The Victor Akinode Initiatives

We are excited to finally open our doors to a community built on mentorship, growth, and opportunity. At VAI, we believe that with the right guidance, every young person can rise, grow, and transform their future.

Just attended a powerful cybersecurity networking webinar and one thing became clear: Networking isn’t about chasing opportunities. It’s about building genuine relationships. Key lesson: Observe. Appreciate. Ask. Big thanks to the Guest Speaker for the insightful session.

Help repost for others to see. Thank you.

We are hiring!!! If this looks like what you can do, please hit the link below to apply and we’ll be happy to talk to you. If you know anyone fit for any of the roles, you can share with them or tag them in the comments. Apply here: bit.ly/veenodevolunte…

We have sent out selection emails for the VA Cybersecurity Mentorship Program Cohort 3. If you applied, check your inbox now, including your spam and promotions folder. If your application was successful, your email is already waiting for you. Did not receive anything? Do not panic. Join our community using the link below, find the admin, and let them verify and add you to the WhatsApp group where all mentorship updates and next steps are being shared. Community link: t.me/+dvi_feSCRCJmN… This is just the beginning. What we have planned for this cohort is going to be worth every bit of the time you put in. Congratulations to everyone who made it, and to those who did not this time, stay close, the next cohort is coming.

I think this is the biggest achievement for me so far. Baruch Hashem Adonai for strength and grace! I have done many hard things in my career, but I have never committed to something as taxing as this. On my birthday, January 16, I publicly announced that I’ll be giving back to my community by creating a video per day for 100 days teaching cybersecurity from start to finish, guess what? By the grace of God, I DID IT! And those videos have turned to a full cybersecurity crash course now. To me, I didn't just show up for myself; I showed up for a community that was counting on me to help them break into cybersecurity. Check comment section to get the link to the videos. To be honest, it was very exhausting. There were nights when the last thing I wanted to do was look at a screen, record a video, or break down another complex exploit. There were days when the "stress" felt like an understatement. But Saturday marked the end of this journey, and sitting through our testimonial call made every late night worth it. Hearing people share how they went from zero knowledge to navigating labs, understanding security protocols, and feeling confident in their new skills was overwhelming. What I learned over these 100 days: 1. Impact is the best fuel: When you know your work is actively changing someone’s career trajectory, "tired" becomes a secondary thought. 2. Consistency beats intensity: Showing up every single day created a momentum that a one-off bootcamp never could. 3. Community is everything: We didn't just learn; we grew together. I am walking away from this challenge with a full heart and a reminder of why I entered this field in the first place, to secure the future, one learner at a time. To everyone who stuck with me from Day 1 to Day 100: You are the reason this was my biggest milestone yet. Once again, all thanks to God for the strength and grace. This would have been impossible without Jesus! Celebrate with me in the comments and help repost.

A 23-year-old lady sent me a message a few months ago and it still bothers me. She said she had applied to 47 cybersecurity jobs, heard back from 3, got rejected by all 3, and was starting to believe the problem was her, that maybe she just was not built for this industry, that maybe everyone else knew something she did not. I looked at her profile, her CV, her approach, and the problem was not her ability, it was that nobody had ever shown her how the industry actually works from the inside, what hiring managers actually look for, how to position herself, how to talk about her skills in a language that makes people stop scrolling and pay attention. She was not lacking talent, she was lacking direction, and those two things look identical from the outside but they are completely different problems with completely different solutions. Three months later, after going through my mentorship, she sent me another message, this time with an offer letter attached. That is the only thing this mentorship program organized by The Victor Akinode Initiatives exists to do, to close the gap between where you are and where you are trying to go, faster than you would ever get there alone, with people beside you who have already made the journey and know exactly where the shortcuts are. Applications are open right now, it is completely free, and spaces will not last. Apply here: forms.gle/6mdY5Ka8eHdTko… Share this with someone who is one conversation away from changing their entire trajectory

I almost quit cybersecurity, and nobody knew.   I was studying alone, failing practice exams, watching tutorials that made perfect sense on screen but fell apart the moment I tried to apply them, and the worst part was having nobody to ask, nobody to tell me if I was even going in the right direction.   Then one conversation changed everything.   One person who had already done it sat down with me, told me exactly what to focus on, what to throw away, and what the industry actually looked like from the inside, and I realised I had been wasting months going in circles when the answer was just someone pointing me in the right direction.   I never forgot that, and I told myself that when I got to the other side, I would be that person for someone else.   This is a story of one of my mentees and is what the VA Cybersecurity Mentorship Program is, it is not another course, not another roadmap you can find on Google, it is direct access to people who have walked the path and can tell you honestly what your next step looks like.   It is free, it is structured, and the people who have been through it are already building real careers in cybersecurity.   If you are where I was, this is for you.   Apply here: docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAI… Repost for others to see.

AI will make you less intelligent! Is that true?   Genuinely. I am an AI safety researcher. I study these systems for a living. And I still caught myself wondering if leaning on AI tools was quietly eroding the sharpness I had spent years building.   So I tested it. I pulled back from AI for two weeks and did everything manually, code, writing, analysis, all of it.   What I discovered surprised me.   I was not smarter without AI, I was just slower. The thinking was the same. The judgment was the same. The creativity was the same. I was just spending four hours on things that used to take one.   The fear was wrong, AI was never replacing my intelligence. It was handling the parts of my work that were never really about intelligence in the first place, the repetitive, the mechanical, the time-consuming.   The real risk is not that AI makes you less intelligent. The real risk is that you never develop your own thinking in the first place and use AI to hide it.   Use AI heavily. But never stop reading deeply, thinking independently, and forming your own conclusions. The tool should sharpen you, not replace you.   Save this, it with someone wrestling with the same fear.   Have you ever felt like AI was making you less sharp? Drop your honest take below!   Repost for others to see

Do this to keep your iPhone from getting hacked

For more on AI and cybersecurity opportunities, subscribe to my YouTube channel: @victorakinode" target="_blank" rel="nofollow noopener">youtube.com/@victorakinode

These AI research opportunities are open right now and most people have no idea they exist.   If you are a researcher, engineer, or policy professional trying to break into the AI industry, this list is for you.   1. Anthropic Fellows Program: Anthropic is opening applications for May and July 2026 cohorts, funding engineers and researchers to work on frontier AI safety problems including mechanistic interpretability, adversarial robustness, scalable oversight, and AI control. Over 40% of past fellows joined Anthropic full time. alignment.anthropic.com/2025/anthropic…   2. IAPS AI Policy Fellowship: a fully funded three-month fellowship from the Institute for AI Policy and Strategy, running June to August 2026 in Washington D.C. or remotely, with a $15,000 stipend for fellows and $22,000 for senior fellows. Applications for Fall 2026 open in April. iaps.ai/fellowship   3. CRA Trustworthy AI Research Fellowship: open now for the 2026 to 2027 cohort, offering a $17,000 stipend for early career faculty and researchers working on trustworthy and responsible AI, with an in-person Field School in Cambridge, MA in July 2026. Deadline is March 31, 2026. cra.org/cra-trustworth…   4. Berkman Klein Center Fellowship (Harvard): Harvard’s interdisciplinary AI research center is accepting applications for scholars and practitioners to lead independent research on agentic AI, AI governance, and responsible deployment. Fellowships run up to eight months. cyber.harvard.edu/page/open-call…   5. GovAI Summer Fellowship, Research Track: the Centre for the Governance of AI offers a three-month fellowship for researchers working on AI governance and policy, pairing fellows with mentors from one of the leading AI policy research organisations in the world. governance.ai   6. CHAI Research Fellowship (Berkeley): the Center for Human-Compatible AI at UC Berkeley offers two to three year postdoctoral fellowships working directly with Stuart Russell, Pieter Abbeel, and Anca Dragan on provably beneficial AI systems. humancompatible.ai/jobs   The AI research field is not closed. It is actively looking for people who care enough to show up.   Save this and share it with a researcher or engineer who has been waiting for the right opportunity.

Your idea deserves to be brought to life; do not let it live inside your head.

Learn Prompt Optimization. It will save you a lot.

Google Cloud is giving out FREE access to its GCP lab environment plus a 100% exam voucher. This is fully covered. All you need to do is complete the required learning activities, and you earn a voucher for an eligible certification exam. Eligible exams include: - Associate Cloud Engineer - Professional Cloud Architect - Generative AI Leader Registrations are currently open and close March 11. If you’ve been waiting for an excuse to get cloud-certified, this is it. Get started here: developers.google.com/program/gear/g… Don’t say nobody told you.

This course normally will cost hundreds of dollars, but it’s FREE. I just came across a GitHub repo that basically walks you through building a production-grade AI system from scratch. github.com/jamwithai/prod… These are not watch videos and feel smart content. You will actually implement things week by week. You start by setting up proper development infrastructure with Docker, FastAPI, and a database. Then you ingest real research data and build an automated pipeline. You implement your own keyword search using BM25 so you understand retrieval at the foundation level. You upgrade it to hybrid search so it captures meaning, not just exact words. You build a full RAG system that can answer questions over your data. Then you make it production-ready with caching and monitoring. Finally, you move into agentic workflows using LangGraph and integrate it with tools like Telegram. This is how AI engineers are trained. Not by prompting models. By building the entire stack end to end. To learn more, subscribe to my channel. I share a lot of tech information there and it’s FREE. @victorakinode" target="_blank" rel="nofollow noopener">youtube.com/@victorakinode

DAY 44: Security Policies and Governance: Setting the rules for cybersecurity @VictorAkinode @VAInitiatives #100DaysCybersecurityChallenge #100DaysWithVictorAkinode #100DaysWithVA #100DaysWithVAI #100DaysCybersecuritywithVA #100DaysWithVictorAkinodeInitiatives

This could be why you are having trouble with starting your cybersecurity career. I'm I right? Let me get your answer in the comments.

Here is a reminder of our Cybersecurity Career Webinar happening TODAY at 6:00 PM (WAT). Stella Okoh and I will be speaking on the topic: “How to Position for Opportunities in the Cybersecurity Industry.” If you’ve been learning cybersecurity but you’re unsure how to strategically position yourself for real opportunities, this session is for you. We’ll be sharing practical steps, real insights, and the mindset shifts needed to move from studying to landing opportunities. 📍 Live on Zoom 🔗 The access link will be shared inside our Telegram community. If you’re not in the community yet, now is the time to join. Link to our community: lnkd.in/ezENxFSc See you at 6:00 PM. Let’s position you properly. ♻️ Kindly repost for others to see.

@VictorAkinode Amazing resources!!!

Here are 10 FREE platforms/resources to learn cloud security. All are truly free to start and suitable for beginners to intermediate learners. 1. Google Cloud Skills – Cloud Security Training – A broad set of free learning paths and hands-on labs for Google Cloud, including cloud security fundamentals and security roles.  cloud.google.com/learn/training 2. Google Cloud Cybersecurity Certificate (Beginner) – Free beginner-oriented cloud security training covering security concepts and defenses on Google Cloud.  skills.google/paths/419 3. Introduction to Cloud Security (Great Learning) – A free self-paced course introducing cloud security basics, shared responsibility model, threats and protections.  mygreatlearning.com/academy/learn-… 4. Cybrary – Check Point Cloud Security Jump Start – Free targeted cloud security course teaching real-world cloud threat challenges and how CloudGuard secures environments.  cybrary.it/course/check-p… 5. Palo Alto Networks Free Cybersecurity Courses – Includes a free Fundamentals of Cloud Security course covering threats, virtualization, cloud environments and defensive concepts.  login.paloaltonetworks.com/lms/PreRegiste… 6. EC-Council Free Cybersecurity Courses – Offers free beginner courses on cloud computing fundamentals and related security topics as part of its free cybersecurity lineup.  eccouncil.org/cybersecurity-… 7. AWS Free Tier + Cloud Security Learning Tools – While AWS itself isn’t a course platform, its free tier and security product docs allow hands-on learning of IAM, network protections, monitoring, and cloud security services at no cost.  aws.amazon.com/free/security/ 8. Coursera (Free Audit Options) – Many cloud security courses can be audited for free (no certificate), including foundational cloud security topics from recognized educators.  coursera.org/courses?query=… 9. openHPI (Cloud & IT Courses) – Free online courses on cloud computing and cybersecurity fundamentals from an academic MOOC platform; useful for foundational cloud security principles.  openHPI.de 10. Reddit & Community Shared Resources (Advent Cloud Security) – Community-curated free video series and talks from cloud security practitioners, covering AWS, Azure, GCP security tips and real-world guidance.  reddit.com/r/cybersecurit…

If you’re new to cloud security, consider checking these free resources.