Leul’s Story: From Lawyer to PhD student to Cybersecurity

Hi! Tell us a bit about your background before enrolling in Masterschool.

I grew up in Hamburg, Germany to Ethiopian parents. I have a law degree and spent three years working at district court in Hamburg. Then, I got a scholarship at Howard University in Washington D.C. for a PhD program to study globalization and law issues in Africa.

Even though tuition was fully covered, I wasn’t able to work anywhere except on campus and that wasn’t enough to support myself, so I moved back to Hamburg to continue my PhD there.

What happened next?

Once I finished my dissertation in 2021, I was self-employed, working as a legal guardian. I had my own office, I was working for the German court, representing people who are disabled in all kinds of legal matters. But I was hungry to try something else, maybe something more international.

I changed directions and moved to Ethiopia, and established a coffee export company. It didn’t work out. It was a difficult time to find good buyers. But, I had a new plan. I applied as a professor at a university in Ethiopia to teach international law. I passed all stages of the interview, and I really thought this was it–  until the president of the university denied my hiring because of the political situation there. 

That must have been incredibly disappointing.

This was in 2023. I was really down.

My coffee export business failed, the teaching position I wanted was denied at the last minute. Nothing seemed to work out.

Want to learn more about the Orientation course? Click here.

Did you have any tech experience?

Actually, when I was around 11 years old, I started coding with a schoolmate of mine, his father was a programmer and we started doing some basic coding together. But I lost interest – other things were more important around age 14, I suppose. For years, I had no real involvement with anything that had much to do with tech. 

When I needed a way to finance my PhD studies dissertation in Germany, I applied for an open position at the Apple Care hotline in Hamburg. I became an IT support person. That’s how I started to get into this world.

So, when did you decide to make the career switch to tech?

In January 2024, I came across an ad for Masterschool and applied. I thought that maybe cybersecurity could be an interesting field for me and I had a little bit of experience with the IT support I did. I thought I could somehow combine cybersecurity with my legal background.

How did you plan to combine your legal background with cybersecurity?

Cybersecurity is a broad field and there’s a sector called GRC – governance risk and compliance. It’s a profession that has a lot to do with legal issues, a way of aligning IT with business strategies, managing risks and making sure to meet industry and government regulations. 

I also remembered during my PhD, there was a chapter discussing digital autonomy of states, how they can protect themselves from outside influence using technology in their systems, especially in the financial sector. I actually discussed some of this in my dissertation.

Knowing what you know now, do you still think it’s possible to integrate your legal background in your new career?

Yes. Now I know I also want to learn more about ethical hacking, because if I go the legal route, it could be a real advantage knowing the technical aspects of hacking. It’s knowledge that can put me in a better position to protect clients or more effectively work out the regulations for a company I’ll work at. So yeah, this is a profession I can really see myself in.

What was your day like during the Orientation course? What was it like to learn online at Masterschool?

Most of the time I wake up around 7:30. I’m not a big breakfast eater, but I’ll drink tea or something, then immediately sit down on the computer.

Learning online was a new thing, but I am used to learning. Even though I’m 50 years old, I only finished my PhD in 2021. So I have that discipline, to sit down and work on a project without anyone telling me I need to do it. It may be one of the advantages I have. I know how to work on my own.

Did you have any doubts? What kind of challenges did you face?

I’m not afraid of tech but I am a little old school, not someone who was deep into networks and new technologies. The difficulty of the tasks increased gradually, so you weren’t frustrated from it being too hard or overwhelming in the beginning. Our instructor took his time and was very systematic. 

That really helped to build my confidence of what I am capable of, I think it was that way for a lot of people. It was a course that was really understandable for newcomers like me.

You’ve graduated the Orientation course, and now you are training to be a Cybersecurity analyst. How’s that going?

So far, the coding part is definitely challenging for me! It can be intimidating but I try not to compare myself with others. I just look at what I’m doing, I watch tutorials, I take my time. As a cybersecurity analyst, it’s not my main focus and I have realized that I don’t need to be perfect in every single thing. That helps take the pressure off.

What would you say to someone who is considering applying for the Orientation course?

For someone who doesn’t have a background in tech, or is not sure which path they want to take within IT, I think it’s very important. If you know exactly what you want to do and you know exactly what it means or have experience, you could apply straight to the full program in a specific field. But most of us who are changing careers, are not like that.

Want to get into tech? Learn more about the Orientation course here.