Shannon Cass: Unexpected career path led to perfect fit in security field

Shannon Cass planned to go to college to become a teacher.

Instead, in her job at the U.S. Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory, she's tasked with teaching people why security matters and how to protect people and information - a career path that might have surprised her younger self, but that brought her to the place she belongs.

"In the defense sector, we're always taking care of people, we're always protecting others, we're always making sure that we operate in a manner that keeps people safe," Cass said.

Since 2021, Cass has been security operations lead for the Isotope Science and Enrichment Directorate's Enrichment Science and Engineering Division, trusted with overseeing the people and procedures that help keep ESED, and ISED as a whole, safe from breaches that could threaten national security. Her job responsibilities are many and varied, but so is the tapestry of career experiences that brought her to ORNL. From each of them, she acquired skills she uses in her job today.

In her early 20s, in her native Maryland, she managed a chain portrait studio, learning to manage employees and seasonal scheduling - along with how to frame a great shot.

"I got to take pictures of babies and families, and I loved that," Cass said. "I thought that was what I would do for the rest of my life."

After the birth of her second child, Cass spent a couple of years as a stay-at-home mom, then worked for an international talent management agency, honing her administrative, technological and customer service skills.

When that company downsized, laying off Cass and other junior employees, she turned to an employment agency, which sent her to an interim position at a Department of Defense contractor.

"I was supposed to be there 12 weeks," Cass said. "Six weeks in, I was asked to join the team as a financial analyst."

After two years as an analyst, she focused on learning about the contracting world, then moved to an executive administrator position for the contractor's security team. Meanwhile, she got her associate's degree, still planning to teach, eventually.

But Cass grew to love the security world - not to mention, as a single mother, the financial security it brought her family. Six years or so later, her former boss, now at a technical solutions company, called to encourage her to apply for a job there as a Contractor Special Security Officer, or CSSO.

"All subcontractors have CSSOs," Cass said. "They handle personal, physical and sometimes informational security. … Being a mom, being of a protective nature, that really resonated with me."

In that job, she obtained additional certifications, took on training others, traveled for work and "spent three years learning and growing" before leaving for a senior business analyst job for the National Security Administration, planning and building secure facilities where linguists would be trained. After three years on that contract, she returned to a CSSO job at the subcontractor's corporate office and spent an additional nine years there, taking on the role of managing admins in multiple locations, all while raising four children and finishing a bachelor's degree from the University of Maryland in management studies.

"I had three young kids in travel soccer," she said, laughing. "It was a crazy time."

As primary security function for a subcontractor owned by a husband-wife team, "I learned to be flexible, adaptive, dependable and, sometimes to a fault, always available," Cass said. "I learned different methods of communication. I learned to read the room."

Meanwhile, Cass's sister had joined ORNL in the National Security Science Directorate. In 2020, as the lab was restructuring, she called Cass and told her, "They have lots of opportunities at ORNL for people in your position."

The chance to work at the national laboratory was well worth making the move to East Tennessee.

"It just excites me to know what cool stuff we do here," Cass said. "It makes me happy that one aspect of our job is protecting people, and another is trying to save them, through isotopes for cancer research and treatment and other medical uses."

Though she's security operations lead for ESED, Cass wants to get the word out that she's available to answer security questions from anyone in ISED.

"I've gotten to meet a lot of really great people from other divisions, and I love being able to help them figure out why they have a negative trend in a security arena, and how we can make it better," she said.

Cass especially enjoyed being able to educate people through a quarterly security series with ISED staff. Sometimes it can be difficult to find specific items in ORNL's Standards Based Management Service, she noted, and she's happy to help with that as well.

"I want to get the word out about who to talk to, why, when and where," she said. "We need to continue to make people feel like it's good to report potential security issues. We're here to help, and we want to make it easier on them."

Cass stresses the positive aspects of reporting and suggests much of the lab's Safe Conduct of Research - or SCoR - also applies to security.

"We have this questioning attitude in the safety culture," she said. "We need to have it in the security culture as well. We need to ask the questions and do the right thing to protect the mission and protect the people."

Cass is a two-time ISED Peer Award winner. In 2024, she received the Fire Extinguisher Award.

"If I can put out a fire, or keep it from ever starting, that's what I want to do," she said.

A 2025 award dubbed her Unofficial Office Therapist.

"Everyone trusts and confides in her, and she is always there to listen," the nomination said. "She can spin a bad situation to a positive one by looking at things from a different angle, and she helps others do the same, to de-escalate situations and their aggravation."

"We have such a great group here," Cass said. "I love the people I work with."

Cass easily adjusted to East Tennessee life, relishing her 40-minute commute through mountain and river scenery. She's raising a vegetable garden and a flock of about 30 chickens. She enjoys spending time with her husband, Nathan, their adult children, and her grandchildren, who moved to the area. She likes to read and travel, and she has two dogs and a cat. She's pursuing a master's degree from the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, which takes up a lot of her non-work time.

Finishing her degrees is an achievement she rates second only to raising her children to be "wonderful humans," both of which she did while working full-time. And though she has no plans now to teach school, three of her four children are in the educational field. The fourth works in business and plans to pursue a law degree.

But that doesn't mean she won't teach. In fact, she sees it as one of the most important aspects of her job.

"I wish people knew that security is here to keep everyone within the boundaries of the rules, which are there for a reason," Cass said. "We're here not only to make sure everybody is doing the right thing, but also to help them learn how to do it - not just telling them when they are doing it wrong.

"We're here as a force multiplier to keep the environments we all work in safe and secure. We're here to help."

UT-Battelle manages ORNL for DOE's Office of Science, the single largest supporter of basic research in the physical sciences in the United States. DOE's Office of Science is working to address some of the most pressing challenges of our time. For more information, visit energy.gov/science.