Surfacing Leaders

In this episode of the Surfacing Leaders podcast, host Marc Koehler sits down with M.K. Palmore, founder and CEO of Apogee Global RMS, who advises boards and executive leaders on cybersecurity strategy, operational resilience, and leadership development. A U.S. Naval Academy graduate, former Marine Corps officer, and 22-year FBI special agent who later held executive security roles at Google and Palo Alto Networks, MK brings a rare, layered perspective on leading through high-stakes, high-uncertainty environments.

MK shares how leading FBI SWAT operations and large-scale cyber investigations taught him that accountability starts with reflecting honestly on your own shortcomings, and why he still journals today, both digitally and by hand, to process what he's learned. He introduces his concept of "zone leadership," the idea that leaders show up differently depending on everything else going on in their lives, and why pretending you can fully separate your personal and professional selves does a disservice to both. Marc and MK also dig into why MK believes cybersecurity is fundamentally a leadership problem, not a technology problem, and why the best leaders he's worked with lead with people first, trusting that a people-centered approach gets a team to mission success rather than the other way around.

The conversation also covers the shifting nature of the "battlefield" in a cloud-based world, a firsthand account of running down the Yahoo breach investigation and what it revealed about nation-states outsourcing to criminal hackers, and MK's candid take on how AI is compressing team sizes and reshaping entry-level career paths in cybersecurity and beyond.

The episode concludes with actionable advice for leaders:

• Build in real time for reflection. Block it on your calendar like any other priority.
• Lead people first. Mission accomplishment follows from that, not the other way around.
• Take the focus off your own advancement. The best leaders often aren't chasing the next title.
• Prioritize risk based on your actual environment. You can't defend against everything at once.
• Concentrate on the people around you, not on yourself.

Join us in this episode to hear how a career spanning the Marine Corps, the FBI, and Silicon Valley cybersecurity leadership all points back to the same lesson: the technology will keep changing, but leadership is still about people.

Connect with M.K. Palmore:
Website: apogee-global-rms.io
LinkedIn: MK Palmore on LinkedIn