Reesë Tuttle is going to change the world

Reesë Tuttle is going to change the world

The precocious UC School of IT alum believes she can save lives through cybersecurity

It's hard to know exactly where to start a story about Reesë Tuttle. The fact that she earned five college degrees before graduating high school is an obvious point of interest. But so is her technological pedigree - she's the daughter of "Hackah Jak" Jesse Tuttle, a keynote speaker, hacker and reformed threat actor. Or maybe the lede is that she co-founded her company, AP2T Labs, during the year she spent as a UC student, finishing a bachelor of science degree (her second) in Information Technology.

But let's start on the unlikely note Tuttle likes to open with: "In middle school, I was a straight-D and -C student," she says, chalking up bad grades to distraction issues. "I was not very good at school."

It wasn't that Tuttle wasn't a good learner (obviously). She excelled in the Microsoft and iSpace summer camps her parents enrolled her in at an early age, where she was able to develop games and programs. "I was always a really hands-on child," she explains. "When you put me into an environment where I could do stuff and have team collaboration in a not-so formal environment, I could do a lot."

But as college acceptance became a concern, Tuttle and her parents started exploring options to engage her inclination for hands-on, tech-driven learning. (She holds that her interest in tech predates learning about her father's previous infamy, which she learned of by accident on a school bus ride via bored Googling at the age of 9.) She enrolled in UC's Early IT Summer Camp - which she says led to a high school internship with Kroger's IT branch - and Early IT program, both of which she describes as "fantastic."

A disposition for degrees

As a student at Indian Hill High School, Tuttle also started earning degrees through the state of Ohio's College Credit Plus (CCP) program, which allows high school students to be dually enrolled for free classes at community colleges and universities.

"I started taking classes at Cincinnati State at 13," she explains. "I got four different associate degrees. One was an associate of science with honors. Then I got a bunch of different associates in applied sciences - like software engineering, computer information systems, computer software development. And I also got a bachelor's degree in computer science."

(In case you're concerned her high school years were all academic drudgery, know that Tuttle was also the goalie for Indian Hill's championship lacrosse team, and she's a black belt in martial arts, a skilled violinist, and an amateur auto mechanic. For a while she considered going into art or law, too, but tech just seemed like a more sustainable career path.)

In 2022 she started working on her second bachelor's, a Bachelor of Science in Information Technology (BSIT) from UC. She graduated from high school in 2023 with a STEM Honors Diploma (Computer Science) and a 6.5 GPA weighted on 4.0 scale.

'Right up my alley'

While still in high school, Tuttle knew she wanted a second bachelor's degree to expand on her computer science knowledge with more specialized, software-focused training. Looking at the credits she earned for her associate degrees, she realized transferring credits put her well on her way to a UC BSIT degree on the software application development track (now a standalone undergraduate degree) through UC's School of Information Technology (SoIT).

Reesë Tuttle Co-founder, AP2T Labs

"I knew I really wanted to do a lot of software engineering and software development," she says, "and the classes were focused on that."

She points to her advisor, Alana Calhoun (Associate Director, Academic - Student Success) and members of the SoIT administration as being supportive partners in her educational goals. "I understood which classes I wanted to do and when. And they were like, hey, looks like you've got it figured out. I don't see a reason why it wouldn't work," says Tuttle. "At a lot of other schools, I've seen counselors be like, this is the way you have to do it. But they trusted that I had researched it to a T. And that's part of the reason why I was able to finish the degree when I did."

Because she started work on the BSIT degree while still in high school, Tuttle ultimately needed only one year of study post-graduation to finish her second bachelor's degree. But even with a brief time to completion, she was excited to have, after years of independent CCP study, a traditional higher education experience.

"I really wanted to be on campus. I wanted to get the college experience," she says. "I wanted to see what it was like."

Not every class she needed required her to be on campus, but she seized the moment as best she could, joining a number of clubs to fully experience her time at UC. And Tuttle points to her senior capstone class as a standout opportunity to connect with fellow students. "I was in person a lot for it, and that was really fun," she says. "We'd always go over there and work on the project and, yeah - I loved it."

Saving lives through security training

Which is not to say Tuttle had unlimited time to spend on fun activities while finishing her degree, as she co-founded her company, AP2T Labs, in July of 2023 - months after she graduated high school. And while it may not be standard operating procedure for most college freshmen to start college fresh off establishing a company, tech work has long been a constant for Tuttle, who had numerous internship, co-op and community service experiences throughout her high school years. She also worked alongside her dad on enterprise-level WordPress design projects for a while before the pair started their current company.

Now, though, her full focus (well, she's pursuing an online master's degree on the side) is AP2T Labs, for which she serves as a threat researcher. Her third startup, AP2T Labs, grew out of the data compliance company she previously founded and offers security training that, she believes, can effectively stop successful phishing attempts.

Tuttle spent some time thinking about standard phishing training - the often-minimal training (think two-hour videos months apart) used by most corporations to educate employees on how not to fall for email scams - considered against the fact that rates are still on the rise and phishing remains a leading external source of revenue loss for organizations. "We researched it," she says, "and I created a whole new holistic approach of how to do security awareness training that goes beyond just e-mail phishing and dives into the psyche of how it all works."

The methodology of her training platform employs continuous, daily training and realistic threat simulations followed up by educational material. The goal is to teach security in ways that people actually learn as opposed to infrequent, one-size-fits-all course material.

"We are pretty much simulating what's actually going on in the real world when it comes to scamming," says Tuttle. "We're researching threats, threat vectors and threat groups, predicting what they're going to do next and trying to stay ahead of the curve when it comes to scammers."

Tuttle says AP2T Labs is about more than just insurance checkboxes for her. Recognizing that data and dollars stolen via phishing scams often fund heinous criminal organizations, she sees this new approach to security awareness training as potentially life-saving work.

"One of the funding factors of that kind of stuff is us, because we get scammed out of the money," she says. "If we could just educate and train people, give them a safe space to fail to see what it's like instead of failing in the real world, then maybe we can help cut off that funding source. That's our biggest goal."

Featured image at top: Black-and-whote photo of Reesë Tuttle standing outside in front of a brick structure. Photo/provided

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