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Yvette Schmitter exists to put power where it belongs: in the hands of defenders, not attackers.

As CEO of Fusion Collective and former Digital Architecture Partner at PwC, Yvette has spent three decades architecting cyber defense strategies at the intersection where AI meets resilience. She led the AWS delivery team building the NFL's groundbreaking Digital Athlete platform. She directed elite engineering and data science teams through one of the most complex cloud migrations in AWS history, creating AI-powered systems that now protect players by predicting injuries before they happen. That same instinct for defensive innovation drives everything she does. Yvette cut her teeth at Big 4 and Amazon Web Services, where she learned that security without AI is like showing up to a gunfight with yesterday's weapons. Today, she builds adaptive AI architectures that don't just respond to threats after they strike but anticipate adversary moves before they materialize. Her work translates into Fortune 500 organizations operating with eyes wide open: understanding how attackers weaponize AI while engineering systems that close gaps faster than criminals can exploit them.

Her mission was forged from personal experience. The girl who built her first computer from junkyard parts while being told technology wasn't for people like her now ensures AI systems protect everyone, regardless of who they are or where they come from. When she asked AI to create her action figure as a "Cloud Jedi," it gave her Jensen Huang's face instead. That moment crystallized her understanding: if AI can't identify successful leaders, imagine what it does on the cyber battlefield where split-second decisions determine whether defenses hold or crumble.

Yvette transforms complexity into clarity. She demystifies how adversaries leverage machine learning to evade detection, scale attacks, and exploit vulnerabilities with surgical precision. More importantly, she shows security leaders exactly how to integrate AI advancements into broader strategies that maintain control when threats evolve faster than humans can track. From boardrooms to SOCs, Yvette delivers the hard truth defenders need to hear: AI doesn't just change the game in cybersecurity. AI is the game. And the question of who controls its future gets answered every single day by the choices we make right now.