Steve Hanna is a technical whiz, but he's diplomatic, too. He'll need both qualities as he helps define what may become the most significant network security architecture to date -- network access control.

As co-chair of both the Trusted Computing Group and IETF NAC efforts, he has influence that will hold sway at the core of NAC open standards work. The work will call on his ability to listen and learn, skills he has consciously developed over the years.

Hanna credits his Harvard University education -- he graduated in 1987 with a bachelor's degree in computer science -- for his versatility, giving his high school math teacher, Robert Kaplan, the nod for steering him there rather than toward Massachusetts Institute of Technology. When he was accepted at both schools, he asked Kaplan which he should choose, and Kaplan told him to think about himself and the areas in which he needed to grow.

Hanna, who says he was a nerd in high school who was immersed in computers, took Kaplan's counsel seriously. "He was right. I needed to expand my people skills, and it worked out quite well," Hanna says. "I'm much more articulate, less shy and able to listen to others and bridge the gaps between different perspectives much more so than if I had just gone deep on the engineering.

"Whatever facts you learn will be obsolete 10 years after you graduate, if not five. Constantly learning and listening to others - those skills carry you over," he says.

Harvard emphasizes the need to study and understand many different viewpoints and perspectives, he says, lessons he put into practice as an undergraduate when helping organize rallies to protest investment in South Africa. He reached out to a broad spectrum to strengthen his anti-apartheid cause. "We were not just going to invite the Democrats and the Republicans without various groups on the far left, on the right, all different angles, the gay and lesbians. All these different perspectives had to be included," he says.

Radia Perlman, a Sun fellow, calls Hanna diplomatic, careful and tough enough to handle the mix of personalities that participate in standards bodies. She knows Hanna from the years he spent at Sun Labs working on IP multicasting and security, 1997 to 2004.

"You have to have a strong enough hand and also be very careful how you word things, and I think he's capable of doing that with ornery people," Perlman says. You can be successful by being a bully and letting your bully friends dominate the thing, whether they're good or not. I'm glad Steve is not like that."