Oli Inkley: From Shop Floor to Security Culture | The Awareness Practitioners
Oli Inkley started on the Waitrose shop floor. Four and a half years later, he's starting a new adventure in security awareness and culture at Marks and Spencer.
In this episode, Oli talks about how he went from managing retail teams and night shifts to building champions programmes, learning to speak the language of engineers, and figuring out what actually works when every organisation does security differently.
We cover:
Why his retail background turned out to be his biggest asset
What surprised him most moving from frontline operations to corporate security
How he learned to have technical conversations without a technical background
Building champions programmes at Ocado, Tesco, and now M&S
Why three similar retailers need completely different approaches
What he'd do first if he was starting from scratch at a new organisation
Where AI fits in this space and where it doesn't
If you're working in security awareness, thinking about moving into it, or wondering whether you need a technical background to do it well, this one's worth your time.