Alumni Profile: Chloe Viot, MPP’19

Since graduating from the Harris School of Public Policy in 2019, Chloe Viot has worked in cybersecurity at Deloitte and Accenture and recently started her new role as Cybersecurity Lead at Meta. 

At Meta, Viot focuses on governance, risk, compliance, and program management. “We identify issues or security concerns within the company and find ways to solve them," she said. "I work with the technical teams to share new regulations and strategize how the policies will be implemented, make sure the new policies fit regulatory needs, and create reports for leadership.

“The way I view the impact of my work at Meta is that I’m at a company that handles 3 billion active users’ data. Cybersecurity is all about data, and what company on earth has more data than Meta? The tangibility of fixing a security issue that protects people’s information is an incredibly rewarding impact.” 

When she applied to Harris, Viot originally planned to work in government. However, while interning with the State Department through an opportunity with the University of Chicago Institute of Politics, she recognized that “while I found that work enjoyable, I wanted to work somewhere faster paced and more at the forefront of cybersecurity"—a field she had first learned about through her classes at Harris. “While at Harris, I came to appreciate all things related to international security and realized that the future of security is cyber.” 

Fortunately, Viot's mentor at Harris—who also worked in cybersecurity—took her to a networking event. "There, I was introduced to some partners at Deloitte, who suggested I apply." Viot subsequently worked for Deloitte for two years as a Cyber Risk Consultant, then moved to Accenture as a Cybersecurity Associate Manager. "In both companies, I enjoyed the opportunity to work with all sorts of clients, primarily in tech and financial services. However, I still wanted to be more boots on the ground in cybersecurity, which is why I applied to Meta.”

Viot says her Harris Master of Public Policy (MPP)  prepared her well for her role at Meta. “At Meta, it’s very important to get buy-in not just from leadership, but also from the engineers. While I don’t do too much data science myself, having the foundation of data analysis has made my conversations with our data engineers a lot more fluid, fruitful, and easy. And all those policy memos we wrote taught me how to write in a succinct way, which is useful when I’m writing briefs for leadership.” 

As for her advice for Harris students, Viot said, “I think there can be a lot of pressure at Harris—are you doing the right things, meeting the right people—but my focus was primarily on the classes and diving deep into the material. While I don’t know if it’s the right approach for everyone, it’s the approach that worked for me. And it was a significant part of my reason for coming to Harris—I had read a lot of studies by Jens Ludwig during undergrad when I took a class on the economics of crime and was fascinated by his work. That’s why I wanted to go to UChicago—so I could take his class and learn from him. And I did, and it was incredible. Ultimately, don’t worry about what you should and shouldn’t be doing, just focus on your interests and why you came to Harris.”