Davis Hake
Prior to joining Venable, Davis co-founded a cyber insurance startup with operations across the United States, Canada, and Europe. Launching the company, he grew the team, product, and brand to record-breaking sales offering new innovation around risk quantification and cyber resilience.
Before that, Davis managed cybersecurity product marketing for a prominent multinational cybersecurity company. As a business leader, Davis guided the brand’s go-to-market strategy, messaging, sales operations, and marketing tools, and was responsible for aligning global sales and marketing teams in establishing market leadership.
Davis gained transformative experience in cyber risk through a number of prominent a number of government roles early on in his career. He served as a director on the National Security Council, where he led cyber incident responses for both classified and unclassified federal IT networks. In this position, he developed strategy for strengthening federal IT security benchmarking and reporting requirements across all federal agencies.
Davis is regarded as a leading author of early cybersecurity legislation in the U.S. Congress. In his role within the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, he gained crucial insight by managing cyber operations, interagency coordination, and policy for high-ranking government officials. He is credited with being a key communicator educating members of Congress on cybersecurity and federal capabilities. In his prior role on Capitol Hill, Davis drove policy work on a variety of topics, including Department of Defense budgeting, judiciary issues, veterans’ affairs, homeland security, and cybersecurity.
Davis is currently an adjunct professor of Cyber Risk Management at the University of California, Berkeley, and a term member of the Council on Foreign Relations. Davis is a part of the Washington, DC, team and lives in San Francisco, CA.
Experience
Government Experience
- Director, Federal IT Security, Executive Office of the President, National Security Council
- Office of the Under Secretary for Cybersecurity, Department of Homeland Security
- Chief of staff (acting)
- Cyber policy advisor
- Legislative liaison
- Military legislative assistant, Representative Jim Langevin (RI-02), House Armed Services Committee
Insights
Credentials
Education
- M.A. Strategic Security Studies & Conflict Management of Stability Operations National Defense University 2012
- B.A. International Relations University of California at Davis 2006
- Minor: Economics
Professional Memberships and Activities
- Term member, Council on Foreign Relations, 2021 – present
- Cyber risk management lecturer, University of California, Berkeley, 2017 – present
- Pragmatic Marketing, Foundations Certified, 2015
- SANS SEC 401: Security Essentials: Network, Endpoint, Cloud, 2014
Recognition
- SANS, Cybersecurity Innovation Award, 2012 (earned for designing the “Congressional Hacking” demo)
- Federal Computer Week, Federal 100 Award Recipient, 2011 (earned for leadership in the federal government IT community and drafting comprehensive cybersecurity legislation)
Community
Volunteerism
- Volunteered abroad teaching English in Anqing, China, in the summer of 2006