Operational Excellence

While you spend your career relentlessly hardening technical systems, are you overlooking the most critical operating layer? Technical expertise is only half the battle. Join us on **Tuesday, June 9, 2026,** at **Honor Brewing Company** at **42604 Trade West Dr, Sterling, VA 20166** to unlock the human side of security! Want a custom name tag to enhance your networking opportunities? Register here and yours will be ready at the door: https://share.hsforms.com/1lIgM4Vu3Q0KlJsKTmyXnigdwxz1 We are thrilled to welcome **Stacey Champagne**, Founder & CEO of **Women's Cybersecurity Alliance**, to share how EQ can transform how you lead under pressure! Stacey, is a leading insider risk management expert who has built security programs for **Fortune 500** companies,high growth startups, private equity, and federal agencies. Her experience spans advanced cybersecurity degrees (**CISSP, GSOM, GSLC**) and **federal intelligence experience**, including creating briefings for the major stakeholders from **military leaders** to the **President** of the United States. Firewalls and patches cannot manage panic during a breach. Human leadership can. Mark your calendars to join us for this exclusive session next month! **Agenda** 5:30 Social hour and networking begins 6:10 Welcome 6:15 Patch Your Leadership Stack - Stacey Champagne 6:50 Q&A 7:00 Open Mic & Networking Continues 7:30 Adjourn

Leigh Ann Sutton, Reiki Master and Teacher, Access Bars Practitioner and Archangelic Light Master will host this event on the third Monday of the month. Open to any level healing and style practitioner. Come share your skills. Space is very limited (no more than 6 total) and masks will be required. Please add your name to the waitlist if full and be courteous in canceling if you cannot make it so someone else can join. Suggested Donation $10. Cross referenced under [Reiki, Angelic and Metaphysical Gatherings of the DMV](https://www.meetup.com/reikiandangelsdmv/) in Meet up. Check out my website for additional offerings and services https//www.exceptionalmindsopenhearts.com/

Attendance is $35 (cash, credit/debit card, or ApplePay - paid at the door), which includes water/soda/coffee, bread, choice of a plated lunch entrée, and a dessert assortment. Parking is also validated in the Reston Station garages (3 hours of validation). Join one of Northern Virginia's most successful business networking groups (part of BNI). Open to the public and is typically attended by business owners, business developers, and entrepreneurs. Meetings are typically attended by 30-40 members and guests. \*\*\*PLEASE RSVP here: [REGISTER HERE](https://square.link/u/0WvC6Eir) \*\*\*If you do not register on the BNI website, there may not be a seat available for you.

**Merry Meet!** In an effort to make ***The Most Excellent Order of the Black Hat*** a safe and sacred event, we will now be charging an ***event fee of $15.00.*** Please stop by the front desk to sign in. Our Samhain event fee will be $25.00. Thank you for understanding. The Order of the Black Hat is an international eclectic order of witches. We take our spiritual path very seriously, yet strive not to take our egos too seriously. We each have a responsibility to grow in the wisdom, love, and power of our deities, and continually learn, heal, and become stronger. We all have a responsibility to share our skills and insights with others, and to serve within our community and beyond it. **Important Black Hat Rules and Reminders:** 1\. To cast a circle is to create a place of protected and safe space\. Our circle is sacred\, please follow these simple guidelines\. 2\. If you are leaving or entering the circle\, you MUST wait for a visualized "doorway" to be opened for you by one of the HPs\. 3\. Please use the restroom before or after Circle\. 4\. Again\, it is not only rude\, but people moving in and out of the circle destroys the energy and effectiveness of the circle 5\. No texting and no chit\-chat when others have the floor\. 6\. We recognize that this is a place of healing\, and we all do our part to share with the intent of healing ourselves and the world\. We share stories not advice\, realizing that we are all works in progress\. **Important Reminders:** 1\. When leaving the circle\, please check your space for any items or trash that you might have left\. 2\. When using your phone as a flashlight\, please be considerate of those across the circle from you\, those bright lights can cause migraines\. Our circle is a magickal space for all of us. Thanks in advance for your help in making this a wondrous time for us all! Please remember doors are locked at 7 PM. Feel free to bring food to share for our Feast! Again, to make ***The Most Excellent Order of the Black Hat*** a safe and sacred event, we will now be charging an event fee of $15.00. Our Samhain event fee will be $25.00. Thank you for understanding. I look forward to seeing you all again!!! Goddess Bless! GrannyMoon

## 1 Million Cups Loudoun – Business Presentation ### Featuring Mary Hartshorn, Founder of Craft Alchemy **Wednesday\, June 10 \| 9:00 AM – 10:00 AM** **Venture X Loudoun** Join us as we welcome **Mary Hartshorn**, founder of **Craft Alchemy**, to the 1 Million Cups Loudoun stage. *** ## About the Presenter Mary Hartshorn is an Army Veteran, entrepreneur, and founder of Craft Alchemy. With a background in communications and logistics and an MBA earned in 2016, Mary spent years developing expertise in e-commerce, digital products, automation systems, Shopify, Etsy, and customer-focused product development while raising her family and navigating military life. In 2024, a personal moment of crisis inspired Mary to create a tool that could help others facing similar challenges. What began as a resource for veterans quickly evolved into a broader solution designed to support individuals and families navigating autism, mental health challenges, caregiving responsibilities, medical conditions, and other situations where communication can become difficult during times of stress. *** ## About the Business Craft Alchemy has developed the **Anchor Tag Support System**, a personalized QR-based support hub that helps individuals quickly access calming tools, emergency contacts, support resources, and personalized information when they need it most. Designed to bridge the gap between physical and digital support, Anchor Tags provide a practical, accessible tool for Veterans, First Responders, autism families, caregivers, mental health advocates, schools, healthcare providers, and organizations focused on community well-being. Rather than creating another app, Craft Alchemy offers a real-world solution that can be carried, accessed quickly, and utilized during moments when support and communication matter most. *** ## Who Mary Is Looking to Hear From Mary would especially value feedback and connections from: * Veteran support organizations * First responder support groups * Mental health professionals and advocates * Autism and disability support organizations * School administrators and special education professionals * Healthcare and caregiving professionals * Nonprofit leaders * Community outreach specialists * Government contracting and partnership advisors * Local leaders focused on community impact initiatives *** ## Current Business Focus & Challenge Craft Alchemy is currently in its early growth and partnership stage. Mary's primary focus is building awareness, establishing strategic partnerships, and expanding opportunities within organizations and community-based networks. She is seeking feedback around: * Building strategic partnerships * Scaling awareness organically * Expanding into schools, nonprofits, and community organizations * Navigating government and organizational opportunities * Growing a mission-driven business without relying heavily on paid advertising She would also appreciate introductions to individuals and organizations connected to veterans, first responders, mental health advocacy, autism support, caregiving, education, and community health initiatives. *** ## Why Attend? * Learn about an innovative solution designed to support people during moments of stress and crisis * Provide valuable feedback to a mission-driven entrepreneur * Connect with community leaders, advocates, and professionals across multiple industries * Be part of a meaningful conversation around accessibility, support, and community impact *** ## About 1 Million Cups 1 Million Cups is a national program that brings entrepreneurs and communities together to learn, connect, and grow through presentations and discussion. Loudoun’s chapter meets on the 2nd and 4th Wednesdays each month. Join us on **June 10** for coffee, connection, and a conversation about creating practical solutions that strengthen individuals, families, and communities. We look forward to seeing you there.

We will be meeting in the Wilson Room. For June, we will be reading Excellent Women by Barbara Pym. A paperback version runs 231 pages. It was published in 1952. The GoodReads blurb is One of Barbara Pym’s richest and most amusing high comedies, *Excellent Women* has at its center Mildred Lathbury, a clergyman’s daughter and a mild-mannered spinster in 1950s England. She is one of those “excellent women,” the smart, supportive, repressed women who men take for granted. As Mildred gets embroiled in the lives of her new neighbors—anthropologist Helena Napier and her handsome, dashing husband, Rocky, and Julian Malory, the vicar next door—the novel presents a series of snapshots of human life as actually, and pluckily, lived in a vanishing world of manners and repressed desires.

For decades, application security has been built around a simple assumption: humans are the primary producers of software. We train developers, review their pull requests, model threats in design meetings, and build controls around human decision-making. That assumption is rapidly breaking down. As AI coding assistants evolve into autonomous software agents, organizations will gain access to an effectively unlimited engineering workforce capable of producing software at a speed no human team can match. The pressure to adopt these systems will be driven not by curiosity, but by competition. Companies that successfully harness agentic development will ship faster, iterate faster, and potentially outpace those that do not. This shift forces a fundamental rethinking of application security. The future of AppSec is not securing developers—it is governing an agentic workforce. Threat modeling, code review, security testing, and change management will not disappear, but they will need to operate at machine speed and increasingly be performed by systems rather than people. In this talk, Ken Johnson, CTO of DryRun Security, explores what the next decade of application security may look like, the assumptions that will no longer hold, and why security professionals must understand these systems deeply if they hope to influence the future rather than react to it.