Florence Mottay started her career in cyber security, researching exploits for security vulnerabilities in a small US startup. Today, she is the group chief information security officer (CISO) at Zalando, a high-tech online fashion retailer that boasts over 50 million customers in 26 markets.
Zalando, she says, is more of a technology company than a retailer, offering its shoppers artificial intelligence (AI)-powered apps that can help them choose the right outfit for an occasion or take their measurements by capturing an image on a mobile phone.
The company’s move to generative AI (GenAI) has created unique challenges for Mottay and her 100-strong IT team. There were no blueprints, so it was a matter of working it out from scratch while working closely with other parts of the business.
Mottay says she “fell into” a career in computer security after receiving an offer from a university in Florida, where she was studying maths during an exchange programme.
“I met a professor of software engineering who must have seen some potential because he said he would sponsor the rest of my bachelor’s degree and my master’s degree if I agreed to switch from mathematics to software engineering and to work on some of the research grants he was getting,” she says.
Starting at a security startup
In 2003, Mottay was offered a job in a small startup that specialised in creating security exploits for US government contractors, such as Raytheon and Northrup Gruman. “I was employee number seven.”
Security Innovation, as the company became known, developed proof-of-concept exploits to show how security vulnerabilities in software could be misused by hackers or bad actors if they were left unfixed.
It was a steep learning curve, says Mottay in an interview with Computer Weekly at a SANS cyber leaders summit in London. “For six months, I used to go home after work and study until 3am on how to create exploits, and I became pretty good.”
Two years later, she was asked to open a branch of the company in the Netherlands to develop exploits for European companies. The branch grew and was taken over by a larger company. Other security posts followed.
Making a switch to retail
After 10 years, Mottay changed direction, taking up a post as director of IT security at Dutch retailer Ahold, owner of the Albert Heijn supermarket chain. Soon after, Ahold merged with the Belgian multinational retailer Delhaize. By 2019, Mottay had risen to become its global CISO and vice-president for information security.
“We’re here to support the business and we’re here to enable, so we need to find ways to enable what the business ambition is, and I think that is how you build trust”
Florence Mottay, Zalando
“I quickly found out that stakeholder management and partnering with the business was the way to success,” she says. “I started building relationships.”
Ahold and Delhaize had similar history, culture and approaches to business, but their IT systems were different. When the companies came together, some IT systems were merged, and in other cases, each company kept its own distinct technology.
“For us in security, we found ways to secure whichever choice was made,” she says.
From vulnerabilities to fashion
In 2022, online fashion retailer Zalando was looking for someone to transform its security operations and made an approach.
Zalando had an “entrepreneurial spirit” and a focus on innovative digital technology that was instantly attractive to Mottay. “It was like, ‘Oh my god!’”
Her brief was to reposition cyber security from a vertical operation that sat alongside other business units in the organisation to a horizontal operation that runs through every part of Zalando.
For Mottay, it was back to building trusted relationships with her new team and the board. That meant finding ways to support the company’s objectives and to navigate around any security issues that arose rather than seeing them as blockages.
“We’re here to support the business and we’re here to enable, so we need to find ways to enable what the business ambition is, and I think that is how you build trust,” she says.
Mottay says she is fortunate that every business leader at Zalando has a good understanding of technology and cyber security. “It is unusual, but it’s actually quite exciting,” she says. “It’s very cool.”
Acting fast with AI
Managing security has become more of a challenge for CISOs like Mottay as GenAI begins to pose new challenges.
“If you think about ransomware, AI is an accelerator,” she says. “It makes attacks more accessible to people, and it makes them faster as well. So that means as a cyber security function, we have to be faster than ever before.”
When there is an attack, I understand how it was created. I can dive deep where I need to, thanks to my technical background Florence Mottay, Zalando
It’s more important than ever for organisations to have visibility of everything that is happening on their computer networks, she says.
Take the Log4j security vulnerability discovered in 2021, which exposed a wide range of applications across the enterprise to remote code execution attacks. The wide distribution of vulnerable software in cloud services and on-premise made it difficult for organisations to detect and patch.
“If you had a bill of materials, you could quickly see where all the instances that were vulnerable were and address them. So, it’s the same thinking – if something is going on, can we look and identify where we need to act as fast as possible?” she says.
Zalando is using AI to triage security alerts, but keeping on top of the threats requires “constant upskilling” of the security team and continual monitoring of threat intelligence.
Mottay’s experience developing exploits and studying vulnerabilities has stood her in good stead. “When there is an attack, I understand how it was created,” she says. “I can dive deep where I need to, thanks to my technical background.”
Adapting to the GenAI dynamic
At the same time, Mottay and her 100-strong security team are supporting Zalando’s ambitious generative AI programme.
Zalando began work on GenAI-powered shopping assistants to help its customers with their shopping soon after the launch of ChatGPT in late 2022.
Mottay was asked to help deal with some of the risks posed by AI, including bias, hallucination and misinformation, which fall outside the natural remit of IT security.
Some of the security team were already enthused by generative AI and had begun experimenting with it, so Mottay turned to them first.
“When I got the call, I went to them … and I said, ‘Hey guys, do you want to help? Do you want to partner? Let’s just do it’,” she says. “And so they started working with the business.”
Zalando’s AI-powered fashion assistant helps customers choose the right outfit for any occasion
There were some clear risks. For example, an AI system could agree to let customers return clothes for a refund even if they had worn them for several years. Or they could offer the same item at different prices to different people.
Mottay’s team assembled 80,000 prompts to train the model in a secure way. They classified each prompt into three categories: business-related enquiries about, for example, items for sale; non-business-related enquiries, such as an irrelevant question about ingredients for a recipe; and malicious enquiries, such as a request to run computer code.
The company launched its AI-powered Zalando fashion assistant in selected markets in 2024. The tool can answer questions such as: “I have been invited to a wedding in Barcelona, in October, and the reception starts in the church and finishes on the beach. I am struggling to find a good outfit. Could you suggest one for me?”
The next challenge will be how to manage the security of agentic AI, which in future will be able to perform automated tasks for customers and the company.
While it doesn’t make sense to control AI agents, which by definition have the ability to take action autonomously, Mottay is working with the company to develop overarching rules that will act as safeguards.
The rules will include ensuring that a human is accountable for each AI agent, ensuring that each agent has a clear mandate and that it does not have capabilities that go beyond its mandate, ensuring there is an audit trail of each agent’s actions, and making sure a human is always involved in any high-risk decisions.
“We are not perfect, but we have something good in place, and we are continuously improving. We are looking at agentic security and what we need to put in place to be ready when the business is ready,” she says.
The founder of Gillette famously came up with a model of basically giving away the razor handle so he could sell the blades. Canadian startup Henson has the opposite model, charging $79 for a razor that can give you an excellent shave with dirt-cheap disposable blades that cost about 15 cents each.
I’ve been using the Henson razor for the past three months, and it offers the best shave I’ve had up to this point in my life. Right now, Walmart is selling the device with enough blades to last you two years for just $80. Razors are always a popular Christmas gift for fathers, and this deal would fit nicely under your tree.
Photograph: Martin Cizmar
Henson
AL13 Safety Razor Shave Set (2 Year)
Henson is a Canadian company with roots in aerospace, having contributed components to the Mars rover. The AL13 Safety Razor is made from aluminum machined at their shop in Ontario. It comes in a half-dozen colors, including the classic copper I’ve tested.
The razor’s head is two parts that dovetail together and are then compressed using the screw-on handle. The handle holds the blade in place with extreme rigidity at a precise angle so the blade doesn’t chatter around, which can cause skin irritation. The blade barely sticks out from the head, with an edge only about half the width of a hair exposed—you’ll have to look very closely to see it.
The Henson razor is manufactured with exacting tolerances of 0.00025 of an inch, or about one-twelfth the thickness of a human hair. There are no plastic parts, just aluminum with stainless steel bushings. Henson specifically designed its device to work with cheap, generic double-edged blades that sell for ten or 15 cents each—the difference here is how firmly and precisely those blades are held in place.
I’ve been using the Henson for about two months now and have never had better shaves. I shave about every other day, and each blade lasts me about a week, meaning the 100-pack included here will last you two years. The shave is very close but smooth, and I’ve only barely nicked myself a few times in that span. (The company has paid for medical imaging that shows its razors cause one-third the skin irritation you get from multi-blade razors.) The company sent me its proprietary $20 shaving cream, which I somehow misplaced before ever using, but I have had extremely crisp and clean shaves with a $4 can of regular Gillette foam.
The one tip I have is that you get the best results if you unscrew the handle a bit when rinsing the blades between uses, as shaved hairs otherwise tend to get stuck in the space between components and don’t easily rinse out.
Did I mention it’s a very handsome razor? It is, with a machined handle that has a texture that looks good and also provides a nice, gritty grip when wet. If you’re looking to gift a grooming device—or just want to treat yourself—the Henson at this price is a great buy.
“Can we make tissues that are made from you, for you?” asked Jennifer Lewis ScD ’91 at the 2025 Mildred S. Dresselhaus Lecture, organized by MIT.nano, on Nov. 3. “The grand challenge goal is to create these tissues for therapeutic use and, ultimately, at the whole organ scale.”
Lewis, the Hansjörg Wyss Professor of Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard University, is pursuing that challenge through advances in 3D printing. In her talk presented to a combined in-person and virtual audience of over 500 attendees, Lewis shared work from her lab that focuses on enhanced function in 3D printed components for use in soft electronics, robotics, and life sciences.
“How you make a material affects its structure, and it affects its properties,” said Lewis. “This perspective was a light bulb moment for me, to think about 3D printing beyond just prototyping and making shapes, but really being able to control local composition, structure, and properties across multiple scales.”
A trained materials scientist, Lewis reflected on learning to speak the language of biologists when she joined Harvard to start her own lab focused on bioprinting and biological engineering. How does one compare particles and polymers to stem cells and extracellular matrices? A key commonality, she explained, is the need for a material that can be embedded and then erased, leaving behind open channels. To meet this need, Lewis’ lab developed new 3D printing methods, sophisticated printhead designs, and viscoelastic inks — meaning the ink can go back and forth between liquid and solid form.
Displaying a video of a moving robot octopus named Octobot, Lewis showed how her group engineered two sacrificial inks that change from fluid to solid upon either warming or cooling. The concept draws inspiration from nature — plants that dynamically change in response to touch, light, heat, and hydration. For Octobot, Lewis’ team used sacrificial ink and an embedded printing process that enables free-form printing in three dimensions, rather than layer-by-layer, to create a fully soft autonomous robot. An oscillating circuit in the center guides the fuel (hydrogen peroxide), making the arms move up and down as they inflate and deflate.
From robots to whole organ engineering
“How can we leverage shape morphing in tissue engineering?” asked Lewis. “Just like our blood continuously flows through our body, we could have continuous supply of healing.”
Lewis’ lab is now working on building human tissues, primarily cardiac, kidney, and cerebral tissue, using patient-specific cells. The motivation, Lewis explained, is not only the need for human organs for people with diseases, but the fact that receiving a donated organ means taking immunosuppressants the rest of your life. If, instead, the tissue could be made from your own cells, it would be a stronger match to your own body.
“Just like we did to engineer viscoelastic matrices for embedded printing of functional and structural materials,” said Lewis, “we can take stem cells and then use our sacrificial writing method to write in perfusable vasculature.” The process uses a technique Lewis calls SWIFT — sacrificial writing into functional tissue. Sharing lab results, Lewis showed how the stem cells, differentiated into cardiac building blocks, are initially beating individually, but after being packed into a tighter space that will support SWIFT, these building blocks fuse together and become one tissue that beats synchronously. Then, her team uses a gelatin ink that solidifies or liquefies with temperature changes to print the complex design of human vessels, flushing away the ink to leave behind open lumens. The channel remains open, mimicking a blood vessel network that could have fluid actively, continuously flowing through it. “Where we’re going is to expand this not only to different tissue types, but also building in mechanisms by which we can build multi-scale vasculature,” said Lewis.
Honoring Mildred S. Dresselhaus
In closing, Lewis reflected on Dresselhaus’ positive impact on her own career. “I want to dedicate this [talk] to Millie Dresselhaus,” said Lewis. She pointed to a quote by Millie: “The best thing about having a lady professor on campus is that it tells women students that they can do it, too.” Lewis, who arrived at MIT as a materials science and engineering graduate student in the late 1980s, a time when there were very few women with engineering doctorates, noted that “just seeing someone of her stature was really an inspiration for me. I thank her very much for all that she’s done, for her amazing inspiration both as a student, as a faculty member, and even now, today.”
After the lecture, Lewis was joined by Ritu Raman, the Eugene Bell Career Development Assistant Professor of Tissue Engineering in the MIT Department of Mechanical Engineering, for a question-and-answer session. Their discussion included ideas on 3D printing hardware and software, tissue repair and regeneration, and bioprinting in space.
“Both Mildred Dresselhaus and Jennifer Lewis have made incredible contributions to science and served as inspiring role models to many in the MIT community and beyond, including myself,” said Raman. “In my own career as a tissue engineer, the tools and techniques developed by Professor Lewis and her team have critically informed and enabled the research my lab is pursuing.”
This was the seventh Dresselhaus Lecture, named in honor of the late MIT Institute Professor Mildred Dresselhaus, known to many as the “Queen of Carbon Science.” The annual event honors a significant figure in science and engineering from anywhere in the world whose leadership and impact echo Dresselhaus’ life, accomplishments, and values.
“Professor Lewis exemplifies, in so many ways, the spirit of Millie Dresselhaus,” said MIT.nano Director Vladimir Bulović. “Millie’s groundbreaking work, indeed, is well known; and the groundbreaking work of Professor Lewis in 3D printing and bio-inspired materials continues that legacy.”
Slack CEO Denise Dresser is leaving the company and joining OpenAI as the company’s chief revenue officer, multiple sources tell WIRED. Marc Benioff, the chief executive of Salesforce, which owns Slack, shared news of Dresser’s departure in a message to staff on Monday evening.
At OpenAI, Dresser will manage the company’s enterprise unit, which has been growing rapidly this year. She will report to chief operating officer Brad Lightcap. She starts next week.
“We’re on a path to put AI tools into the hands of millions of workers, across every industry,” said OpenAI CEO of Applications Fidji Simo in a statement to WIRED. “Denise has led that kind of shift before, and her experience will help us make AI useful, reliable, and accessible for businesses everywhere.”
Dresser has been at Salesforce for 14 years, according to Benioff’s message. Prior to becoming CEO, she held a number of executive roles in Salesforce’s enterprise sales unit. She was appointed CEO in 2023, after the previous CEO, Lidiane Jones, departed for the chief executive role at Bumble. (Jones served as Slack’s CEO for about a year.)
The company that eventually became Slack was founded in 2009. By 2014 it had become a fast-growing application for workplace chat and collaboration tools. In 2021, the company was acquired by Salesforce for nearly $28 billion. Much of the founding staff of Slack, including cofounders Stewart Butterfield and Cal Henderson, left within a few years of the acquisition. Over time, some of Slack’s operations were absorbed into the larger structure of Salesforce, and there were reports of culture clashes between the employees of the once-small startup and the enterprise behemoth.
Rob Seaman, Slack’s current chief product officer, will become interim CEO of Slack, according to two sources with direct knowledge of the executive changes.
Representatives for Slack hadn’t responded to WIRED’s requests for comment at the time of publication.
In Dresser’s tenure as Slack’s CEO, she oversaw the rollout of several large scale AI features, including AI-generated meeting summaries and an integration with Salesforce’s AI agents. Earlier this year, when Elon Musk took on a prominent role in the US government, Dresser occasionally took to X to show support, saying she agreed that federal employees should be required to send bullet-pointed emails about what they’ve accomplished, and sending a “thumbs up” emoji to a post about President Donald Trump signing an executive order mandating federal agencies to work with Musk’s DOGE.
Paresh Dave and Maxwell Zeff contributed to this report.
Update: 12/9/2025, 2 PM EDT: WIRED has corrected how long Dresser was employed by Slack and Salesforce.
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