From Immigrant Working For Groceries To CEO: Asal “Vox” Gibson’s Career Journey | Ep029

Episode Information Show Notes In this powerful episode of Career Downloads, Manuel Martinez sits down with Asal “Vox” Gibson, CEO and founder of Cyroot and president of Cyroot Academy. Vox shares her extraordinary career path that began as an immigrant who didn’t speak English and worked in exchange for groceries. Vox takes us through her journey of determination and growth: becoming a RadioShack store manager at just 20 years old, transitioning to automotive sales, building a successful career in financial services, and eventually working in defense contracting with top security clearance. Throughout the conversation, Vox reveals the values and mindset that propelled her success: an unwavering work ethic, hunger for knowledge, and willingness to start from scratch in entirely new fields. She explains how each career transition taught her valuable skills that built upon one another, creating a foundation for her current roles leading both a cybersecurity company and a nonprofit providing free education to military personnel. Key moments include: The origin story of her military call sign “Vox” (meaning “voice of the people”) How she overcame language barriers and financial hardships after arriving in America Why critical thinking skills matter more than credentials in technology careers Her approach to screening job candidates for problem-solving abilities How she’s now paying forward the opportunities she received by creating educational programs for transitioning military personnel This conversation offers practical wisdom about career advancement, the importance of being teachable, and finding purpose through helping others succeed. If you’re looking to transform your career or seeking inspiration on overcoming obstacles, this episode delivers actionable insights from someone who’s mastered the art of career reinvention. Listen to the full episode to hear Vox’s complete story and learn how she’s now helping others find their own path to success. Episode release date: April 1, 2025 #CareerDownloads #CareerTransition #TechLeadership #CyberSecurity #VeteransSupport Transcription Manuel: Welcome everyone. My name is Manuel Martinez and this is another episode of Career Downloads where each episode I basically hit the refresh button, bring on a different guest to really learn more about their experience and their background to try and uncover any actionable advice that you can uncover as you’re managing your own career. So for today’s episode I have with me Asal Gibson, also goes by call sign “Vox”. So there’s a, sounds like there’s a pretty interesting story around that so I’m excited to dig into that. So I met Asal at a networking event. I didn’t get much of a chance to kind of interact with her, you know, started to look at her LinkedIn profile, saw a lot of what she was posting, what she was doing. I looked at her background and felt that she would be an amazing guest to kind of bring on and just learn more about kind of what she’s done throughout her career and, you know, anything that she might be able to impart onto others. So she teaches part-time, she’s been a project manager, she also has started a non-profit, she’s, you know, was in the military, still helps out the military. So there’s a number of different ways that this conversation can go and I’m actually really excited because this, I just have the feeling that this is probably going to be a two -part series at some point. So with that I will go ahead and introduce Asal. Hi. Asal: Hi. Manuel: I appreciate you coming on and taking the time to kind of share your story and your experiences. So to kind of get started, normally what I ask people is kind of what your current role is and I know that you have multiple different ones so you can name them all, pick a couple and then just kind of a brief summary of some of the roles and responsibilities just so that people can get an understanding of kind of who “Vox” is today. Asal: Sure. Yeah, thank you for having me. I really appreciate it. I’m the CEO and founder of Cyroot. We’re an IT and cyber security company born and raised here in Las Vegas. And I’m also the president of Cyroot Academy. It’s a non-profit arm of our company where we provide education at no cost to our military and veterans in the community. And about the teaching, I’ve been teaching for going on three years. I taught cyber security for two years at UNLV and a couple other universities. And now I’m on a faculty in a business school where I teach business classes and IT project management classes. Manuel: I know we’re going to probably get into it at some point, but I really want to, I am very curious now. So I’m curious how the call sign name “Vox” came about. So I don’t know if that’s something you want to dig into now, or if it’s something that will kind of come up along, you know, the conversation. Asal: Yeah. So I’ve had that call sign for 10 years. In the aviation community, you normally get a call sign. I think it started as a security thing. You go by a nickname or call sign, not your full name. Now I was never a pilot, but I hung out with pilots and, you know, I just went by the name Asal. And they start giving me different call signs. Like if I was being picky about the coffee, I’m like, this coffee sucks. They’re like, finicky, that’s your call sign. And I would get annoyed. I’m like, I’m not finicky. Okay. But this coffee sucks. And then they gave me the call sign “Big E” because I was the most extroverted person in there because I would come in and say, good morning. And no one would say good morning back. And they’re like, you’re way too extroverted. So I went by a “Big E” until, um, a person said, Hey, you can’t call her the “Big E” that’s the big enterprise ship, you know, in the Navy. Like, um, so I went back to being called Asal. And then I was presenting a project to the CEO and people in the company saying, Hey, we really need to recruit people out of college and give them a chance, sponsor their security clearance and bring them into the defense contracting instead of building ridiculous requirement for entry-level jobs. Uh, so I started getting, Oh, some attention for that. Like, where did that come from? So, uh, the CEO, uh, and a commander thought, well, “Vox” would be good call sign for me because “Vox” means the voice of the people. And, um, I wanted to take a second to think about it, but you can’t think about it. And if you don’t like it, it will definitely get stuck. So he basically, the boss said, we’re calling you “Vox” from this point on, but no one knew that outside of my office. And when I left the Navy, went to work for the Air Force, they said, Hey, you have to deploy to the Middle East. And I’ve never been deployed. I was never trained as military personnel. You know, I was civilian. So I showed up there and on day one, ironically, it was the first ever in my life. They said, do you have a call sign or anything you go by? And I’m like, why do you, why did you just ask me this? Cause no one ever asked. And I said, “Vox”. Uh, so it, it became a thing, uh, you know, serving the Air Force for a couple of years. Uh, just everyone called me “Vox”. And when I came back stateside, I had so many friends from the military. So it, it just, uh, it kind of became more real and never went away. Manuel: Well, and based on kind of conversations we’ve had and a lot of what you’re doing, it almost, it sounds like it’s very fitting, right? “Vox”, the voice of the people. So, you know, I’m interested as we kind of dig into your journey and, you know, so that people can understand kind of that parallel and where this goes. Asal: Yeah, absolutely. Manuel: So now tell me a little bit of kind of your background, kind of, you know, where you grew up and, you know, eventually kind of what led you into technology. If it was later on in life, it was early. Um, you know, if it, if it was later on, then just, you know, we can get to there eventually just so that people understand, you know, just kind of the foundation of what led you to where you are now. Asal: So it’s a little bit of a complicated story. I grew up in the Middle East and came to the United States in 2001. Didn’t speak any English, came here with my mom and my sister. We didn’t have any money. My parents separated and everything that you could imagine could go wrong, went wrong. Uh, for example, we were supposed to arrive on September 12th, 2001 and we got held up and couldn’t make it, you know, until, uh, September 24th, you know, of that year. So it was, it was a difficult transition to get here. And my first job, I worked for food. I worked for groceries. And when people, you know, hear that, they say like everybody works for food. I said, no, I actually worked for food as I got paid with groceries for my family. I, you know, I didn’t have any skills or language and I walked four miles to go to the store. I opened at 8am and worked till 11pm. And the store, you know, owner would say, you know, take whatever grocery for your mom and your sister. And that’s, I did that for six months. I made my first dollar when I was sick. I was so burned out. I was getting very little sleep and he would like do, you know, he would like take my hours, calculate them. And he would look at the groceries I picked. And he looked at me that night and I was so drained. And, and he said, you owe me $7 and 50 cents. And I said, okay, why do I don’t have any cash? As you know, I’ve never had cash, uh, but I’m happy to work an extra hour. Uh, so I think he felt bad. So he said, you know, I’m going to give you a couple of dollars to take the bus. You don’t have to walk home tonight. So he gave me two bucks. And that was the first two dollars I ever made. Actually, like it was the first time I s...