About Oritse J. Uku
CISO | Resilience Architect | Former Military Intelligence Officer
Executive Bio
For twenty years I’ve done a single job in four uniforms: defending institutions against adversaries and risk — from military intelligence to global markets to enterprise cyber and the boardroom.
I build the enterprise security, identity, and operational-resilience programs that regulated institutions can stake their businesses on. I developed the Resilience Operating Discipline (ROD) — a framework for building operational resilience as a measurable, board-visible capability — demonstrated under severe but plausible stress, not asserted on paper.
I began my career in the U.S. Army as a Military Intelligence Officer, joining just before 9/11. Over eight years, I served across continents, operational environments, and disciplines, including a deployment to Afghanistan supporting coalition forces in austere conditions. Those experiences shaped my understanding of how systems behave under stress: human, technical, and organizational.
After the military, I entered global financial services at Citigroup — first on the institutional sales side of the rates business, advising clients on interest-rate risk, and later in cybersecurity, where I led threat management and incident response across one of the most complex environments in the industry. Between those chapters, I co-founded a technology startup. Today I serve as a board-appointed CISO at a regulated financial services firm, accountable for enterprise security, resilience, and regulatory engagement across entities supervised by the OCC and U.S. securities regulators. I am a graduate of the CISO Certificate Program at Carnegie Mellon University.
I am the author of Taking the Boy Scouts to War, a bestselling memoir on leadership, service, and the realities of modern conflict.
Professional Philosophy
Resilience is not a control domain; it’s a strategic capability.
Organizations succeed not because they avoid disruption, but because they are designed to adapt, recover, and continue performing when conditions change.
Personal Notes
Outside of work: advisor to AI cybersecurity startups and venture portfolio companies, retired amateur rugby player (three continents), student of history and systems thinking.
Connect
I welcome conversations with boards, fellow CISOs, and executive teams on operational resilience, enterprise security leadership, and the governance of institutional risk. The most direct way to reach me is on LinkedIn.