CISO Conversations: Aimee Cardwell
Security Week, Wednesday, March 11th, 2026
Cardwell started her career at Netscape, become a VP of engineering at American Express, CISO at UnitedHealth Group, and now CISO in Residence at Transcend.
Aimee Cardwell started her professional career at Netscape, went on to become a VP of engineering at American Express, and CISO at UnitedHealth Group. She is now CISO in Residence at Transcend.
Entry into cybersecurity
Cardwell started at Netscape as a product manager rather than product developer. 'I tried, but I just wasn't very good at coding.' She implies her introduction to cybersecurity came from dating Netscape's head of security and finding herself in the SOC at 4:00 am 'chasing down script kiddies in the late '90s.'
From there, 'I had a delightful career as a CIO - not a CISO - in financial services companies.' This included VP and Eng/Unit CIO at American Express, and CIO at Optum Financial Services. Optum is part of the UnitedHealth Group. UHG promoted her to CISO, which became her first role as a CISO.
It should be no surprise that she believes most modern CISOs need to be technologists as well as businesspeople, people managers and security experts.