Vivian Kristofferson Understands the Risks

War, cybersecurity, legal contracts, and licensing agreements. For Vivian Kristofferson, they all require the same thing—managing risk through negotiation. And Kristofferson is very good at understanding risks. Her ability to see how risk moves through a system has allowed her to chart a multi-faceted career at MITRE.

From contracts and managing supply chain risks to wargaming and cybersecurity challenges, Kristofferson's career journey has followed a winding path that could define a whole career. But Kristofferson has done all of this without leaving MITRE.

A Long and Winding Road to MITRE

Winding paths are a recurring feature in Kristofferson's life. She was born in Taiwan and lived there until she was 12, when her family moved across the world for the first time. After four years in Argentina, the family moved to the United States, eventually settling in Pittsburgh, Pa.

While today she is proud of her Taiwanese heritage, her ethnic identity wasn't always something she flaunted. "When I first got here, the goal of my life was to blend into society," she says. "I wanted to make myself as American as possible."

It wasn't until almost 2016 and the rise of anti-Asian violence in her community that she began efforts to claim her Taiwanese identity. "People still look at the Asian community as being perpetually othered, so what could I do to help?" she asked. She found the answer with the Asian and Pacific Islander Network (APIN) business resource group (BRG), one of several MITRE internal communities offering a sense of belonging.

"The APIN is a great place for people to talk about their experience and build a relationship of understanding," she says.

When Kristofferson joined the API Network, the organization was still nascent, having been created less than 18 months prior. Building it up has been a significant project. Today, the APIN is active and thriving and the team has won numerous awards. Kristofferson herself was recognized with 2024's Society of Asian Scientists and Engineers Achievement Award for ERG Leadership.

She's hoping the BRG and other initiatives can help newcomers and early career staff network and discover opportunities across MITRE.

Creating A Career as Fluid as the Mind Behind It

Drawn in by MITRE's public service mission, Kristofferson started with our legal division but wanted something more. "I wanted to have more hands-on experience working with the sponsors themselves," she says.

When she brought the idea of a career change to some colleagues in MITRE, she found their full support. One person in particular, M Schneider from MITRE's Cyber Infrastructure Protection Innovation Center, was instrumental in her decision to make the change.

"The fact that I had the support from my colleagues and my management speaks volumes of how supportive the corporate environment really is," Kristofferson says.

With help from MITRE's education benefits, she quickly earned her master's degree in cybersecurity. Afterwards, Kristofferson transferred from legal to MITRE Labs, and was quickly working on cybersecurity projects for software supply chain risk management and other issues that directly impact our sponsors. Today, she's a lead cybersecurity engineer with MITRE’s Simulation, Experimentation and Gaming department, working on cybersecurity projects and facilitating wargames for several different government agencies.

"MITRE people are very good at recognizing when people have particular skills that could be good on a particular project," Kristofferson says. It's not always about having one key skill but being able to combine different skills that makes you useful to a project."

But even now, Kristofferson isn't standing still. Lately, she's combining her negotiation, cybersecurity, and sponsor-awareness skills into a new form: working as an adjudicator during Department of Defense wargaming sessions.

"I have a very fluid mind," she says. "I see a lot of commonalities in law, wargaming, and cybersecurity. It's just a continuation of the work in risk management."