Ellison Anne Williams - The Holy Grail

Extreme Uncertainty

What do you know about cryptography?

For decades, researchers and data scientists in the federal government and commercial enterprises have invested millions to crack the code on homomorphic encryption—that is, how to keep data secure while it's in use. Our guest on the podcast today spent the first part of her career at the National Security Agency as one of those scientists, and she's the one who cracked the code.

In 2016, Dr. Ellison Anne Williams left the NSA to found Enveil, the first commercial company to provide security for data in use. Also known as the “Holy Grail” of cryptography, Enveil's homomorphic encryption platform is a technical breakthrough and represents a fundamental leap forward from traditional privacy and security technologies. Though Ellison Anne spent her early career "collecting degrees" in math and machine learning before joining the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Lab and eventually the NSA, she recounts how for much of her time in government she felt like a fish on a bicycle--an entrepreneur working in a massive government bureaucracy. Ellison Anne recounts her entrepreneurial beginnings running a cake business in high school, and talks about a career in government that was undergirded by a desire to work on entrepreneurial endeavors. Since founding Enveil, Ellison Anne discovered that what she learned about working the gears in a government bureaucracy helped her prepare for navigating enterprise sales cycles. She shares her advice for founders and gives us a look at what the market for privacy and data security will look like in 5-10 years time. You can check out their groundbreaking work at enveil.com and you can follow them @enveil_inc.