2024 Founders Award
Mark S. Loepker is a master practitioner in Information Assurance (IA) and International Partnerships with over 39 years of government experience. He excels at orchestrating dissimilar groups aimed at fostering consensus to solve the toughest cybersecurity challenges. Mr. Loepker held many Executive level leadership positions throughout his career. He retired in 2023 and is enjoying traveling with his wife and visiting grandchildren.
Mr. Loepker served as Education Director to the National Cryptologic Foundation, focused on developing educational programs. In this role, he focused on ensuring that K-12/STEM initiatives were tightly aligned with national cyber curriculum standards, and that the NCF became a national resource addressing workforce development and operational training requirements targeting 13-20 grade curriculum.
During his National Security Agency career, he worked closely with Congressional Members and Staff on emerging cybersecurity issues and legislation.
Mr. Loepker, working with Dr. Melissa Dark, then Purdue’s Professor of Technology in Computer and Information Technology, pioneered the first-ever NSA sponsored class where graduate students used typical NSA technical challenges for their class work with mentorship from NSA Technical Directors. After five years, the effort now spans 19 Universities and 12 government agencies with over 354 alumni and over 160 currently enrolled. He continued his efforts with Dr. Dark as Dark Enterprises developed the first ever High School Cybersecurity Curriculum Guidelines used by many HS curriculum developers today.
Mr. Loepker’s educational degrees include a Master in Business Administration – Quantitative Analysis, University of Missouri; Bachelor of Science in Electrical Engineering Technology, Purdue University; Associate in Aviation Electronic Technology, Purdue University and numerous NSA technical, executive and legislative development programs.
Source: https://www.afcea.org/event/sites/default/files/files/LoepkerMark_PDF.pdf
