning what? What’s the process? What’s the workflow like? Once I know that, then I can go and build it. Right. So AI is just a tool set to kind of help you get there faster. But you gotta have the plan of how you want to execute to get there first for sure.
Mark Callahan [00:41:22]:
Before we jump into wrapping up just a little bit here, I am curious. So you’ve got again, the project management background. You’ve got this unique blend that just makes you who you are today. I mean, that’s where the goat comes from. How do we measure success in all this? Like, you’ve also written quite a bit about this, but like measuring the outcomes of IAM programs, specifically, what should we be measuring so that we know how we’re doing on all these fronts that we just talked about here?
David Lee [00:41:43]:
So at the high level, impact to the business, that’s what you should be measuring. Now somebody will ask, well, what does that mean? Okay, cool.
Mark Callahan [00:41:49]:
You guys just say, see a little more there. Yeah, right.
David Lee [00:41:51]:
Every business is different. So let’s figure out what are the. So I like getting concrete examples. Let’s go back to this example again, this team of three. And we look at it and go, okay, what’s our biggest problem? And I am right now, hey, like we have a ton of dormant accounts because we’re still doing manual deprovisioning, right? So it takes us on average a week to remove and get rid of the access on of account. So because of that, we’ve got 1500 dormant accounts. Right, Cool. So impact to the business.
David Lee [00:42:19]:
What’s the impact that those dormant accounts have on the business? Well, we can go and do research and go, okay, well, one of the ways that usually people get in for attackers is through dormant accounts that have access they shouldn’t have anymore, right? Let’s go look at that and let’s put a risk profile to that. Right? And even if my company doesn’t measure risk and have a risk model that I can use, I’ll go make up one, I’ll go research one just to give it a figure and number that I can go give to it. So I’ll say, okay, listen, right? If we’ve got 1500 dormant accounts and we’ve got 3000 employees, we can go, hey, 50% of our accounts that we have are dormant and don’t have access to, which gives us a 50% risk that one of these is going to get. Right. Get owned some way, right? So we want to reduce that. So now I’m going to take that 1500 and say we’re going to reduce it. How are we going to reduce that? Okay, well we’re going to reduce that by fixing this one week process right now. Because if we can get to these faster, we should be able to reduce that.
David Lee [00:43:13]:
And I want to reduce that by a magnitude of 20% per quarter. That’s going to be my goal. What does that mean? Right. So I take 20% of that 1500. That’s my goal for the quarter. How am I going to get there? I also have my measurement of time of my week so that it takes a process that. So I’m like, all right, now if I can just shorten that week, maybe I can get it to three days instead of seven. How much more does that allow me to get the dormant accounts down?
Mark Callahan [00:43:36]:
Right.
David Lee [00:43:36]:
Like. And so now that I have these actual measurable goals, that’s what I’m measuring on. So hey, we deprovision this many accounts quarter over quarter. That’s a 20% increase in ones that we’re deprovisioning. We’re doing them this much faster and it’s reducing this number by this much. We’re bringing that risk number down by this much. Right. Everything you do in identity, that’s the path you want to follow.
David Lee [00:43:56]:
Find what the business impact is and work backwards from there. Right. Shout out to AWS and their whole work backwards. Just, you know, scientists, much as I didn’t like it there, some of this stuff is really important. But if you work backwards from there, that gives you your playbook of what you need to go do and what you need to measure. And that’s how you define success. Success for your program.
Gerry Gebel [00:44:14]:
That’s a great answer, David, because we’re always looking at things to measure.
Mark Callahan [00:44:18]:
That was exactly it. Because so many things tend to be this knee jerk forward thing where somebody just says do the thing, fix the thing now and we don’t see what the downstream impact is. Exactly what you said that work back of understanding what it is that the risk and coming back from that. That’s hard math to argue with. That’s really. Yeah. Well, you call yourself a Renaissance man and you truly are a renaissance man and all things that you do. One of the things I’ve noticed, and I don’t want to put you on the spot here, but I’m just going to do it anyhow is how incredibly approachable you are.
Mark Callahan [00:44:46]:
I think that five years ago I saw you at an identiverse and I was like, ah. And then each year like progressed and talked more and more and now here we are, friends. But as our audience is thinking about ways they can educate themselves. What are you studying right now? That is your thing about identity going forward. What is there any specific topic that you’ve got studied right now?
David Lee [00:45:03]:
It’s a number of them. So. But here’s what I’ll tell you, like, so the main thing I’m studying right now is AI. I am just fascinated with it. I study everything from agency to AI to the models and how that’s growing. But specifically with that and identity is this idea of this identity data lake and these standards around having a standard data format for identity. So Ian Glaser, shout out to Ian, this is all his thing came up with this idea of oids, right? Which is God, what does it stand for anyway? It’s some kind of data schema. I forgot what the OIDS stands for.
David Lee [00:45:33]:
Open Identity Data Schema. And so he started the Slack group in adipro. And I’m just fascinated with this idea of if we can come up with a standard of how. And I what identity looks like, right? What are the attributes in there? What do we care about? And then I’m taking that and going if we had a true identity data lake where we take this information and through connectors and ETL and create this standard identity data lake format that then feed into identity systems, right? So that’s the area that I’m studying. I’m just, I’m deep diving into all stuff. I’m looking at Snowflake, I’m looking at what Radiant does. I mean, I’ve known Radiant Logic a long time, but like just. I just have this inkling that we need to pull the Identity store out of the identity systems.
David Lee [00:46:18]:
Blasphemy. I know, sorry. But pull it out because like IGA platforms, IDP platforms, they’re not ETL tools and we give in those tools, you get just enough ETL to kind of do stuff. But as we’re starting to look at more and more at this data that we use in Identity, like there’s so much processing and so much things that we need to do. It truly needs to sit in an ETL platform and kind of get cleansed first and then get passed. And so I feel like we should pull that part out and maybe it’s a better feature in one of these tools. But like, anyway, that’s the area that I’m studying right now and kind of writing stuff about. I’m going to actually realize that I was supposed to post this the other day, but I’ll post it sometime this week.
David Lee [00:46:56]:
I kind of came up with like a general identity lake architecture that I’m going to post out there and just kind of put out there that I want people to beat up and stuff like that or whatever. So area of research, because again, I’m a nerd. This is the stuff I love to do. This is what keeps me up at night. I’ll literally have this in the middle of the night and be like, oh, we should do this. Next thing I know, it’s three hours later, I’m drawing architecture diagrams and researching stuff. It’s a problem.
Mark Callahan [00:47:15]:
I’ll tell you. We’re lucky enough. You already did shout out to Ian. So as I think about places that people may self educate, I don’t want to overlook your own newsletter. The Jedi newsletter is amazing and everything you published previous, they need to go back and just, just go read it all. Awesome. Anyone else to study or follow right now? We’ve got Ian, we’ve got Eve, we’ve got you. I mean, we’re saying those in the same breath.
Mark Callahan [00:47:36]:
I didn’t even take a breath between those.
David Lee [00:47:38]:
So Heather Flanagan, ID Pro. ID Pro, Heather Flanagan and ID Pro writes a ton of good stuff there. Not quite identity, but chase Cunningham, right. Dr. Zero Trust. It’s not just identity, but he likes a lot of good stuff around just cybersecurity in general and how just the approach that we should be taking. He just wrote a fascinating article this past week that I just absolutely love. So, yeah, that’s what I would suggest.
Mark Callahan [00:48:03]:
Obviously we could go for hours here, David, and this has been awesome, but I mean, just like understanding all the things that you’ve been through, your path, how incredibly approachable you are, it’s fun hanging out and learning from you. I love geeking out over this stuff. So thank you for joining us.
David Lee [00:48:16]:
Thanks so much for having me. This is fun.
Gerry Gebel [00:48:18]:
Yeah, thank you, David. Look forward to seeing you next week.
David Lee [00:48:21]:
Yes, that’s right, buddy.
Mark Callahan [00:48:22]:
Is there anybody else that you would nominate to be in this league of heroes that you find yourself in now that maybe we should go talk to next?
David Lee [00:48:29]:
Stephen Washington. I will make the introduction. He is one of the best identity leaders I have met from the aspect of he knows identity, he knows how to build teams and I think you’ll really enjoy his concept and passion for building teams and why that’s important. Yeah, I think that’s, that’s a hero you guys need to get on the show.
Mark Callahan [00:48:56]:
Noted. Well, we’ll take that introduction from you and can’t thank you enough for joining us. I mean, it’s for us. It’s like we get to hang out and talk as friends. But your story is so unique and hopefully it really inspires a lot of people as they listen to this episode. So thank you for joining us.
David Lee [00:49:09]:
Appreciate you guys having me and group picture is happening in ident, so we’re going to make that happen.
Mark Callahan [00:49:14]:
Deal? Deal. Take you up on it.
Gerry Gebel [00:49:15]:
That’s the deal.
Mark Callahan [00:49:16]:
Gerry, thanks as always for joining and actually being one of my mentors, to be honest, you know, as I’ve learned so much in the identity space as well. But thank you for joining and co hosting with me again today.
Gerry Gebel [00:49:25]:
You got it. Anytime. See you next time, Mark.
Mark Callahan [00:49:27]:
Thank everyone and have a great afternoon. We’ll see you.
Use Identity Orchestration to integrate, automate, and secure identity and apps across hybrid and multi-cloud environments
Media kit 