A Whistle That Touches My Heart: John Stark

Name: John Stark

Home: Chevy Chase, MD

Job: Securities lawyer, cyber-security consultant

John’s Whistle: Enthusiastic creativity

How I Know John: We met at the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission in 1997 when John was an attorney and I ran the office of public affairs.

Whistle in Action: Have a notepad ready any time you talk to John Stark, because you’ll come away with several new ideas. Give John raw materials, and he will create innovative finished products. Present a challenge, and he will come up with solutions you hadn’t thought of. Throw a road block in his way, and he’ll leap over it. Give him a ream of blank paper, and he’ll write a book. I first witnessed this enthusiastic creativity in 1997, when John combined his knowledge of the law with a computer and used it to fight securities fraud on the Internet, a first for the U.S. government. In the twenty years since, he’s continued to turn ideas into reality, forming his own cyber-security consulting firm and writing a book on how to protect against cyber thieves. I love to spend time with John. No matter what issue I’m wrestling with, personal, professional, or artistic, John has thoughtful and actionable ideas to help tackle a challenge or turn a germ of an idea into something tangible and exciting. Whether it’s simply watching him in action or being the beneficiary of his enthusiastic creativity, John has touched my heart and my life in meaningful ways.

(Find this and other stories in my book Find Your Whistle: Simple Gifts Touch Hearts & Change Lives.)