K. Patrick Wheeler
CIRP™ Programme Director
Patrick is a cybersecurity expert, practitioner and educator in securing the global financial sector and combatting cybercrime. Originating from California’s Silicon Valley and San Francisco and now a naturalized European (Belgium/Luxembourg) he contributes to alleviating the critical cyber skills shortage and building a diverse next-generation cyber workforce via the CyberWayFinder cybersecurity academy (www.cyberwayfinder.com).
He guest-lectures and contributes to cyber pedagogy in universities and is active in the international cybersecurity and finance speaking circuit speaking to business leaders at international conferences such as Euromoney Switzerland, Treasury Nordics Stockholm, and COSAC Ireland, GSMA Athens, e-Crime London and Dubai and many, many more.
Patrick and has been involved in global IT consulting, business and security for over 20 years and he currently focuses on the European Financial sector specializing in security, compliance and innovation with rubric of ‘Cybrepreneurship’ which includes opportunistic approaches to enterprise cyber security program uplift as well as business-leading topics like in payments, fraud, bitcoins, blockchains, cloud services, big & small data, digital transformation, A.I. and digital robotics. As a past CISO and practicing Security Architect he is responsible to protecting major portions of Europe’s financial infrastructure with clients include BNP Paribas Group, Euroclear, SWIFT and more.
With particular interest in talent building and gender-rebalancing efforts in the cyber and technology domains by building cyber apprenticeship programs, leading the Design.Think.Your.Professional.Life career transformation seminar series and working with international corporates, associations and others to build the next generation cyber-prepared workforce. He leads an executive ‘cyber-uplift,’ masterclasses and mentorship program assisting business, technology and security executives address evolutions of cyber security topics.
A list of credentials on offer include being awarded the premier the (ISC)2 EMEA ‘Senior Practitioner of the Year’ award, registered Civil Engineer (California) and job titles including Chief Security Officer, Security Architect, VP of Operations Sr., Operations Director, Audit Manager, Inspector, and more. Academics include an AA (Associate of Arts), BS (Bachelors in Engineering), and an MBA (Master in Business Administration). Patrick lives in Luxembourg with is family.
