Daily Monitor Sunday December 13 2020 The statement that ‘hard work pays’ is such a tired cliché that we all roll our eyes when we hear it. But the only person who has a right to say it to us must hold a position so larger-than-life and unattainable that we should think ourselves lucky that the person is sparing time to talk to us all. One such person is Esther Amullen. She is a Ugandan cyber security engineer, based in Charlotte, North Carolina, USA. She works for the Electric Power Research Institute, founded in the 1970s following a power blackout that left 30 million American homes without electricity for up to 13 hours. The institute was founded to support the electricity sector and address its technical and operational challenges.