I'm Michelle Duell, transitioning from military intelligence to cybersecurity with a focus on defensive security and threat intelligence.
I serve in the Army Reserve in intelligence, where I've spent years analyzing patterns, tracking adversaries, and turning complex data into actionable insights. Those same skills translate directly to what I'm passionate about now: blue team operations, incident response, and threat hunting.
As a SANS Cyber Academy Scholar, I've earned GCIH (98%), GSEC (95%), and GFACT (100%) certifications, and also a member of the prestigious GIAC Advisory Board. I've put those skills to the test in competition, placing 1st in the 2026 WiCyS Cyber Quest Tournament, 2nd in the 2025 WiCyS x Target Cyber Defense Challenge, and earning Runner-Up Most Creative Report and 5th place on the leaderboard in the SANS Holiday Hack Challenge.
Outside of competitions, I'm building practical experience through my homelab, where I run Proxmox with Wazuh SIEM, Active Directory, and MITRE Caldera. It's where I experiment with purple team operations and detection engineering, constantly learning and staying sharp.
Currently open to cybersecurity opportunities, collaboration on security research, and speaking engagements.
1st place finish out of ~325 competitors in the Women in CyberSecurity (WiCyS) Cyber Quest Tournament powered by SANS Institute Cyber Ranges. Competed across network forensics, web exploitation, SIEM analysis, assembly programming, and multi-stage exploitation challenges.
5th place finish solving all 26 challenges and Runner-Up for Most Creative Report. Built custom technical writeup webpage with interactive elements and comprehensive documentation covering router exploitation, web application attacks, privilege escalation, cloud security misconfigurations, and protocol analysis.
2nd place overall finish in national cyber defense competition. Successfully defended infrastructure against red team operations while maintaining critical services.
WiCyS San Diego Virtual Speaker Series
Co-presenting 45-minute technical session covering novice to professional reverse engineering methodologies using Ghidra for static binary analysis.
WiCyS 2026 Conference | Washington, DC
Co-presenting 45-minute technical session covering novice to professional reverse engineering methodologies using Ghidra for static binary analysis.
Author of technical reports and analysis documenting CTF challenge solutions, honeypot deployment findings, blockchain security research, and homelab infrastructure. Published 8 articles at medium.com/@aeronique
$ cat active_certifications.txt
$ cat in_progress.txt
American Military University
Cochise College
Lamar University
Lamar University
U.S. Army Reserve | [REDACTED] Clearance
National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency GEMINI Program
Nederland Independent School District | Nederland, TX
Before pivoting to cybersecurity, I spent over a decade as a professional musician. Mastering complex systems is kind of my thing.
$ echo "Fun fact: I was a Blockbuster Video manager in college. Yes, I'm that old."