Leading the Way: Men and Women at the Helm

From the grass-roots vision and bravado required in the organization’s early years, to the complicated business and strategic puzzles that accompanied – and still influence – the organization’s growth in more recent years, ISACA leaders have encountered distinct challenges on the path to 50 years and beyond.

Yet, despite the many potential roadblocks to ISACA’s growth, development in the disciplines and domains of technology has served the organization well, as technology has become the foundation and focal point of business, the workforce and society at large.

“ISACA was blessed by the developments of IT over the past decades,” said Michael Cangemi, who was ISACA’s board chair in 1985-86 and has served the organization in a variety of leadership roles. “Basically, we had the wind at our back, and there was a great interest in learning. We actually came to the meetings to learn from each other and break new ground.”

For the founders of what was then known as the Electronic Data Processing Auditors Association (EDPAA), rallying support for the organization and defining a path forward initially focused on the need for processes, controls and auditing, given the increased use of commercial computers in the 1960s.

“It was a start, very simply, out of need,” said Bud Friedman, one among a handful of Los Angeles-based “Wise Men from the West” who founded the organization in 1969. “We needed to have something to be able to structure ourselves. We needed papers, an organization that can manage it, that was structured, that could focus on certain important things like standards. We thought of standards as control objectives because we didn’t want to label ourselves with standards; standards were too permanent. What we wanted was something that could be used in a way that was flexible, and so we called them control objectives. The whole idea was for organizations that had a need to structure their operation in such a way that it would meet the criteria established by the control objectives.”

From initial leader Stuart Tyrnauer (1969-71) to Rob Clyde (2018-19), the organization has had 38 board chairs – the leadership term used today to refer to what was earlier called “international president.” Ingrid Overson was the first female international president in 1982- 83, and the organization has installed numerous prominent female leaders in other capacities, including former CEO Susan Caldwell, who served for more than 20 years beginning in the early 1990s. ISACA also has been committed to geographic diversity in the board room, tapping directors from throughout the world.

Deepak Sarup, ISACA’s board chair from 1991-93, credited Caldwell for hiring talent, and creating a structure to professionalize an organization that had previously been predominantly volunteer-run.

“I would say she was the key,” Sarup said. “Mine was the easy part. I just hired someone, and then I left it to her to manage, and she did a wonderful job. I don’t think I or any member could have done it. Pushing us away from a volunteer-run and volunteer-managed association to a professionally managed association sounds very trite today to many people, but it was a very big shift.”

Still, ISACA leaders in the ensuing years have kept the organization’s emphasis on volunteerism in the forefront, even as professional staff have injected new expertise. Cangemi has had the chance to interact with some of his successors, and has taken pride in many of the characteristics that have linked ISACA leaders of different eras – smarts, vision and passion for the organization.

“When you get to see it continue, it’s just a joy,” Cangemi said.