Wesley Alvarez
Director of Academics at EC-Council
Wesley Alvarez is a native of western New York with a passion for cybersecurity education and new technologies. His experience comes with over 12 years in strategic cybersecurity program development in compliance with academic and industry accrediting standards. Throughout his career, Wesley worked on project development, program mapping, and course integration for top industry certification bodies, including EC-Council. He has supported EC-Council’s cybersecurity education initiatives from 2008 to 2014 via Axzo Press publishing (Rochester, NY) and in May of 2014, he transitioned from Axzo Press to EC-Council (Tampa, FL) to lead EC-Council’s Academic division. Wesley is the creator of the globally recognized EC-Council Academia program, a program supporting a network of over 2,000 secondary and post-secondary institutions across the world which focus on certification and stackable credentials, accelerated workforce pathways, hands-on education, disruptive learning environments, cyber competitions, and more. This program supports tens of thousands of students each year with hands-on, tactical cybersecurity education courses via the EC-Council Academia Series.
Wesley’s vision is to bridge the gap between the ever-changing Information Security industry and higher education classrooms to ensure students transitioning to their professional careers are properly equipped with a career-based education. He has contributed to numerous content and program advisory boards for colleges and universities across the world, and has worked with some of the most prominent institutions in the U.S. to influence their programs and prepare their students for existing and future careers. These colleges include, but are not limited to, the University of Maryland Global Campus, Naval Post Graduate School, Western Governors University, Miami Dade College, University of Phoenix, St. Louis University, Vincennes University, and more. He is also an advisory board member of WORKCRED and participates in the National Initiative for Cybersecurity Education (NICE) initiatives and sub-working groups. He has spoken at multiple events including, but not limited to, NICE K-12 Conference, BSIDES, The Colloquium, 3CS, Cengage Learning’s Computing Conference, CERTIFIED, and various Hack-A-Thon’s and competitions. Wesley currently resides in Tampa, FL.