 Think Tech Hawaii studios. We've got another exciting episode of Security Matters for you today. My guest today is amazing. I think you're gonna love her story. Liz Bakas is with us. She's an engineer with Integrated Security Technologies in Honolulu. Liz, welcome to the show. I'm glad to have you on today. Thank you for having me, Andrew. Hello. No worries. Well, I saw your story in the Women in Security Form Spotlight. Paul Ragusa had you in there as an interview. So I thought we'd get a little deeper. You know, you can do a little bit in print, but live we can get a little more of your story. So let's introduce you to the industry and maybe give us your history, you know, as much as you care to share. We don't all put everything out there on social media these days, but give us what you can and then we'll roll from there. Sure. Let's see, how far back do I want to go? So I was originally born in the Philippines and my family and I moved to New York City at age eight. And so, you know, growing up in New York City, but still growing up in like Filipino values on Filipino. Anyway, with that type of diversity, that's always been, you know, a center point in my upbringing, basically, right? So traditional Filipino values and the melting pot of New York City. Anyway, long story short, I did get sent back to Philippines for my high school education, just so my mother, you know, my mother was like, it was really important to her for us not to forget our, you know, history, culture, whatever. They come back for college. During college, 9-11 happened and I was kind of inspired, you know, about four or five years later, I was like, you know what, I really want to do something, you know, besides my formal education, I wanted to get more knowledge and I just want to be out there and help the community. I just want, it was like a call to action. So I joined the Navy and I was in the Navy as an electrician's mate. And I was, my contract was for eight years, but I did for active duty, for inactive. After that, I went to school, continued my education, but this time instead of in New York, I continued it in San Diego, where I was last station. Basically never left. Went to school with University of Phoenix, which by the way, shout out to University of Phoenix for giving me some swag for this interview. Got my bachelor's and my master's and during that time I was working in the defense industry with BAE systems, ship repair. And then I got married and my wife's active duty Navy. She's a lieutenant commander select now, weapons officer for a destroyer. She got stationed here. So that's when I started looking around for jobs here in Hawaii and here I am. She's on deployment right now. So that's a quick rundown of my life story, I guess. Wow, it's amazing. So how was it to go back to the Philippines for high school after going, I guess you went to great school in New York, right? Yeah. So it was a little bit of a shock, a culture shock in the sense that I was trying to, starting to relearn the language. I mean, we still spoke it at home, but just like slang, it's teenage years. So it's like slang words in the native tongue, if you will. And like just the culture too is so completely different, very conservative Catholic. I mean, I went to Catholic school my whole life with exception of college. So like, it was still a shock. Cause my mom in Filipino, you know, traditional conservative Catholic standards is still very progressive. So it was trying to relearn, you know, navigate as a teenager, who by the way, is LGBT going back to something like that. Which my family knew, you know, I was LGBT and stuff, but like, yeah, it was interesting, but not in a bad way. It was good. It was good growth for me, for sure. Wow. Yeah, that's it. Was it a big school? Yeah, it's actually one of like the prestigious schools in Sibu City. Yeah, it's, they have like, like an all-encompassing education level. So it was like kindergarten to all the way to college. Wow. So that campus was huge. Wow. Yeah, I was fortunate to visit. We did some volunteer work when I was in the Navy out there and went to some of the schools and they, I don't think it was in Sibu. It was, I'm gonna have to remember the city, but it was so interesting cause the kids put on like shows for us. And they were so professional. And I was like, oh my gosh, these kids are amazing. That's a thing, yeah. Yeah, it was really good. So we didn't expect that, right? They were just very, I think grateful. We were like delivering supplies. And so it was interesting. That's so cool. I love that you ended up in the Navy. So tell me about, so was now 11, was your family impacted by that? Or was it, did you have, did somebody that you worked that you knew? I mean, that was a major event if you lived in New York. It was a major event for the country. Yes, definitely. My mother, she is a registered nurse and my stepdad is a doctor. So when 9-11 happened, anyway, so it's really intense because like we lost communication, could not contact any of them because all the major towers, comms towers were on those towers. So like there was no communication. Like people were, you know, this was at a time where cell phone use was not like prevalent. And yeah, so, and even then, even if you had a cell phone, you know, you couldn't communicate. So for like hours on end, we didn't know what happened to everybody. Whereas everyone, and, you know, emergency services, as you know, like emergency services was called up to go and then that's when things collapsed. So it was just very crazy. So yeah, we were impacted in a, like in a not like personal sense where, you know, somebody, you know, passed due to it, but it was definitely a, you know, what is this? It sears in your memory. How you felt. Like traumatic, sure. Almost. Like traumatic event for you guys, for your family. Wow. Yeah. I think most New Yorkers can attest to that too, I think. Even if they're not, you know, they don't have family in the medical field because just all of the calm showers just went down. So you couldn't contact your family. And it was crazy. It was a crazy time. We didn't know what was going on initially. All right, so. Super scary. And so that got, you got to thinking about a little bit of national pride and ended up in the Navy. So did you get, did you meet a recruiter at school? How did you get, how did you pick on the Navy? How did that come about? Honestly, Andrew, I took like my own initiative to like look it up. So I was like, I want to join the military. Okay, which is the best branch obviously Navy after my research, right? I was like, obviously, like let me contact a recruiter. And you know, they're quick. Like once you show interest, boom, recruiter calls me up. He just so happens to be a native New Yorker too. So he's like, hey, come up to Harlem. You know, do you want me to come pick you up? You know how they are. They're like, they super cater to you. They're like, do you want me to pick you up? I was like, no, I'll take the train at my school. Like, I went to, you know, straight up, like went to the recruiting office, like ask more questions. You know, me, I'm like, I talk a lot and I ask a lot of questions. I ask so many questions. And then I was like, hey, I'm satisfied. Like I really do want to sign up. And at this point, I was already 21. So it wasn't like I needed a waiver to join or anything. I was already an adult going to college, part-time job, all that. But I was like, listen, can you please put a little nice little presentation for my mother? Oh, okay. Because I was the person to convince, not that I needed her, again, not that I needed her, you know, approval or anything, but it just, it would make me feel so much better that she didn't worry about me while I was away. So yeah, and that rest is history. I signed up once my mom was convinced, of course that took a while, but. Nice. And you said for eight years, so did you, how did you pick your rate? And what rate were you? So I was an electrician's mate. So basically an electrician, motor rewinder specifically. So yeah, so they, you know, they have you take the ASVAB all that stuff and they gave you like all of these things that are available to you. And again, if nobody knows what ASVAB is, it's standardized tests to basically assess like, where do you belong? So they gave me a whole list of like rates, which is jobs in the Navy to pick from and what is actually available to get shipped out within the next two, three weeks. Cause I said, please, I need to get shipped out now before I change my mind and my mom changes her mind, right? So they're like, okay, okay. So this is what's available. That's right now that needs to be filled, billets, right? And I was looking at it and I was like, electrician, huh? That's so far removed to, you know, from what I'm currently studying. And at the time I was studying journalism. Okay. Because, you know, idealistic me at the time, I was really inspired by embedded journalists during the two wars, Iraq and Afghanistan war. So I was like, I really would like to, I don't know, convey that type of news to civilians or just electorate, you know, the population. So we know where our money's going. Like, what are we funding? You know, are we good? Whatever, but I'll get you to political there. But that was my, you know, that's what I was into at the time. So I was like, huh, well, let me learn to be an electrician in the Navy. And cause that's so different. There's something new to learn and I love learning. So I was like, let me do that instead. Cause it was like, what was available? Andrew was like firefighting in ownership, which was like, all right, cool. What was the other ones? E.T. was available, which is electronics technician, which, you know, deals with this industry rather. ICMEN, which is internal communications again, deals with this industry. So a lot of it was like electronics, electrician type works. I was like, let me do electrician. And again, the rest is history. That's how it was. And so you went to, did you go to BEE? Did they still have that then? I had to go to basically BEE school for like 12 weeks. Oh, that's called back now. Basic Engineering Common Core. And that's actually stretched out to, yes, it's still 12. Yeah, you're right. About two months, three months. Okay. And then you got to pick an A school of some type. Yes, sir. And that was the, crap, I forget. Which A school was that? Yeah, motor rewind. No, that's a C school. What was my A school? No, you don't get to pick it. It's just an automatic A school, automatic A school if you're an EM. So you have to learn like basic instrumentation, calibration, reading, stuff like that. So you learn how to use like a oscilloscope, a multimeter, stuff like that. So that was the A school. And then did you go, we went about like the choice of orders. So if you finished like first in the class and there were 20 students, you got your first choice of the 20 sets of orders and that's how it worked. Okay. That's awesome. It was still like that during the time. And I did get to pick my first orders in my dream sheet. You know how they make you fill it out? Yeah. Like you said, if you're top whatever, you're able to do your dream wish or whatever wish list. So my wish list was Italy to be stationed in Italy. So I got it. That was my first time. Oh, wow. Yeah. Nice. And was it chipboard? Or was it like a maintenance facility? So it was a, so my first ship was the USS Emery S-Land, AS-39 that is a subtender. So you have a repair side and a ship's four side. I was part of ship's fours. So the repair side is what supplies and repairs submarines and whatever ships are alongside us. So we were like the supply repair ship. Nice. For all the other ships. I spent some time in the Persian Gulf alongside, you know, I was on a destroyer. So we pulled up the, you know, a destroyer tender, right? Similar ship. Those things were huge. Destroyer tenders. Yeah. Same thing. Yeah. Never knew those existed. That's cool. I guess they tend, maybe tend to all ships. I don't know, but they did, you know, they, they were, it was like 560 foot was huge, you know, compared to us. Yeah. Great stuff. So about that, I got my, I was second in my class. So I, but the first guy wanted to stay in Virginia. So I wanted to go to Hawaii. I really did, you know, like I grew up in Kentucky and people there saved their whole life to come out here for two weeks. I was like, I'm going to be going to Hawaii. And I didn't know how I would get here, but, but I did. So that was kind of, that was my, that was my lucky story to end up in Hawaii. So after, after Italy, did you, did you, was it like a two year tour or four year tour? It was supposed to be a five year tour, but since the ship was going to get turned over to MSC, which is your civilian counterparts of the US Navy, military Navy. They said, hey, you have the option. You can stay here or you can go to another ship. And I was like, heck yeah, I want to go to another ship. I want to learn more. I want to see more. I want to see something different. Cause this was a steam ship. So I wanted like a more up to date ship, like gas turbine or, or diesel, right? So I was like, yes, sign me up for the next ship. I want San Diego. Oh, you got a choice. Did you get a choice when they decombed it? That's awesome. Good for you. So then San Diego, huh? Well, let's, I tell you what we'll do. We're going to take a break. We'll stop with, we'll pause with San Diego and then we'll come back with Liz Bakas. Liz, thanks so much for joining us today. We'll be right back folks. Stick around and welcome back to security matters. We're talking with Liz Bakas and we've been through her history, which is I think amazing and inspiring. And she's finally on the way to San Diego, still in the Navy, headed to her second ship. I want to learn what, what were all these skills that you were picking up along the way? So along the way, obviously as an electrician, you know, onboard shipboard electrician, I was able to learn, you know, major mechanical systems like main propulsion, auxiliary stuff, so pumps, motor controllers, you know, taking apart the engine and the ancillary stuff, generators and ancillary stuff of that. So going from a steam ship, which was the old ship, right? That was talking about my first ship. So like a smart ship, which is the LPD-18 USS New Orleans, it is a diesel ship. So now you have a smart system where things are communicating to each other. You have a console now that actually says, hey, these sensors are indicating that this cylinder or whatever in your generator is messing up, go check it out, whatever, right? So now that's where the electronics part, the knowledge about electronics really got a foothold in my brain. I was like, this is so interesting because usually the ETs and the IC men would be handling that. But in my second ship, they gave me free reign just because, you know, in the Navy, when they see somebody that wants to learn, you know how it is, right? I like, oh, this person, they're motivated. Let's give them all the jobs while the others are, you know, kind of slack it off. It's okay, she's here sometimes, unfortunately. So it was cool though that they allowed me to do that because I learned so much working with the ETs and the IC men and that's when I learned about, you know, logic boards, PLCs, reading sensors. So that the electronics side right there was where I learned it from. Then when I became a civilian, going to like the software portion of my job as a systems engineer, where you use, you know, computer aided design, AutoCAD for example. When I started, when I worked for BAE Systems and ship repair industry, I had to, I was a tech writer. So I had to kind of be an SME of sorts for systems that I was writing procedures for, right? Got you. And from cradle to grave, I was kind of involved in a sense. So part of that was putting together work packages and creating these 3D drawings or floor plans or layouts to help out the technicians in doing their job. So hey, if you're gonna put together a pump or take it apart or clean it, you know, here are the things that you need to do. And this is what it'll look like, you know what I mean? Because sometimes as comprehensive as Navy tech manuals are, they're old. Like some of them are dated from like 70s, you know, 80s. Some of them are no longer like relevant or they are still as far as the procedure goes, but the drawings in them are no longer relevant to the new stuff that's already on our ships today. So I would put together these CAD drawings. Most of them would be 3D so that, you know, the text would know how to, you know, put it together, put it, take it apart, what measurements to take, you know, where to take the measurements, you know, what are your parameters that it's passing or failing and criterion. So that was, the AutoCAD I learned, I got certified through that job with BAE systems. Wow. So that's both with inventor, which is 3D and AutoCAD, which is 2D, so. Yeah, interesting. So that, there's so much sort of precision and detail in the Navy. You know, we had all of our maintenance processes, everything's down. You never had to really think about what to do. You were told what to do all the time and it was laid out for you exactly how to do it, except maybe troubleshooting when something broke. But I remember the depth of the manuals, but also the lack, there'd be things that were wrong with them, you know, definitely. And so I do remember, especially when we started troubleshooting and we'd find, hey, this isn't actually like this. So that's amazing. I'm glad the Navy continues to do that stuff for the sailors out there. So you got to our industry coming, which is a little, we're on the applied side of the industry, right? I mean, so we're taking someone's desire, someone's what they think they want. Sometimes they actually know what they want as well. And we've got to turn that into a solution set that sort of addresses their concerns from a security perspective. How did you find drawing sort of a dream versus something that was hard and, you know, a actual pump, like a pump, a known thing versus turning, you know, from someone's ideas into a set of security system drawings. How's that been for you? Or what's your opinion of sort of that process? Well, again, I credit Richard Arguellis, which is my mentor in this industry. When I first joined the company, I bothered him and bugged him. And so many times, you know, shadowed him in his job, like just to learn. You know, I already have the fundamentals of electrical and electronic theory, of course, from my previous experiences. And knowledge base, right? So I just needed to learn what this was about. This particular access control, ideas, CCTV, all that stuff, which I had like, you know, bare minimum knowledge of and applied all the other knowledge and put them all together and learn, right? So essentially he made it very easy for me to understand. And I did tell Christine, I told her, if you're gonna hire me, please put me in with a really, really great like instructor or someone that can teach me the ropes because I won't disappoint. I'll learn that really quick. So she didn't fail me, Richard didn't fail me. So that's how it worked was just watching him. And you know, he gave me the steps on how to, like you said, like somebody telling you verbally, like this is how I want it to look, you know, this is how I want it to work. And then us coming in and going, huh, how is that gonna be like cost effective? And also like exactly how they want it, right? Within budget, whatever. So I couldn't tell you detail like the steps it took, but it's essentially, yeah, it's essentially like drawing something and putting it into a 3D plane. There's so many aspects you have to think about. And as far as training to understand how to get to that point, like giving the customer what he or she wants, you know, I took a lot of certification classes and in those classes, they actually tell you like basic steps, you know, hey, if they want forensic, you know, like at this height, it should be this, or if there's motion, lots of traffic, you know what I mean? Like those things are considered. There's so many in-betweens that you have to consider, you know what I mean? To get to that point where here customer, here's the thing you ask for and they're like, yes, that is exactly what I asked for. Yeah, I could spend like 30 minutes just breaking that down, but I'm not gonna. But yeah, definitely certifications help and these manufacturers and their certification classes and they're just classes in general, amazing. Like they were great, yeah. That's awesome that somebody, you know, with as long as you have that basic background in electronics, right? The door sort of opened for our industry to bring you in and train you. And you, how long have you been working in the security industry? Oh my, it hasn't even been, let's see. It was a year for me back in August last year. So about a year and a half. So a year and a half and you're like a lead engineer already. I think all that experience that you had must have played well and into your point of being able to learn quickly and then being hungry to learn, right? So that's just a good lesson, I think, for folks that are interested in that level of work because not everyone has the sort of adaptability to pick up the detail that's necessary on the engineering side but it's a very rewarding part of our business. Absolutely. And keeps the salespeople straight too, right? A lot of them don't aspire to that level of detail. I'll just leave it there to be as gentle as possible. And so they need that guidance right along the way, you know what I'm saying, from an engineering team. So how do you find the industry collaborating? Like when you've been, had to go visit with a customer, is it, do you go with the salespeople or is it with a project manager? How does, sort of the way that you work, how do you get to communicate, I guess? Let's just ask that question. Sure. So before I got into this hybrid role of systems engineer and project manager which what we call Fedgov project engineer now, I was still just a systems engineer. So I would go and do sidewalks with the salespeople for a salesperson and actually have face to face time with a customer. So I'm there, there's nothing lost in translation from the account manager, you know, relaying that information to me. I'm actually there listening and understanding the needs of the customer. So yes, I would be at these sidewalks. I mean, if they were, if these sidewalks weren't as like big or whatever, I mean, the salesperson, I gave full, you know, confidence because, you know, at the point, you know, when I started in the industry, they knew more than me. So I was more confident in their knowledge at the time. If anything, I was shadowing Richard, you know, this was in the beginning, but now as a systems engineer when they had confidence in me at my certs, I knew a little bit of the industry, I understood my job, blah, blah, blah. Yes, I would go with the account manager, do the sidewalk, take all the notes, keep in all of the ceilings or what have you if needed, all that stuff. And then same thing with being a project engineer now for the Fed side, same thing. Again, cradle to grave with a project pre-sale all the way down to close out, involved in every step of the way. So I don't know if that explains it. Yeah, I think so. I mean, I think that the folks in our industry can appreciate that, you know, that type of vision. I mean, a lot of your projects are complex. And so they really require, I think that visibility from cradle to grave, like you said, to make sure that the final deliverable, the final as-built packages accurately reflects what was done in the field and you know, there's field changes and all that stuff as we know about. Did the initial sort of, I guess I'll answer it another way. When, now that you have, you know, done all the work that you've done, how do you think that that compares in sort of complexity to the work that you did, say, you know, the shipboard drawings and all that type of work? Honestly, and not to like undermine like the complexity of our industry. I mean, I was dealing with electromechanical systems on board a ship and it wasn't even just that. It was in conjunction with welding, machining, like ancillary stuff like flushing, you know, systems. So you had to, you know, consider all these other things working at the same time and know about them and know the regs, you know, per federal, whatever's, state, federal regulations and then also know the system itself. So compared to my previous job to now, I would say that this job was a lot more, you know, for anybody to pick up, like it'd be a lot more easier for someone new to pick up and it was easier for me to learn, I would think because at my previous job, you know, coming in as an engineering background as an electrician and a Navy, I had to still learn what welding was. I still had to learn machining. You know, there was a lot of other like jobs that were happening in conjunction with mine that I had to learn their requirements and their start, stop and dates and whatnot, all that stuff to consider. Meanwhile, in this industry, because it is electronics, electronics makes things so much easier. It's just electricity, right? That's, you know, to me, just a little bit heavier on the complexities of my previous industry than this one, for sure. Awesome, awesome. Well, we've got a minute or so left, Liz. What would you tell somebody that's looking at our industry, thinking about engineering, maybe they're already in our industry and interested in what you do? What kind of advice would you give to them? Definitely go for it. I, you know, we've talked about this before the show started, but I definitely was not aware of how great this industry was and how like, as far as mobility goes in career, how like, wow, like, there's so many opportunities, not even just systems engineering or project management or sales, but there's so many things you can do, IT. Definitely, if you're looking into it, you know, talk to someone who has been in the industry a while, I was fortunate enough that I'm with a group of people, you know, with IST that just are so knowledgeable, have an extensive, you know, experience and just everything, like everything I needed to learn, I learned from them, right? So it's like, they answered all my questions, you know, it wasn't just Richard, it was a whole bunch of the team that like basically, I bugged them and just asked questions and they were so open to answer. I also found, this is on a personal note, I also found that in this industry or at least the company that IST, there was not a lot of like, I don't know, what is this? There's competitiveness, healthy competition, but it wasn't like cutthroat to the sense where people are keeping knowledge to themselves. People were always so available to impart that knowledge, you know, at least with this company and I'm assuming just in the security industry in general, I guess, in my previous industry and it wasn't just with BAE, I felt like in general, people were very cutthroat, like unless you were in their little clique or whatever, they were not very free in sharing information. So that's why when I'm talking about mobility with access to information and just career, you know, going up, trying different hats, wearing different hats, I feel like the security industry has a lot of opportunity for whatever you're looking for or whatever your passion is. So do the search, do formal education, talk to someone about it, get into it. Perfect, I love it. Yeah, we're a caring industry. We're a sharing industry. Join us. Liz, thanks so much. It was a great interview. Glad I finally got you on the show and I look forward to seeing you again soon. Take care of yourself. Take care, everybody. Aloha.