About

Most communications support for security and privacy teams arrives after something goes wrong. Melanie Ensign built Discernible to change that.

Melanie spent two decades leading security and privacy communications inside some of the world's most scrutinized organizations, including Facebook, Uber, and AT&T. In every role, she fell in love with security teams that were technically excellent but organizationally invisible, and communications teams that were waiting for a crisis rather than helping prevent one. When she brought these disciplines together — improving how security teams communicated with leadership, with peers, and across functions — teams began building political capital, change management got easier, and public apologies became less necessary.

She founded Discernible to make that kind of support available to more organizations by contracting with a network of specialists across executive leadership, organizational behavior, engineering, risk management, legal, and product development to ensure clients get the right mix of domain expertise and industry experience dedicated to their specific challenges.

Previously, Melanie led communications for the world's largest hacker community DEF CON for 10 years. She is also an accomplished scuba diver and draws on the discipline of managing high-stakes, high-uncertainty situations (where preparation and clear communication are often the difference between a near-miss and a catastrophe) in her work with security and privacy leaders.