Jason Hishmeh: AI Without Security Is Just a Faster Way to Fail | Ep 1321
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How did Jason’s accounting‑first background spark his 25‑year tech journey?
Welcome to Corizont Technologies, home of the Digital Executive Podcast. Do you work in Emergent Tech, working on something innovative, maybe an entrepreneur? Apply to be a guest at www.corizant.com forward slash brand. Welcome to the Digital Executive. Today's guest is Jason Hishme. Jason Hishme is an entrepreneur, investor, and technology leader with 25 plus years building and securing technology from early stage startups to the Fortune 500. He's a co-founder, partner at Variance and Equit. He helps companies put AI to work where it moves real business outcomes with security and compliance built in from day one. Has been featured in over 150 articles by leading news outlets, sharing expert insights on AI, cybersecurity, business, technology, finance, compliance, and startups.
Well, good afternoon, Jason. Welcome to the show. Thanks for having me. Absolutely, my friend. I appreciate it. Love that you made the time today. I know you're generally out of New York, but you travel so much to your European offices and you're in Ukraine today. So again, that's that's a big stretch for calendars and time zones. So I appreciate that here in Kansas City. So, Jason, if you don't mind jumping into your first question, your story has a great origin. version. You started as an accountant in a Fortune 500 department where nobody had a computer, asked for one, and discovered you were getting paid to play with computers, kind of like my background, with fun part being automating the work around you.
From there, you spent 25 years in tech and cybersecurity leadership at companies like GE, SP Global, Allstate, State Farm, before co-founding Variance and Equit. How did that habit of raising your hand carry you from corporate accounting all the way to an AI operation?
Entrepreneur. Yeah. Great question. Yeah. For me, technology is fun. So it was fun to take on technology, especially before technology was popular. So in my first job decades ago, I worked at a Fortune 500 company in the accounting finance department. Every month doing month end closes, month after month, following my checklist faithfully. At that time, Nobody even had a computer on their desk. It was not a typical thing. I asked for a computer. That was an odd request, but they fulfilled it. They gave me a computer. And the fun part was automating away a lot of the repetitive monthly tasks that I had to do as an accountant in that finance department. And for me, hours just disappeared. It was so fun to work with technology.
And I could build things that would help everyone in my department get time back by automating repetitive processes. And that company started to roll out an ERP platform called SAP. So I also volunteered to work on that project, got to travel around the country and got to see how big companies operate, how they deploy tech. Technology, how they run their businesses. And over the years, my experience compounded like that was that was accounting and finance. And I started to get into application ERP systems, infrastructure, application development over the years, cybersecurity. So started to learn a new layer of the puzzle each time. But the I still today use that finance and accounting. Background. Like I have to know that the business and technology initiatives are going to actually create value for the business.
And they have to know that from a financial standpoint, how is it going to impact things financially? So for me, it was really fun to raise my hand and get involved in new projects, deal with fun technology, and build a skill set in financial technology. And cybersecurity, application development, all those areas to put together like a unique skill set.
Amazing. Love that backstory. Being an accountant. And to me, I've always been in technology, but I I was like, oh my gosh, I don't know if I could be an accountant. And you've you've kind of flipped that script there. We found technology was cool and fun. Your curiosity dope. really drove you to ask for that computer initially. And then when you started to automate tasks for speed and efficiency, you just opened the floodgates, diving in, coding, cybersecurity, et cetera.
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