 Aloha and welcome to the Think Tech Hawaii studios for another exciting episode of Security Matters Hawaii. Today we have a very special guest, Maureen Carlo, is taking some time out of her busy schedule to visit with us today. She is with, she's the business development manager with BCD Video and I believe she's coming to us from Chicago but I'm not sure. Maureen, thank you so much for joining us today. Hey, Aloha. Hey, me. I'm actually coming to you from way upstate New York. Okay, way upstate New York. How far? Yes. Well, I'm right up on the Adirondack coast bordering Vermont and very close to Montreal. Okay. And as far northeast in New York state as you can go. Right on. So it's nice you're, it looks like you're in your home office today. So thank you for jumping in. It's a good thing BCD Video lets you work remotely. I think that's powerful because they're headquartered in Chicago. Is that correct? Yes, they are. They're in Buffalo Grove, Illinois, which is just north of Chicago. So I'm one of, you know, a handful of people who are able to work out of our home office. Nice. Well, sorry, go ahead. I was going to say, I'm spending a lot of time on the road so I'm thrilled to be in my home office because it's not very often these days that I'm here. Well give us, for our audience out there that doesn't know, you give us as much as you care to share just a little bit of your history in the industry, how you got to BCD Video and then how you ended up here today. Sure. I actually love my story about how I got to BCD Video. I started in the industry as an integrator about a dozen years ago. And well, around 2006 I got involved in the industry selling IP cameras for a motor roller two-way radio house, which two radios being a very male dominated technology company. So I got involved with a company who hadn't done anything with video before. And I worked with some people who taught me a lot. And as I was learning IP video, I met Jeff Burgess from BCD Video and I was selling, they were still called Burgess Computer Decisions at the time. And I was selling their servers. And Jeff Burgess and I and Tom Larson and I became close throughout the years. And as I migrated from an integrator to working for a manufacturer, I would see them at shows and our friendship continued and grew. And last summer, they offered me a position at their company. So I joined BCD Video a little less than a year ago. But it's been a nice transition as I've watched them grow in the industry and they've watched me grow in the industry. And now we're partnering for success. Yeah, and they have a really strong partnership I know with Dell. I'm not sure if you use other OEMs. But are you managing the channel globally, nationally? What's the scope of what you're doing over there? So what I'm doing, my role is actually in the middle of a change right now. So my role is throughout North America, working with the A&E security consulting community and also working with organizations. So maximizing my capabilities with associations, I should say, with associations that we're involved in, such as SIA, PSA, security consulting associations, such as IAPSC, security specifiers. So I'm working together with them throughout North America to help educate BCD videos on BCD videos message so we can hopefully get involved with the right types of partners and grow the partnership base that we already have. That has been pretty exciting over the last 20 years. We're in our 20th anniversary this year, actually. So companies growing and we're changing roles and moving people around to maximize strengths and weaknesses. And I've been working as business development manager in the Northeast for the last several months. But now with with some some successes and some industry involvement that I have, we've decided that it's better to get me out of this small little corner of the country and maximize my resources. So I think that that's why you're seeing more of me. And I think why you're getting me involved in this call today. So good. Then we're going to get you out of the Hawaii at some point. I'll work on that. I'll work on that for you. Well, you got part of our company there last week. So we had Carl, he did great at our symposium. We had a lot of fun. Thanks so much for supporting that. So you talked a little bit about, you know, industry penetration and getting engaged with a lot of these groups that we have one of the up and coming groups. So we have the youth, you know, we have Accelerize and we have a youth movement for our industry. But we also have a sort of a gender inclusion effort going on across a lot of different organizations. And I know you're you're deeply involved with SIA and what they're doing there with the Women in Security Forum. So talk a little bit about how that came about or how it got presented to you. Sure. Well, the Women in Security Forum has just celebrated our first anniversary, which seems. It seems like we started our our initiative long ago, but we finally put something down on paper about a year ago. So Don Erickson and the Security Industry Association came to me after I became vocal, attending, securing new ground and different conferences that they have throughout the year. And, you know, I thought they needed some color up on the stage during the panel session. And there's a ball headed guys like this. With all due respect, there's a lot of color to you and your personality, Andrew. But there's also a stereotypical demographic that we have in the industry. And while, you know, they're they're great partners to have and great leaders in the industry, I also was, you know, vocal that I was looking for more. So when the Security Industry Association decided to form a group that can really delve into diversity and inclusivity, Don Erickson phoned and asked me, I think I was one of about seven or eight women that he called and asked to be founding members of this. And then they developed a steering committee and we now have 13 people on our steering committee, some men and women from from the industry and all from a variety of companies, a variety of roles. So what we've been doing over the past year is really rolling up our sleeves and figuring out what we want to do because the goal is not to be recognized as another regional social networking club. But we want to we want to have, you know, we we want to have activities that are aligning with our goals. So it made us think, what are our goals? Do we want to be a, you know, just something that women can get involved in? Do we want to be something for women and men? Then what is our mission? What is our vision? So we work to come up with our mission statement and our vision statement. And it wasn't easy. Have did you work on your mission statement and vision statement for your company? Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. And we did it about 10 years ago also. So we because we had more voices that wanted to be included. So we sort of reframed it. Yeah. Sure. And I think that's that's what you have to be able to do, right? It's you have to be able. It's it's it's for now. It's not forever. So we were hearing things about our industry, such as men were told that they're not allowed to attend some events that the Women in Security Forum was having. Wow. Well, that's not true. So the best time for me to have, well, I know, but I mean, you attend. So you know, that's not true. But it was good timing to hear that message because it allowed us to refocus our mission statement to ensure that we didn't just say this is for women. You know, we we let people know. In fact, I can read. Can I read it to you? Sure, please. So our mission statement is our mission is to engage all security professionals to promote, recruit, recruit and cultivate leadership of women for more inclusive and diversified industry. Yes. So we didn't want to say just for women, but we know that one of our industry's biggest problems is getting that next generation, whether they're men or women. It doesn't matter who but getting that next generation of people to join the industry, participate in the industry. So now we're just opening up the the realm of of who we're going after and how we're targeting people to get involved in the industry. But the goal is to empower women and to influence change. And that's what we're working on with the Women's Security Forum. Yeah. And I think we we've, in my opinion, missed those voices, right? So there I think there have been some some traditional roles where we saw women in the industry for many years, maybe an accounting, you know, supply side, maybe a little bit in the marketing space and definitely in the sales space. You know, but what about thought leadership? This has been it's been lacking. There's this guys my age and older that seem like is that they have some monopoly on leadership? I don't think so. They sure don't seem to move out of the way and we haven't seen women, you know, rising up to that role. I know we have a I heard I'm not thinking of a name, but the president of Aziz spoke up in Seattle last week on Saturday, you know, which was awesome. So, you know, it's things are maybe starting to happen. I know Christine, my wife, we're women owned. She was the first woman on the board of PSA in they've been around for like 40 something years with that, you know, so this this thought leadership is missing. And do you do you think that that's intentional? Is it accidental? Is it is it the guys holding on? Like, you know, some guys have to hug their servers and they won't let go of them, you know, the IT, they won't go to cloud. You know, is it is it that? Is it a power thing? It's their BCD video servers. I understand why. I have them right on. I don't think it's intentional. I don't. I think that things are changing. OK, I think that the dialogue is opening up. I think that women are participating more. Why are they participating more? Well, there was a at securing new ground last year. There was a great panel on stage that Sandy Jones was part of. And when the panel was introduced and I'm paraphrasing here, but they introduced it as this is the first all women's panel we've had all securing new ground. Well, Sandy Jones made a comment that that was a shameful remark. It was it was a panel of leaders. And it was, you know, a crying shame that it was the first time after all of the years securing you down has happened, that it was the first time. So she made me think about that in that comment, because it's, you know, yes, it did stand out in the crowd because there was a lot more color on the stage because there were. And there were certainly other panels that women were participating along with men, but it struck some people as odd to see just women on the stage. But it was really just that they were the right women for the topic at hand. Sure. So as far as women participating more, I I I did moderate a panel at ISC West that your wife was part of. But it was a really interesting take on what types of rules women can have in the industry back to your question. So we had four women-owned businesses, you know, Christine as an integrator, we had Eddie Reynolds as a manufacturer, Linda Sev, God bless Lynn, who who does things to facilitate government sales for integrators and manufacturers that nobody understands better in America. And Rebecca Bain, who is a recruiter, you know, a consulting recruiter. So there are four women that do very different types of roles. And we gave them the dialogue. We gave them the opportunity to go in and talk about what they're doing, what led them, let them down their path. But I took Sandy Jones's lead and I introduced them. You were in the audience. I said, yes, you might look at four women on the stage right now, but these are four women leaders in the industry, not four women in security. So I don't want to be bottlenecked into just having that women label. Good. I talk, I talk to people and they say, we would hire more women if more women were applying for the job. So, you know, going back to your question again, why haven't there been more women doing, you know, getting leadership types of roles? Well, we're trying to empower women to change that. But we're also trying to get men as our allies, working with men like you. Like, you know, there are so many great men in the industry who are very supportive of women and they just want the right woman for the right role. So the more we can have these conversations and maybe at the same time improve the data behind the success rates of having more women in leadership roles, that that brings up a different view to people when they think, oh, wow, you mean when there are more women on boards that numbers can outperform men or when there is more gender diversity in a company, millennials are happier and they're bringing their friends in to work with them and they're getting more, more recruits. So, you know, there's there's a lot that that comes with it. And dialogues like this, they matter. They make a difference. Yeah, I just finished a book about a guy who's called unskirting the issues, but they talked about the well-intentioned man and those of us who are aware that these these biases exist in business and not not just the security industry, but all industries. And, you know, when you announce, oh, an all woman panel, that's it's a panel of leaders. We don't need to point that out. Now, it some people may notice it. That's the bias in their eyes, right, that they're so used to. But I'm I'm convinced that that what's going to happen is a is sort of a groundswell of acknowledgement of of different voices, different perspectives that we haven't had and wherever we can get them from, it's only going to improve the industry. So do you think people's opinions can change? Oh, yeah. Are you seeing that? I don't know. I don't know if like the the bias, the bias, the built in bias, you know, from let's just say since the Industrial Revolution or since the World War Two ended and, you know, the guys went back to work and I don't know how I mean, it's obvious that men built all these businesses. So they have all this bias built into them. And we've got to work, you know, work to understand what those biases are. The men have got to work to understand where they exist and try to remove them so that we aren't, you know, just blindly biased in the things that we accept. I read a piece about orchestras and orchestras had only less than five percent female participation, I guess, like 20 or 30 years ago. And so what they started doing were blind auditions where you couldn't tell if it was a man or a woman. And in two decades, now they're 50-50. So there's a lot of that perception and bias built in. It's not meant to be negative. It just has occurred. And so what we've got to do is work to get equity out there in our industry. I heard that story about the orchestra at SIA's Honors Night last year. Bonnie, the keynote, she told that story and it was brilliant. I also heard a story at an event a few weeks ago and this woman said that when she wrote her resume for many years, she would not include her first name on the resume, only her initial. Because when people were calling about the job when her husband would answer the phone, they just assumed it was him. It was it was a job in a male-dominated industry, but they assumed it was him. So she stopped putting her name and just her initial and then her husband had a whole, you know, his whole, his whole little pitch that he would give when people would call and it was soon that it was him. But I thought that was interesting that she, she didn't even use her name. Yeah. So there's a lot of that bias we've got to work on. We're going to cut out to our, our, what do we call them? Our sponsors take about a one minute break and pay some bills and we'll be right back with Maureen Karloff. Thanks. Aloha. This is Winston Welch. I am your host of Out and About, where every other week, Mondays at three, we explore a variety of topics in our city, state, nation and world. And events, organizations, the people that fuel them. It's a really interesting show. We welcome you to tune in and we welcome your suggestions for shows. You got a lot of them out there and we have an awesome studio here where we can get your ideas out as well. So I look forward to you tuning in every other week where we've got some great guests and great topics. You're going to learn a lot. You're going to come away inspired like I do. So I'll see you every other week here at three o'clock on Monday afternoon. Aloha. Aloha. I'm Cynthia Sinclair. And I'm Tim Apachella. We are hosts here at Think Tech Hawaii, a digital media company serving the people of Hawaii. We provide a video platform for citizen journalists to raise public awareness in Hawaii. We are a Hawaii nonprofit that depends on the generosity of its supporters to keep on going. We'd be grateful if you'd go to thinktechhawaii.com and make a donation to support us now. Thanks so much. Hey, Aloha, and welcome back to Think Tech Hawaii. This is Security Matters Hawaii and we're talking with Maureen Carter from BCD Video. We're talking about women in security. We're talking about inclusion, not diversity. We're talking about inclusion, I think, Maureen. You mentioned something earlier about this discussion, you know, that everyone's having. And we had a lot of it up in Seattle, was it two weeks ago at the Microsoft event. And that was initially, I think, sponsored by ASIS chapter, but then Sia got involved and put in a lot of representation. When we showed up, there were a couple hundred women there present and not too many guys. So there was a lot of discussion that I think was very heartfelt, different than the discussion I'm used to hearing. What stood out for you about that event? Because it was, I thought, amazing. Well, it was certainly a privilege to participate in that event. Thank you to Sia for inviting me to join them. It was open up to everyone in the steering committee to get involved. And I didn't know what to expect. I just knew it was at Microsoft, so there was a lot of peel-in going there. I read briefly who the presenters were, but they put together such a wonderful job. There was one discussion in particular that stood out to me. There was a woman from Facebook who gave a presentation on women who travel regularly for a living. Did you sit in on that by any chance? I was not in that one. Okay, so that it was called what women need to know about traveling safely and navigating the corporate ladder. So what was happening is that, yeah, there were mostly women in attendance at this event, and that's atypical with the events that we go to. Definitely there were men there, but mostly women there. The fact is we were able to have a different conversation than I've really ever had at any event because we were all going through the same thing in the fact that we travel for a living. Some people live in Seattle. I traveled from, I took a plane from New York City to Washington to go to this event. So the fact that women are traveling more for a living is opening up a dialogue about safety and security when we travel. So this Gallagher, she has a two hour presentation she does on this, just to show you what a big topic it is. And the presentation that she was talking about giving is one that many enterprise level companies are starting to take advantage of and focusing on the duty of care that employers have has in some cases become a benefit that's offered. But what it was for me is it was an eye-opener talking about best practices when you're in a hotel, when you're in a hotel lobby, when you should never give out your room number at the restaurant when you're signing a bill or when, you know, in general, what to do best practices when you're in an Uber or in a rideshare program, when you're on an airplane, how to be more aware of predators what security measures to take when you're in your hotel room and locking the door isn't enough. So there was a great discussion that opened up my eyes to something that, you know, you travel for a living also, your wife travels for a living, so many of us travel for a living but different things happen to women who are traveling regularly from men. So that conversation is one that I'm trying to figure out what to do with next. It's worthy of being a topic. Throughout our industry because it's not a conversation that we talk about a lot. We talk about, yeah, you don't always eat healthy when you're on the road, you don't always get your luggage to show up when you do, you don't always get home when you wanna get home but there are a lot of measures around safety and security that we should be concerning ourselves with that men and women should both be having in a dialogue in addition to now the HR departments that are starting to have these conversations. Yeah, I think the companies have that responsibility and if you haven't gotten around some of the larger programs that the Amazons and Microsofts of the world run and come up and see how deeply they take duty of care to the point of they know where all their travelers are all the time so they don't fly into a war because they're global. So they could fly into a civil war somewhere, they could fly into a tsunami or an earthquake or whatever it may be. So that idea of caring for them all the time, outside of that enterprise space, a lot of SMBs and to include larger, medium-sized businesses don't really have programs that are very evolved. So I think it's a great conversation and if it starts with the women's security group all the better, wherever that conversation's had it's a good thing to have. I had an interesting thing. Exactly, because it wasn't on my radar. Duty of care wasn't on my radar at all. Good. Until this, yeah. Well now it is, so it's awesome. I had an interesting kind of an epiphany that I wanted to get to your thoughts on this. One of the women on Saturday during our big roundtable discussion mentioned, she was in marketing and she's used to the trade shows and all the guys and she has no trouble. And she said that when she walked into that atrium for the greeting that night and there were all those women, she felt uncomfortable. And that was, for me I was like, wow. So she immediately found a group of like three guys and so she's all comfortable over talking to them. And that was just, I don't know but she didn't know that about herself. So she was just sharing how there, it was a competitive, I don't know what went on for her. She didn't elaborate on that and she talked about her own behaviors and the feeling that she had upon arriving there. And so, do you find the women in our industry different to work with in the men or what do you think? Well, you know, this isn't junior high school where girls can be so catty. But maybe, I've always worked for companies where currently I'm the only woman that travels all the way for a living with BCD video. My last job, I was the only woman on the sales team. So I'm used to being in events where it's all men and I'm quite comfortable with that. I enjoy it, I enjoy it but I'm used to it. But I had an event, I had a dinner planned last year during securing new ground. Actually, your wife wasn't able to join us but all the women that were gonna be on our panel for ISC West session, we all went out for dinner. So there were four of us. And as we sat down, I looked at the ladies and I said, I have never been out for dinner with just women in the industry. Nice. And I thought, that's really strange. It's never happened before. And I tell you, we had a different dialogue than I typically have over dinner with the men but it became a very meaningful dialogue. And we really took the time, four of us to get to know each other. And I'm really sorry Christine wasn't there but we all spent time discussing how we got involved in the industry and just really quickly things became, like we felt like we were friends not just peers in the industry and the dialogue changed. So I think that when you go to an event like the one at Microsoft last week and you see mostly women, are women working together? Are they congregating? Well, for the most part, I think, yes, like we just want, we can support each other in ways that not all men feel comfortable doing. So at the end of the day, that Friday evening I was having a chat with you preparing for this and next thing you know, everybody around us that came in for the cocktail event were surrounding us and maybe there were two men there. Did you feel uncomfortable or did you feel like, yay, I got the best seat in the house. How did you feel? Yeah, well, so I'm a 49% owner. So from seven to four Monday through Friday that's as much vote as I get all year long because I'm also married to my boss. So in the evenings it falls off to about 5%. I don't even know what it is on the weekends but I've been, I think, because working with Christine, she's always been, she's pretty, she'll correct me. She catches me in my thoughts. She catches me when I try to overstep or try to not let her speak and things like, she's made me very aware of the difficulties that she has as a woman. And you know, when she wrote our A woman owned A to A she had to explain a lot of that because you have to be socially prejudiced against socially. So she had to talk about a lot of those stories throughout her life. And it's made me more aware. So I think pretty comfortable regardless of the audience but that could be topic dependent for me. I don't know. And I'm sure that if to read this book about the well-intentioned men, I'm sure I step on my own tongue and probably say things that are biased sometimes. So I'm guilty as guilty as any of the guys of having a lot to learn. Well, it's awareness and that's why this is all about a collaborative effort. It is all about having allies, having men who are allies, having men who wanna be a part of the conversation. I shared a story with you about Jim Henry speaking at the breakfast, the keynote breakfast event at ISCUS to Juliet Cayenne at the end of the session and being so impressed with not only what the dialogue was but how it's opening up the conversation of more inclusivity in the industry. And that was a win to have somebody have a takeaway like he did at that event. That was a win to me. So it's just about having more conversations and getting more men who understand the value in a collaboration as together, together we're gonna make our industry better. Together we're gonna bring the next people into our industry who wanna roll up their sleeves and get involved and be doers and active with us and bring in the thought leadership that we need more of from a more diverse group. So together we're having those conversations now and it's exciting to see what's about to come of it. I couldn't agree more. Maureen, thank you so much for sharing with us today. This is a good episode, it's a good topic. I intend to revisit it on this show. So we'll get a checkup from you in a couple of quarters and see how the industry's progressing. That would be fantastic, Andrew. Awesome. Mahalo. Mahalo, thank you so much for joining us because security matters, aloha.