Podcast Summary:
The cybersecurity industry is facing a workforce crisis and a gender gap at the same time. Women make up less than 25 percent of the global cybersecurity workforce, a number that has barely shifted in years. In this studio interview, journalist Oosheen Yadav sits down with two Hofstra University cybersecurity students and a Hofstra professor to talk about what drew them to the field, what they found when they got there, and what needs to change. Three women. One room. A conversation the industry needs to hear.
Behind the Scenes: How I Made It
By Oosheen Yadav
This one started in a classroom.
I was covering Hofstra’s engineering and tech programs for the university’s digital channels when I kept noticing the same thing: women were present, sharp, clearly capable, and almost never centered in how the field talked about itself. That observation became a story.
Why a Studio Interview
Most of my audio work is field-based. Ambient sound, on-location interviews, natural tape from events. This package was different. I made a deliberate choice to bring all three sources into the studio together.
Here is why. Cybersecurity is a field built on precision and analytical thinking. I wanted the audio environment to reflect that. A clean studio setting strips away distraction and puts the focus entirely on what the speakers are saying. No competing noise. No ambient texture pulling attention. Just three voices and the ideas between them.
A studio setting also changes the dynamic between sources. When people are in the same room, they respond to each other. They build on each other’s points. They sometimes push back. That kind of spontaneous exchange does not happen when you interview sources separately and cut their answers together in post. I wanted the conversation to be real, not assembled.
Finding the Sources
I reached out to Hofstra’s engineering school directly. I explained the project and asked for an introduction to faculty working in cybersecurity. The professor came through that channel. She was an obvious choice, not just because of her academic credentials but because she had been actively thinking about the pipeline problem in cybersecurity and had strong, specific opinions about it.
The two students came through her. I asked the professor if she knew students who might be willing to speak on record about their experiences entering a male-dominated field. She connected me with two students she described as thoughtful and candid. Both agreed immediately. That willingness to speak without hesitation told me something important about where they were in their own thinking about this issue.
The Pre-Interview
I met with all three sources separately before the studio session. Not formally. Coffee, a walk, a phone call. I wanted to know their individual perspectives before putting them in a room together.
With the students I asked about the moment they decided to pursue cybersecurity, what the classroom environment was actually like day to day, and whether they had ever felt out of place in a technical setting. With the professor I asked about what she observed in her students, what the field looked like when she entered it, and what she thought had and had not changed.
Pre-interviews do two things. They surface the most interesting threads before you start recording, so you know which questions to push on. They also give sources a chance to articulate things they have thought but not yet said out loud. By the time we got into the studio all three were ready. They were not starting from scratch.
Setting Up the Studio
I used WRHU’s studio at Hofstra. Three microphones, one for each source, positioned for a round-table format. I did individual sound checks before bringing everyone in together and listened back to make sure levels were balanced across all three mics.
Seating matters in a multi-source studio interview. I placed the professor and the two students so they could make natural eye contact with each other and with me. A conversation that is physically awkward produces audio that feels awkward. Small logistical decisions like chair placement shape the quality of what you record.
Conducting the Interview
I opened with a simple question directed at the students: why cybersecurity?
Not why do you think women are underrepresented. Not what is it like being a woman in tech. Just: why this field, why now, why you.
Origin stories open people up. By the time we got to the harder questions about bias, barriers, and what the industry gets wrong, all three sources were already speaking from a personal and honest place.
I tried to function less as an interviewer and more as a moderator once the conversation started moving. My job was to redirect when something needed following up, slow down when someone said something important that deserved more space, and stay quiet when the exchange between sources was producing something I could not have engineered with a question.
The professor pushed back on one of the student’s characterizations of the classroom environment. That moment of respectful disagreement became one of the strongest pieces of tape in the package. I did not plan it. I just did not interrupt it.
Writing and Editing
Studio interview packages require a different editorial approach than field packages. There is less narration because the conversation carries more of the load. My job in the script was to frame the story at the top, provide context where the conversation assumed knowledge the listener might not have, and then step back.
I cut for clarity and momentum. If an exchange started to circle back on itself I trimmed it. If a source made the same point twice I kept the sharper version. If a moment of genuine feeling or genuine disagreement appeared I protected it from the scissors.
The final package ran tighter than the raw interview by about two thirds. That ratio is normal. An hour of good conversation produces about 20 minutes of great audio. Your job in the edit is to find that 20 minutes.
What I Took Away
The two students in this package are entering an industry that is actively debating whether it wants them. Not overtly. Not loudly. But in the structural ways that matter: hiring pipelines, mentorship access, who gets taken seriously in a room.
The professor had navigated that industry for years before returning to teach the next generation. The conversation between those three perspectives, early career, mid-path, and established, gave the package a depth that a single source interview never could have.
That is the value of the studio roundtable when it is done right. You are not just collecting individual opinions. You are capturing a real exchange between people who have different amounts of the same experience. That difference is the story.
No responses yet