Our Team

Melissa Dark, PhD

Melissa Dark is committed to developing, supporting, and stewarding cybersecurity education in the United States.  She has worked in this area for the past 20 years where she has been fortunate to lead a number of creative and impactful projects ranging from studying the effect of various representational forms on cryptography learning and neural connections to developing cybersecurity concepts lessons for integration into the Advanced Placement Computer Science Principles high school course.  Her early work in cybersecurity education focused on the graduate level and has progressively grown down to community college, and now high school, in response to two needs: robust cybersecurity literacy among all cybercitizens and closing the cybersecurity workforce gap. In 2015, she founded DARK Enterprises, Inc., a non-profit which advances the mission of developing, supporting, and stewarding cybersecurity education initiatives in the United States through:

  • D – Design and Development
  • A – Assessment and Analytics
  • R – Research
  • K – Knowledge Transfer. 

Teach Cyber is a flagship project within DARK Enterprises, Inc.

Jenny Daugherty, PhD

Jenny Daugherty is a Research and Curriculum Lead for DARK Enterprises, Inc. Jenny has over 15 years of experience in K-12 STEM education with expertise in curriculum development, teacher professional development, and educational research and evaluation. She has served as Principal Investigator and Co-Principal Investigator on numerous projects in the fields of Cybersecurity, Science, Technology, and Engineering education. Jenny earned her doctoral degree in Human Resource Education from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign where she was awarded a doctoral fellowship with the National Center for Engineering and Technology Education. Prior to her position with DARK Enterprises, she worked at Purdue University, where she earned tenure as an Associate Professor, and at Louisiana State University, where she served as the Leadership Development Institute Director. 

Nancy Stevens

Nancy Stevens is a Curriculum Lead for DARK Enterprises.  Nancy taught AP Computer Science Principles, Python Programming, and Intro to Computer Science at First Flight High School in North Carolina. Prior to starting the computer science program, she taught a variety of Business and IT courses. Nancy has worked with the Friday Institute as a Code.org facilitator since 2017 in both the Computer Science Discoveries and Computer Science Principles programs. She has led numerous workshops in Computer Science education. Nancy was inducted into the North Carolina Business Educator Hall of Fame in 2016. She was the honored recipient of the Dr. Orus Sutton Award in 2017. She has a BA in Business Management from the University of Northern Iowa, and an MA in Education from East Carolina University.

C Lannin

Chris Lannin

Chris obtained her undergraduate degree in Business Education from Winona State University, and she went on to obtain two Master’s degrees: A Master’s in Secondary Education from Arizona State University and a Master of Science in School Library and Information Studies from Minnesota State University-Mankato. Chris worked for the Kasson-Mantorville School District in Kasson, MN for 20 years. While there, she held numerous positions as her experience and as the school district needs evolved. Chris believes that meaningful learning requires students to be engaged and active. She used a multi-media approach to create a sensory experience. She incorporated videos, music, games, and student movement in her lessons. Chris is highly experienced at using technology in the classrooms. She taught the CCNA (Cisco Certified Networking Associate) curriculum as a yearlong class to high schoolers. Her classroom had its own local-area network, and students developed skills necessary to build their own network. Chris also taught a high school independent study course in Virtual Reality Educational Pathfinders in which students used Blender to learn 3D modeling. For the last three years, Chris worked for Lanesboro School District, Lanesboro, MN teaching K-12 Technology and high school Business classes in addition to acting as the District Technology Integrationist. 

Sabrina Smiley

Sabrina Smiley leads Operations for DARK Enterprises.  Sabrina earned her undergraduate degree in education and her master’s degree in special education from Ball State University. In 2018, Sabrina began contributing to the DARK Enterprises, Inc. team. She enjoys her role as an editor and copy editor, and she also assists in performing data collection and analysis. She contributes to various cybersecurity projects within DARK Enterprises, Inc.

Contributors

Bobbie Bastian

Bobbie Bastian is a CTE Computer Science Teacher at Bollman Technical Education Center in the Adams 12 School District in Colorado where she teaches Intro to Computer Science, AP Computer Science A, AP Computer Science Principles, Cybersecurity, and Senior Projects.  She has 13 years of teaching experience in both the elementary and secondary levels.  Bobbie is a Code.org CS Principles Facilitator and is a co-designer / co-instructor of Relay’s Computational Thinking Professional Learning Course for elementary educators. Additionally, she is the President of the Colorado Chapter of CSTA and served on the Colorado Computer Science Standards Committee.  She loves teaching both students and adults how to program. Bobbie’s TSA students have placed in the top 10 at Nationals. She was selected as the 2017 Colorado TSA Advisor of the Year. Bobbie has a Bachelor of Science degree in Computer Information Systems and a Master of Arts degree in Education.  She is currently pursuing her cybersecurity certificate at CU Boulder. 

Dan Massey, PhD

Dan Massey works on cybersecurity with applications ranging from network security to cyber physical system security. He serves on several boards from school district advisory boards to the Neutral Vehicle Consortium that is developing secure interoperable standards for vehicular data.  He is currently a full professor at CU Boulder. Prior to joining CU Boulder, Dr. Massey was a Program Manager in the Cyber Security Division, Science and Technology Directorate, U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS). At DHS, he developed and managed the Cyber Physical Systems (CPSSEC) program that focused on cyber security for automobiles and other systems that combine the cyber and physical worlds. He has more than 25 years of research and management experience and is the author over 100 peer reviewed publications on networking and cyber security.

Filipo Sharevski, PhD

Filipo Sharevski is a cybersecurity researcher and tactician who constructs and manipulates reality as it unfolds across the cyber-physical spaces, particularly focused on human-centered security, machine learning for cybersecurity, and secure cyber-physical system interactions. His academic work has been published internationally, including a book on cellular network forensics, cybersecurity curriculum under the Cybersecurity National Action Plan (CNAP), and academic articles in renewed cybersecurity journals and conferences. His research areas include: malware-supported online/social media information campaigns, adversarial user experience design, secure human-interaction design, machine learning approaches for detection and testing of mechanisms for coordinated information manipulation online. Dr. Sharevski holds a PhD in Interdisciplinary Cybersecurity from Purdue University, West Lafayette. He is currently an Assistant Professor in the College of Computing and Digital Media at DePaul University, where he co-founded and co-directs the Divergent Design Lab.

Jennifer Peyrot

Jennifer Peyrot endeavors to make this world a better place than she found it. Professionally, she has done this for the past 13 years as a public school educator. Some of her roles during this time included teaching high school students social studies and various technology courses ((including an Introduction to Cybersecurity) and serving as an instructional technology coordinator, creating and implementing professional learning for educators. Jennifer has co-facilitated education conferences, facilitated the development and implementation of district-wide programs, and developed student-centered curriculum for in-person and online learning environments. Ms. Peyrot is an Army veteran and her experiences as a SIGINT analyst allowed her to see the need for cybersecurity education in the K-12 setting. This caused her to shift her professional work to bring opportunities in cybersecurity to middle and high school students. Currently, she is pursuing a master’s degree in cybersecurity at CU Boulder and working on projects related to cybersecurity education. 

Jesse Hairston

Jesse R. Hairston is a research engineer at The University of Alabama in Huntsville’s (UAH) Center for Cybersecurity Research and Education where he creates cybersecurity curriculum and provides research expertise to government and industry. He is a seasoned program director for UAH’s GenCyber programs, offering unique and meaningful experiences for North Alabama teachers as well as high school students with hearing and vision loss. Jesse also developed and taught U.S. Cyber Camp at the U.S. Space & Rocket Center. He received the 2018 Cyber Huntsville Educator of the Year award and maintains industry certifications such as CISSP, Certified Ethical Hacker, Certified EC-Council Instructor, and Security+. As a CyberCorps: Scholarship for Service recipient, Jesse earned his M.S. in Cybersecurity and B.S. in Computer Engineering. Currently, Jesse is pursuing his PhD in Computer Engineering at UAH.

Tania Williams

Tania Williams works at University of Alabama Huntsville as a Research Engineer. In her role, she provides curriculum development and instruction of cybersecurity education courses and camps for The University of Alabama in Huntsville’s Center for Cybersecurity Research and Education. A former teacher at Lauderdale County High School where she taught for 19 years, she achieved 2016’s and 2018’s Teacher of the Year Award. She was also recognized as Cyber Educator of the Year at the 2019 National Cyber Summit. She holds a M.S. in Cybersecurity, is a CyberPatriot mentor, is the K12 Team Lead for her local WiCyS affiliate, and teaches Security+ prep courses. Her qualifications include Security+ certification, a State of Alabama Certificate of Teaching, and an EdS degree in Teacher Leader. She is an associate of ISC2 and is currently pursuing a PhD in Information Systems at Dakota State University.