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Bio

Dr. Christopher Freeze currently serves as an Assistant Professor for Cybersecurity at the University of Oklahoma in Tulsa, Oklahoma. His work at OU-Tulsa began a new chapter in his professional career that has been centered around public service.
His career began in 1989 as an Auditor for the State of Tennessee investigating fraud, waste, and abuse of state dollars. In 1996 he was hired by the Federal Bureau of Investigation as a Special Agent and spent the next 23 years investigating criminal, cyber, and national security crimes. He retired in 2019 as the Special Agent in Charge (SAC) over the FBI’s work in the State of Mississippi.
Dr. Freeze was appointed as the Executive Director of the Mississippi Department of Human Services (MDHS) by Governor Phil Bryant in August 2019 to serve during the last year of the governor’s term. During his tenure, he led the agency through a major fraud and abuse case while continuing to help Mississippians move from a state of crisis to self-sufficiency.
Then, his life changed with the introduction of the Science of Hope. In addition to promoting the need for people and organizations to be trauma-informed, hope provided a framework for how to help someone establish goals, identify pathways to the goals, and harness the motivation to pursue their goals.
His Ph.D. in Organizational and Community Leadership was centered on the conceptualization, development, and application of Hope-Centered Leadership which addresses how leaders can activate and nurture hope in employees to improve well-being and increase performance. Dr. Freeze now incorporates and teaches Hope-Centered Leadership as part of his work at OU-Tulsa where he focuses on the human behaviors in the cybersecurity field.