Episode 213: Corey Thomas - Chairman & CEO, Rapid7

Corey has an impressive background in terms of his career path and his many accomplishments as a leader, which we discuss in detail. But that is only part of the story. I was also very excited to talk with Corey about Rapid7’s Diversity, Equity, & Inclusion initiatives. The company has been very open about their goals and progress. In 2018, Rapid7 set a goal to have 50% of their workforce to be women and people of color. The company published a DEI Annual Report for 2020 which shared their results. They achieve 49.7% of their goal and one would think they would just round up and say mission accomplished, but as noted from a recent blog post on VentureFizz from Christina Luconi, Rapid7’s Chief People Officer, they are immensely proud of their progress to date, but they know they still have so much more to do. Thus, we talk at length about how Rapid7 has gone about building a more diverse & inclusive workforce and Corey shared lots of advice on how other companies can follow. In this episode of our podcast, we also cover: * Corey’s background growing up and his decision to study Computer Science and Electrical Engineering at Vanderbilt. * His experience at AT&T during college and working at Deloitte after graduating, then attending business school at HBS. * His time working at Microsoft as a Group Product Manager, where he worked on one of the largest releases of SQL Server back in the day. * The details on Rapid7, plus his career progression to CEO and the company’s IPO. * Advice on building a career path to a CEO position. * And so much more. If you like the show, please remember to subscribe and review us on iTunes, Soundcloud, Spotify, Stitcher, or Google Play.