Nicole Perlroth
Founding Partner, Silver Buckshot Ventures

Nicole Perlroth spent 15 years immersed in the most significant cyberattacks in history, tracking state-sponsored hacking campaigns, commercial spyware-for-hire outfits, and embedding with the nation’s top cybersecurity experts, leaders, and operators in their fight to secure our world. Her New York Times bestseller, THIS IS HOW THEY TELL ME THE WORLD ENDS earned her the McKinsey/Financial Times’ “Best Business Book of the Year Award,” the Arthur J. Ross Bronze Prize for best foreign policy book of the year and in 2023 was inducted into the Cybersecurity Canon Hall of Fame.  Her Times investigations helped compel U.S. indictments of state-sponsored hackers, mercenaries, and even led to the outing, and blacklisting, of the world’s most sophisticated spyware developer. Her work drilled home the urgency of digital threats and helped catapult our cyber dilemma into the national consciousness.

In 2021, she left journalism to go “inside the tent” to help solve the nation’s cybersecurity challenges. She joined the advisory board of CISA, the nation’s cyber defense agency, along with 22 of the country’s leading security and private experts. She also joined the Council on Foreign Relations’ Cyber Task Force where she helped draft a new U.S. cyber foreign policy to confront the reality of our virtual age. In addition to government service, Perlroth educates Fortune 500 boards on cyber risk and serves as Venture Partner at Ballistic Ventures, a cybersecurity venture firm, and advises a dozen cybersecurity startups, leading her to create her own cyber mission fund, Silver Buckshot Ventures.

She is a graduate of Princeton University (BA) and Stanford University (MA) and regularly lectures at top institutions including the Stanford Graduate School of Business, Harvard Law School and her alma mater, Princeton.

She is the producer of a scripted TV series and documentary based on her book, as well as the soon-to-be-released podcast, “To Catch a Thief,” with Rubrik, which charts China’s rise to cyber dominance.

When she’s not working, you can find her jumping out of helicopters with Chugach Powder Guides.