John Powell has over 35 years of industrial automation experience in the industrial chemical, refining, gas fields, pipeline, and water utilities sectors. He has also spent six years in the public sector with the Department of Energy (DoE) at two national labs assigned to U.S. Nuclear Security.

He was responsible for the development and execution of cyber security and functional safety risk-based gap assessments. He is an expert in OT cyber security policy and procedure creation based on the NIST Risk Management Framework (RMF) and IEC 62443.

Prior to Optiv, Powell was a Control Systems Subject Matter Expert (SME) for the DOE and as an OT Cyber and Process Safety SME for the largest construction company in America. His responsibilities included engineering management and execution of large projects up to $10B. He has been a Tiger Team Lead and a Six Sigma Champion.