Choate alumna, Chief Security Officer at Mozilla Corporation, and new addition to the Board of Trustees, Mwende Window Snyder ’93 was featured in Black Enterprise magazine’s Hot List of 40 African American achievers under age 40.
2007 marked the first year that the monthly included business executives, top-ranked money managers, and medical researches with ultimate achievers in media, music, entertainment, and sports when cultivating its annual list. The list featured celebrities such as LeBron James, 22, Béyonce Knowles, 26, Eldrick “Tiger” Woods, 32, Kayne West, 30, Venus Williams, 27, and Sean “Diddy” Combs, 37 to name a few, but also honoured young African-Americans in fields like local politics, finance, and aviation.
In the magazine itself, Snyder, 32, was listed directly under Will Smith. Her picture was the only one featured on the page. In the “why she’s hot” section, the magazine proclaimed her working title in the world of online security as “rock star,” and noted that Mozilla’s popular Firefox Internet browser claims about 18% of the online browser market share worldwide and around 28-45% in Europe alone. Her business blogs were quoted as “must-reads for those who want to keep up with online security issues.”
Prior to joining Mozilla, Synder made her mark as Senior Security Strategist with Microsoft, serving as security lead and signoff on Windows XP and 2003. She was also Founder, Principal, and Chief Technology Officer with Matasano Security and has co-authored Treat Modeling, a standard manual on application security.
In addition to her work in technology Snyder this year became the youngest member of the Choate Rosemary Hall Board of Trustees. Snyder was appointed by the Trustees’ Committee on Trusteeship July 1st and attended her first official board meeting in October after the August retreat session. As a first-year member she has been attending multiple committee meetings, all of which are open to all board members, before she is assigned to two or three permanent committees based off of her interests and requests. Choate staff members in the field think she would be a natural for the Academic Affairs or Student Life committees.
“She is very engaged already and she has just started, so we are very excited to have her on the board,” said Rosa Holava the Headmaster’s top administrative assistant.
Executive Director of Development and Alumni Relations, Daniel Courcey believed Snyder was a crucial asset for the board. “If you’re in the education business in the 21st century, by definition, you’re in the technology business.” Courcey described her as “osmotically brilliant,” “vibrant,” and as “a remarkable person who I think does honor to our school.” He commented on her great sense of humour as well as her ability to listen to others.
Courcey called Mozilla a “hip company,” in which users define the products as opposed to other companies whose research and development is held within the confines of corporations. Mozilla is a nonprofit public benefit organization exempt from federal income tax with no outside shareholders. Its products, which include the award-winning Firefox Web browser and cross-platform communications Thunderbird e-mail client, are available free for Windows, Macintosh, and Linux computers in over 35 languages.
Snyder now works in San Francisco as “Chief Security Something or Other” according to her business card. Her security blogs enable technology users to protect their privacy and stay on the lookout for the newest software threats. Mozilla remains an open company, encouraging users with links such as “how to write a code for Mozilla,” “build Mozilla,” and “help to test Mozilla.”
As a Choate student Snyder’s time was invested in a wide range of interests including the Afro-Latino Organization, theatre, and scuba diving. Gary Dormandy of the Athletics Office who was Snyder’s freshman advisor during his first year in Pitman described her as “witty, sharp, outspoken, and confident.” “That dorm was one of my favourite dorms of all time.”
Michael Rinaldi, who taught Snyder in AP Spanish Literature during her senior year, declared that although grammar deficiencies prevented her from achieving optimum marks, Snyder was “very bubbling. You can see from her hair she was all over the place, and she showed great enthusiasm in the classroom.”
Her current interests include photography, reading, writing, glass blowing, snowboarding, hiking, and camping as well as travel, mathmatics, and the spoken word. When she is not managing security at Mozilla, attending conferences across the globe, and contributing to Choate Rosemary Hall trustee meetings, Window can be seen petting Cheetas in Kenya and knitting some of her favourite marine creatures: cephalopods.
