Student Profile
Cheryl Allen-Ricciardi
Director, Corporate Counsel, Cybersecurity , Thermo Fischer Scientific
Class of 2026
The field of cybersecurity is a big tent, encompassing professionals with highly diverse talents and backgrounds. Cheryl Allen-Ricciardi, for example, double-majored as an undergraduate at Brown University, in Slavic Studies and International Relations—Political Economy and Development, and spent a semester studying in Russia. Following graduation, after stints including paralegal, market and FOIA analyst, and dancer with a modern dance company, she entered Fordham Law School and thereafter began her career as a litigator, for a large law firm and for the past five years for Thermo Fisher Scientific. As for cybersecurity, she confessed, “Honestly, I fell into cyber.”
While at Thermo Fisher Scientific, she said, “It turned out that cyber incidents fell to the litigation team because no other legal team knew how to tackle the unique challenges of cyber incidents better than the litigation team. I had no background in or knowledge about cybersecurity when I began working on cybersecurity incidents.”
“As a newly hired litigation team member, I was only supposed to work on cyber incidents about 10 percent of the time. As it happens, I had joined the company during Covid when many of our litigations were stayed, so I was able to spend a good chunk of time getting to know our technical teams and learning more about cyber incidents. I thought it was fascinating and fun, albeit a bit stressful. I took Continuing Legal Education courses (CLEs), read articles, and learned from the questions and guidance our outside counsel provided early on until I understood some of the key issues. It was a lot of learning on the job. Once I realized I was familiar with what was being said in CLEs, I knew that I had learned enough of the basics to feel comfortable diving deeper.”
Allen-Ricciardi was advising the company on cybersecurity incidents for a few years when her role began to expand and she sought out the NYU MSCRS program. “I recognized there were gaps in my knowledge that I couldn’t fill solely by CLEs,” she recalled. “I wanted to better understand technology and was looking for a program that had both legal and technical aspects. Better understanding technology helps me to better communicate with the technical teams. That said, I don’t plan to be ‘hands-on-keyboard,’ so a purely technical program was not going to be practical or useful in my day-to-day. The MSCRS program is a perfect blend of law, policy, and technology.
“I’ve really enjoyed engaging with my cohort, hearing everyone’s backgrounds and perspectives. We have such a diverse group with years of experience. Everyone is really interested in real-world application of the concepts we’re discussing. As a working professional, I really appreciate that focus. It is nice to step back into academia and critically think about these concepts and issues to help strategize for the future, but it is also nice to leave residency with concrete ideas and knowledge to put in place when I return to the office.”
In recognition of her growing expertise, Thermo Fisher Scientific named Allen-Ricciardi Director, Corporate Counsel, Cybersecurity, in 2024.