About
A student-run nonprofit teaching cybersecurity across San Diego County.
CyberCEO started in Summer 2023 as a group of Del Norte students who wanted to teach cyber and information security to people who were not getting it anywhere else. Since then we have run workshops for more than 2,000 students, trained staff at two senior residences, and hosted an expert panel at our own school. Everything we run is free.
Mission
Spread awareness and educate the broader community about cyber and information security.
This is the sentence we test every new program against. If a lesson does not change what someone does the next time they get a suspicious text, it is not ready.
Vision
Every school and community center in the county has someone who knows what to do.
We cannot be in every room, so we train the adults who already are: teachers, library staff, and senior residence caretakers. Then we hand them materials they can keep using without us.
How we're set up
The basics
- Founded
- Summer 2023, at Del Norte High School in San Diego.
- Advisor
- Mr. Mortensen, Del Norte High School.
- Pathway
- Aligned with the Information and Communication Technology CTE pathway.
- Members
- 25 enrolled DNHS students, with roughly 10–11 active at any given meeting.
- Subteams
- Curriculum, Instructional, and Marketing.
- Meetings
- Mondays at Del Norte during the school year, and online through the summer.
- Cost to partners
- Free. We bring the slides, the games, and the handouts.
Timeline
How we got here
Each year added an audience we had not figured out how to reach yet.
Founded
A student pitch by Ethan Zhao, Risha Guha, Advik Garg, and Will Cheng to build a stable organization, run workshops for elementary schoolers, and develop training for senior citizens.
Building the curriculum
Recruiting, setting up subteams, and writing the Introduction to Cybersecurity deck from scratch. Passwords, phishing, malware, and the CIA triad, written for a fourth grade audience without talking down to them.
Into the classrooms
Assemblies across six Poway Unified elementary campuses, eventually covering 48 fourth and fifth grade classes. At the same time we built a separate workshop for senior residence staff and wrote the Teaching Cyber Safety Instructional Guide.
Beyond school walls
A free open workshop at 4S Ranch Library, and a summer camp that drew participants from outside California. The first sign the material travels.
Diversify
We hosted our first Cybersecurity Expert Panel at Del Norte, ran our first assembly outside Poway Unified at Rowe Elementary, added new lesson formats, and started teaching at senior community events rather than waiting for bookings.
Expansion
More senior residences, more districts, and a second expert panel. The programs are built. This year is about running them in more places.
2026 / 27 direction
What expansion looks like
Senior communities
- Return to Villa Rancho Bernardo and add homes such as Remington House.
- Run staff training and leave the caretaker guide at every new residence.
- Keep teaching at senior community events with booths and short sessions.
- Continue building out digital literacy material alongside cyber safety.
Schools
- Reach elementary schools in districts outside Poway Unified.
- Prioritize schools that have no cybersecurity programming at all.
- Extend into middle schools and private schools.
- Offer the shorter, condensed version of the lesson where a full assembly will not fit.
Events and partnerships
- Host a second Cybersecurity Expert Panel at Del Norte.
- Run library workshops and summer camps open to anyone.
- Bring staff training to local schools, not just senior residences.
- Build relationships with cybersecurity companies for speakers and sponsorship.
The club itself
- Grow enrollment and get more members presenting, not just planning.
- Keep developing cyber games to use at meetings and in lessons.
- Pursue corporate sponsorships and employer matching.
- Collaborate with other Del Norte clubs on joint events.
Get involved
If you run a room full of people, we would like to visit it
Classrooms, libraries, community centers, and senior residences. The workshop is free and we adapt it to the audience. Tell us who we would be speaking to and how long we have.
