Katlin Koemets is Chief Partnership Officer at Cyberr. In May 2026, she completed the CybHER bootcamp by Guild Security. She does not come from a technical background. Here is why she did it anyway, and what she found on the other side.
Why would a Chief Partnership Officer do a cybersecurity bootcamp?
That is the question Katlin Koemets gets when she tells people she spent her evenings in May working through hands-on cybersecurity labs. She works in partnerships, not engineering. She has never claimed to be deeply technical. So why do it?
Her answer is straightforward. She wanted to understand how cybersecurity people think, not just what they do. "I want to understand their mindset, how they are solving the problems," she says. "The bigger picture in their minds."
It is a distinction that gets lost in most conversations about breaking into cyber. The focus tends to land on credentials, certifications, and years of experience. Katlin was after something different: the mental model. What does it feel like to approach a problem the way a security professional approaches it? What do you notice that you did not notice before?
She had done a programming course the previous year for the same reason. The bootcamp was the next step in a deliberate pattern of learning that has nothing to do with changing careers and everything to do with changing perspective.
"I knew that I can do it. I had the goal. The goal is to understand."
What actually happens on the CybHER bootcamp?
The CybHER bootcamp is a four-week, instructor-led programme run online by Guild Security in partnership with Evolve Security Academy. It runs weekday evenings on a structured schedule (Monday to Thursday, UTC+3), with around five hours of self-directed lab work per week alongside the live sessions. No deep technical background is required to apply.
Katlin completed the May 2026 cohort. The programme covers cybersecurity fundamentals, networking, defensive tools, and offensive techniques, finishing with a professional consulting project carried out with a real partner organisation, and a final presentation. Lecturers are working practitioners, not academics.
That last point mattered to Katlin. One of the instructors was someone she had known since running Capture the Flag events years earlier, a young woman who had gone from participant to lecturer. "She has been there all years when I ran the programme," Katlin says. "And now she is giving lessons to others. That is the thing we should be moving toward."
The cohort itself ran from students in their early twenties through to senior professionals. Katlin describes it as a range she had seen before in the CTF world, and one she finds energising. "Smart youngsters are our future," she says simply.
Was it hard?
Yes. Katlin does not soften this. May was an exceptionally demanding month, and the bootcamp sat on top of it. She completed it anyway, fitting lab work and sessions around a schedule that left very little room for either.
The labs were the hardest part. Working through technical exercises independently, without a lecturer present, required something she had not anticipated needing to develop: the ability to ask for help.
"It was fine when the lecturer was with you," she says. "But most of the time I was the one who just took it on alone. You need to know how to ask for help. And it is fine if you do not know. That was the thing I needed to learn."
It is an honest observation, and a useful one. The people who struggle most on intensive programmes are often not the least capable. They are the ones who wait too long before asking.
"Do it scared. If you are the smartest one in the room, you are not learning."
What changed?
Katlin is careful not to overclaim. She does not describe herself as a cybersecurity expert after four weeks. What she does describe is a shift in confidence: the ability to enter a technical conversation differently, to follow the logic of a problem she could not have followed before.
"It gives some confidence," she says. "I can start a conversation with a fully technical person more easily now. I need to test it properly, but that is how it feels."
There is also something quieter in what she says: a sense that the act of doing it, of carving time out of a packed schedule to learn something hard, was valuable in itself. Not because it made her technical. Because it proved she could do it.
She learned, in her words, that May can have 48 hours in a day if you decide it has to.
Why Cyberr is funding the CybHER Scholarship
Cyberr is funding one place on the August 2026 CybHER cohort for a woman who wants to break into cybersecurity. The scholarship covers the full cost of the bootcamp: EUR 1,500, fully funded, no strings attached.
Katlin's participation was not a marketing exercise planned around the scholarship. She did the bootcamp because she wanted to. The scholarship exists because Cyberr believes the barrier between motivation and entry into cyber should not be a financial one.
"If we are just talking about needing more women in cybersecurity and doing nothing, then nothing happens," Katlin says. "If you show that there are people who are doing it, who do not have the knowledge yet, who are stepping forward anyway, then one day it makes a difference."
The scholarship is open to any woman, anywhere. You do not need a deep technical background. You do not need to be a member of a particular community. You need a Cyberr account, a reason that is real to you, and enough courage to write it down.
Apply for the CybHER Scholarship
Applications close 18 July 2026. Know a woman who should apply? Share this with her.
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