When Elian Habra received the email that would change his career, he was driving through Damascus as mortar bombs hit the city. Today, the cybersecurity leader and stand-up comedian is proving that the future of cyber may depend less on fear, and more on empathy.
Most of us remember the day we got a big career break. For Elian Habra, he was driving home from work at the bank in Damascus in early 2015. In the distance, a plume of smoke was rising into the sky from a mortar bomb explosion. “My mum had just called to ask where I was and then I got the email,” he recalls. “I couldn’t stop smiling. I didn’t want to tell anyone but this felt like a sign to leave for Luxembourg.”
To anyone who has never lived in a warzone, this might sound like an obvious conclusion. But Habra was happy with his job managing information security and business continuity at a bank in Damascus. He had a happy childhood in Syria, studied telecommunication engineering, and then a master’s degree before his first experience outside of Syria, doing an internship in Rennes, France. “I was 24 and I remember calling my mom crying: ‘Mom, there’s no mattress in the room, there’s no TV. The photos were not like this when I chose the dorm room.’ I was very spoiled,” he laughs. Long before cyber security, he learned to ask strangers for help. With nothing to eat or drink on that first night, Habra knocked on the neighbour’s doors, begging for food. A worker directed him to a vending machine where he bought biscuits and water. “I didn’t realise it was sparkling water!”
Cybersecurity Pioneer
Habra returned to Syria and began his career in cyber security, just as the sector was taking off. “I still don’t regret this decision. Had I become a telecoms engineer, I might never have had the chance to move to Luxembourg.”
Despite the novelty of the sector, Habra said he had several jobs to make ends meet. A gifted linguist, he tutored friends in English, and one of them happened to work in TV.
The friend invited Habra to do a 15-minute tech spot on a show. “I would talk about how to use your PC well or create your social media account,” he recalls. Word got around and his family who, until then had no idea what he did, started dropping laptops off at his home to fix. “I once even got a call from a neighbour of my parents who said ‘my washing machine stopped working. Can you pass by and check it?’”.
Building Soft Skills
From the start, Habra’s strength wasn’t just technical expertise, but his ability to translate complexity into language people weren’t afraid of. But these communication skills were hard-won. As a child he had been painfully shy, so much so that when a teacher once asked him to write on the board, he cried. “I felt very insecure as a teenager. I was shy talking to girls because I was a nerd,” he says. Joining the Scouts helped him “shine” as a young adult. Scouts also taught him the importance of being calm before analysing a problem and finding a solution. This came in handy during the frequent power outages he experienced in Syria, which also served as early crisis training. “Then the moment I got to university, my whole personality changed. I became open, sometimes even too talkative,” he says.
Habra began his Luxembourg career in July 2015. Before joining ADEM, Luxembourg’s national employment development agency, he passed through two Big Four firms, which he describes as a “good schooling”, worked for a Canadian consultancy and a bank. He wasted no time in getting to know about the cultures of the people he worked with. He doggedly learned and improved his French and Luxembourgish, and studiously watched European history documentaries. “This also helped me when, in 2017, I started doing standup comedy in Luxembourg. I learned what made people from other cultures laugh.”
This cultural understanding eased his integration into Luxembourg. Five years to the day of his arrival, he applied for citizenship “not because I wanted another passport, but I wanted to be more integrated in the country, which is not easy in Luxembourg.”
This curiosity paid off in his career progression. Habra’s easy manner and sense of humour helped him to connect with audiences at cyber training. He joined ADEM as chief information security officer in January 2025. Here he faces daily risks and challenges. “You can never say that you are risk-free, because every second hackers are scanning our network, trying to exploit vulnerabilities.” He stresses the importance of having the right team to delegate to. He plans to delegate cybersecurity responsibilities to “security champions”, people in different departments, who will report problems to him. He focuses on learning by doing, and acting as a role model for his network and colleagues.
And he draws on his standup comedy experience when giving training to boost engagement. “Nobody has ever said they were bored in any of my training sessions,” he smiles. “Comedy helped me a lot in terms of body language, attracting people, making them interested to know more. And changing the intonation helps other people learn.”
Empathy As Superpower
Habra is not the risk-averse gatekeeper many imagine when they think of cyber security, but a communicator who believes trust is part of the infrastructure. Working for ADEM which works on behalf of thousands of jobseekers, this is critical. “My goal is to protect our clients’ data from being hacked,” he says. But this data must be shared to best serve the different clients, be they jobseekers, colleagues or potential employers. And so when making risk-based compromises “understanding the public interest needs is the top priority.”
As a public servant and comedian who has built a life in Syria and Luxembourg, Habra’s story and passions challenge stereotypes around the role of cybersecurity leadership. What does that say about him? “It’s about understanding your audience, protecting them.”
Whether he’s onstage understanding what makes audiences laugh, or in a conference room, connecting with colleagues, he aligns with the business needs while putting himself in their shoes. Ultimately, success for Habra sounds disarmingly simple. He wants colleagues to leave training thinking: “He’s a funny guy and he made me less afraid of cyber attacks while helping me learn more about them.”
At a time when Europe struggles to find cyber talent, Habra’s career suggests the missing skill may not be technical at all.
This article was published in the Silicon Luxembourg magazine.
