Mark “Hershey” Herschberg is the CTO of Averon. He is a cryptographer, university instructor, and champion ballroom dancer. Hershey chairs the IEEE standards committee on HTTPSi and serves on the board of TechieYouth.

After graduating from MIT with degrees in physics and EE/CS, he then continued his graduate work at MIT on cryptography. His master’s thesis, “Secure Electronic Voting over the World Wide Web,” created the first online voting system. He subsequently worked in Fortune 500s and startups to track down cybercriminals, terrorists and extremists on the dark web.

Hershey’s range of other work includes big data tools, lead generation, media, enterprise mobile platforms, and he was brought in as the turn-around technical lead on an NBC business unit that was relaunched as Hulu. A part time academic, he has taught at MIT for almost two decades where he helped create MIT’s seminal Undergraduate Practice Opportunities Program. He also created the Dynamic Markets course at Harvard Business School, he annually lectures at NYU, USC and elsewhere, and he enjoys speaking regularly on cybersecurity, technology, and entrepreneurship at conferences around the world.

Although now retired from dance competitions, Hershey was a top, nationally-ranked ballroom dancer. He is passionate about helping others improve their personal and professional efficacy and for many years has been an active volunteer with Streetwise Partners, Futures & Options, TapRoot, and has successfully helped run CodeRanch for nearly a decade.