Heather Mahalik Barnhart

Heather Mahalik Barnhart is the senior director of community engagement at Cellebrite, where she helps drive strategic growth and cultivates strong relationships with customers, partners, and industry leaders. She works alongside a dedicated team to strengthen the company’s position within the digital forensics and incident response (DFIR) community.

She serves as the DFIR curriculum lead and senior instructor at the SANS Institute, where she is a SANS Faculty Fellow and lead author of the FOR585: Smartphone Forensic Analysis In-Depth course. She is also co-author of the best-seller "Practical Mobile Forensics" and served as technical editor for "Learning Android Forensics" and "SQLite Forensics." A skilled public speaker and educator, she shares her expertise through Cellebrite’s Tip Tuesday series on YouTube and remains passionate about empowering her team and advancing the field of digital forensics.

With more than two decades of experience in digital forensics and eDiscovery, Barnhart has a deep background in forensics acquisitions and examinations, advanced exploitation, manual decoding, application reverse engineering, SQL queries, scripting, training, and reporting on electronic media.

Previously, Barnhart served as senior director of digital forensics at Cellebrite, guiding strategic digital intelligence operations, advising DFIR professionals on emerging challenges, and providing counsel on how Cellebrite’s tools and expertise can support investigative missions.