• 2020 Luminary Award Winner•

As a cyber assurance architect at Sandia National Laboratories, Angela Rivas is the functional lead for cyber/software security awareness and training.

Demonstrating a passion and talent for data and software security, she has found new and innovative ways to inform its best practices for integrating security earlier into the software development lifecycle.

Ms. Rivas has developed a training course that educates members of software development teams, nuclear weapons engineers, and cyber security professionals on software security awareness and supply chain risk.

In previous roles at Sandia, Ms. Rivas helped to develop strategies for software security, cyber security, and web development. She has consistently advocated for both security and usability in the design of software systems at Sandia.

Ms. Rivas also managed a multi-million-dollar portfolio of web development projects while leveraging her knowledge of web-based technologies and communication expertise to develop and implement roadmaps and lead a small team.

Growing up in Albuquerque’s impoverished South Valley, Ms. Rivas was forced to abandon her ambitious triple-major in Technical Communications, Electrical Engineering, and Computer Science at New Mexico Tech to support her family after her grandmother’ death.

She then demonstrated incredible determination as she juggled a full-time administrative job at Sandia with part time classes to earn her B.S. in Technical Communication from Arizona State University in 2016.