 have everybody and welcome back to Security Matters. We're virtually from the ThinkTech Hawaii studio today and this this episode is so much fun for me because this I believe is one of the success stories that you're going to hear about that came during the COVID crisis when there are a lot of non-success stories you might say. So the Women in Security Forum started a scholarship campaign this year to award scholarships to some of our industry members for their continuing education and this program was absolutely a resounding success and I've got a couple of the awardees with us today and I've also got a member of our donor committee and I've also got a member of our awards a grading committee and this effort was undertaken by all volunteers and I want to give a shout out in particular before we get started to Steve and Till Brevo. Brevo was not only were they a ruby level donor to this program but Steve also offers up his employees and their time to participate in the Women's Security Forum committee efforts and these are not small efforts so Steve if you're out there thank you so much and thanks again to Brevo. With that let's get started and let's meet our awardees first Holly Sampson with ADT commercial and Holly welcome aboard give us give us your background as much as you sort of care to share with our audience today. Hey thanks Andrew um yeah so I'm Holly Sampson I work for ADT commercial as a marketing manager um my role there is more focused on culture and recognition and so just you know helping to really encourage a culture of appreciation recognition and hopefully retain our employees you know we um are appreciative of them and um so we really try to build a culture that makes them want to stay. That's awesome we definitely need you on our committee we're working on that in the Women's Security Forum as well those exact initiatives uh our next awardee is Erin Mann. Erin's with the Legion Canada. Erin welcome aboard and congratulations on your award. Thanks so much hi everyone really uh really thrilled to be here today um I work for Legion Canada I am a channel marketing manager um and strategy manager for a multi-family channel up here so I focused on trends in the multi-family space and support our sales initiatives um going after some of the biggest multi-family markets in North America so it is a fun and ever-changing job but loving it so far. Awesome I'm glad you could join us from the great north um our next guest Gloria Sameron is also the chairman of our committee and uh she has put in undying hours thank you very much Gloria for being here today and she chaired the grading side of this committee today Gloria how you doing up there I know we've had John before how are things going since we've finally got these awards out the door? We're so excited um this you know this was the first year as you mentioned uh that we did something like this and we're just so proud um we had you know a relatively small um awards team if you will awards committee team um and we were able to review you know all the applications that we got um and you know this is the first year and we were so excited to um be able to offer or to award 12 um scholarships this year and that's thanks to our donor um our donors and um and our donation team as well our fundraising team um you know for reaching out to donors um I know it was an especially uh difficult time to ask for money um for something like this but um yeah but it's been it's been incredible incredible journey for sure awesome thanks and so finally from that donor side of the house Nicole Kopa-Zewski is with us this morning also from Brevo uh Nicole we started off with a pretty modest goal I think it was $30,000 and I think we raised way more than that so you must have been working really hard thanks for joining us today thank you Andrew so with when we initially started off and that was our goal and then COVID hit what were you thinking about our ability to raise donations and by the way this was an all donated uh fund campaign so there wasn't a started off with zero dollars you might say yeah asking for donations starting a global pandemic it's definitely not by any means um however it's because of the amazing people in this industry that we're able to make this a success the companies and the people who contributed are recognized as leaders in this movement it's really a way for companies to show their commitment by helping to shape the future of the industry and the next generation of leaders by focusing on career development so this is you know not a small task as you mentioned um however this is just an amazing success despite COVID and everything we had stacked up against us so awesome thanks so much I know how hard you worked on it um so to our awardees when had uh first of all were you uh women security forum members prior or how did the scholarship opportunities sort of get on your radar because I know from the working side of it our perspective Don Erickson sort of we just said hey we want to do a scholarship this year he goes okay but you got to get it done in 60 days so we were all like what oh my gosh like how are you going to do it that fast and uh so how when did it get on your radar and how did you go through the criteria and decided something you could apply for and Holly we'll go back to you first um so I was encouraged to join Women in Security Forum by my supervisor who felt that um her employees should just be more involved so I accidentally came across the scholarship opportunity um on the page whenever I was was joining and so I just went ahead and took a chance uh I've been wanting to go back to school to get my MBA anyway and um it seemed like a really good opportunity to just basically jump on that right away um so yeah it was kind of accidental uh but super super thrilled that I was awarded and super thankful to be a part of Women in Security Forum it's been amazing so far and and being a part of the subcommittee of outreach and education I mean that's just I've met so many so many new people and um I already had an idea of the culture of the security industry but um widening my horizons and meeting people from all over within this industry has really confirmed that it is a very collaborative one and supportive one that's awesome founded by I love it it was accidental that's so good so we drew you in and then we drew you in further hey so how did you come across uh the scholarship um uh application and what were your thoughts when you first looked into it was it like something that was appealing or did it seem daunting I didn't fill one out myself so I don't know it was I think a little bit of both so I'm pretty involved with Sia from the rise perspective which is their young professionals group um I've been on the committee for about a year and a half and that was kind of my first push into getting more involved with the industry which I've loved and I had won a rise scholarship in 2018 so I had known that Sia occasionally did have scholarships for you know any number of opportunities what caught my eye about the women in security forum and I had started being involved because I had started building kind of a relationship with Maureen Carlos who is really an integrated part of of the women in security forum um and when I saw that the funds could be used towards student loan repayment that was the kind of hook for me um because I'm not actually in a place where I'm actively trying to do something go to a conference or go back to school or anything like that um but knowing that there's a lot of people in my position who have student loans from undergrad um it was just kind of like a I don't know should I apply should I not apply and I went back and forth for a couple weeks and I sent in my application on the last day actually um because I had been contemplating for a while you know my undergrad has nothing to do with kind of what I'm doing in the security industry now but it was kind of my gateway to get into my first position with Legion four years ago so um yeah student loan repayment was huge and being able just to actually apply those funds to my loans and see that burden taken off of me was a huge and liberating feeling so an opportunity that doesn't present itself often but when I was very happy to take advantage of that's so awesome Gloria do you remember how we came up with the idea to repay allow student loan repayment was that Maureen or I forget who brought that up in the committee but what a great idea and a fairly unique idea I think for a scholarship award yeah um I'm not exactly sure I think by the time the idea got to me it was a no-brainer we yeah we're absolutely doing that but it is a great idea and it did make our scholarship actually stand out from some of the other ones that SIA does offer and that was something that we wanted to make sure that we highlighted in the application process we wanted to make sure that everyone saw that because it's yeah it's such a fantastic benefit that you know very few scholarships offer so yeah and especially during COVID I know Nicole we talked about this quite a bit like how do we how do we offer that how do we get more donors because of this sort of unique selling proposition of our scholarship um when you talked to um what we call prospective donors um were they open to that um did that did that help you think sway some of them I guess I could ask I think so I mean at first I was a little concerned that folks were going to be a little tight with you know donating money especially during the time of uncertainty that we had but you know the power of being able to invest in our future leaders and to really invest in the industry which I know all of us in the college we were pretty passionate about so you know it's it's a way to make our industry stronger it's a way to invest in the next future future generation of leaders so the opportunity is priceless when you think about it at the end of the day I mean you know a few hundred dollars a few thousand dollars you know you can't compare that to the development of our future leaders and also really just getting the word out there that you know this group of women which are you know typically very underrepresented in our industry you know it's a way to promote that and raise awareness because you know women and minorities they make our industry stronger at the end of the day and that's important for our future as an industry as a whole. Yeah I don't I don't know if I mentioned but our donations did all come from WISF members not just CIA members so that was what was that was another one of the the things that we are starting mantra for where will we get these donations as well we have like 400 I think 500 I'm not sure how many members we have now in the WISF but 400 or so when we started so there was some right pickings I mean I remember trying to promote that idea and I remember people kind of being shocked like really you're going to pay for someone's old student loans like any kind of student loans I'm like well yeah if it was used for education you know it's valuable because they're they're here they're in our industry cool stuff. Let's um let's let's we got a couple of minutes before the break so let's take a quick look at with our awardees what um what do you think the future offers you in the way of a career inside of our industry and I'll leave it sort of an open ended question in that way you know if you could if you could pluck some job that you've seen someone doing out of the spin air and say that's going to be my job what would that look like and Holly we'll go back to you for that. For me I'm kind of already doing what I really wanted nice yeah yes um I kind of again accidentally stumbled into culture and and and now a little bit of diversity and inclusion as well um and love it I realized what my passion is I've kind of always felt like I don't know if I really love marketing sometimes I love it sometimes I hated it sometimes I just wasn't hurt um so I um I do I do love culture I think that my goal and and you know pursuing continuing my education is just to get more overall business experience so that I can be in a leadership role um but still maintaining in the in the culture or diversity part of this industry. That's awesome so my argument is if you made it on this show you're already a leader in this industry. Erin uh so what what um what uh what what do you think about your future in the industry you've mentioned you've been four years of lead John I wasn't sure if you were somewhere before that but what is um me John's huge I mean obviously a lot of growth opportunity there now I should maybe that was a loaded question I want you guys jumping outside of your your company your boss is like where the hell you think you're going so sorry about that um but if um if if uh if the role goes up what does that look like to you. Gosh I have my sight set in a couple different directions I am I'm lucky that I work for a legion I've loved working for a legion for the past four years I could see myself staying with the company at the stars line for the long haul um I really enjoy the security industry and kind of I've been in marketing and customer experience positions for the last four years but the more that I've gotten involved with the industry the more my obsession with people has come to the forefront of my career and so doing things like professional development and promoting different opportunities towards individuals and helping people reach their full potential is I think where I want to go in the long term um I saw a job posting for some company that that was called a happiness coordinator and I think that that would be my ideal title is really focusing on kind of what Holly said that the culture of the company looking at how we can make people um kind of be the best versions of themselves come to work do the things that they love um because for me we're spending 40 plus hours a week doing something it's not worth it if you're not enjoying it so if I can play some role in making sure a company is bringing the right people to the office giving them the resources they need to do their job and enjoying it that would be that would be my ideal role I love it it's kind of like internally focused marketing of the people right and marketing to the people and building the culture I'm sure glory is going to have some advice for that after the break we are going to pay some bills because uh we can't do this for free so we'll be back in one minute stick around I'm going to shut up so we can get back to our guests all right so erin teed is up with sort of that working on internal um you know uh the the people you know keeping our people happy working on building them up and and obviously this scholarship was designed to help do that help promote folks within the industry um glory you know you uh sit on a big hr engine over there um is that component that seats into sort of your world as well or is that how does how does culture building get done let me just throw that question out there oh uh well that is definitely a um you know a company-wide effort uh while it is hr who kind of helps kind of guide that effort it is you know everyone's job to you know to be to contribute to the culture of the company i know erin talked a little bit about uh professional development in her last comment and i will say i mean not that this is a plug for brieva but um that's something that we do we do um we believe in developing our staff and i think that does you know make people happier um you know when you when you invest in their learning when you invest in their growth it makes people happier because they're able to advance within the company or if the opportunities are just not there you know at our company then we're happy to see them go and you know go to bigger and greater things um but yeah it is it is everyone's job to contribute to culture it's certainly something that we're always working on improving um you know it's it's a it's one of those ongoing things uh that you always have to invest time in um so yeah it's it's very important and we do need happy what is it uh happy makers uh happiness coordinators yeah happiness officers yes we do need that uh i 100 percent agree yeah absolutely well i don't know if the so like it it says that everybody tends to look at leadership right like leaderships are supposed to cultivate this downstream thing and everyone's a leader in their work org so we we do hear this put out but leaders also have pnls and other things to drive right so those there's always that that performance component of happiness right because you're hopefully you're very happy performing at your highest level to to help the company achieve its earnings uh goals right so that sort of thing and sometimes those can be that can be stressful um i think the focus on you know growing practices for people to help them deal with with stress obviously during cobit i mean it's been a whole change of focus i think for everyone so it's a happiness officer is a one of those great jobs if you fail at it i wonder what that means that was the only thought that comes to my mind like i was a happiness officer over there but i'm gone now and i'm gonna go be the happiness officer over there so i don't know maybe if everybody follows you then that's that's the right thing hard to say um so gory i know you want to talk a little about the grading process and i'm not sure what um what you were what you were thinking there how that went i know i didn't have visibility on it so i'd love to hear uh what your thoughts were of the applicants or whatever you'd like to share with us about that yeah so i wanted to share that um you know first again my gratitude obviously um to the fundraising team and also the donors um we never thought that we would ever get to award 12 scholarships um so that was significant for us it's way more than we ever thought possible so and i know when you know you and i spoke earlier you know and you know when we were starting this out we're like oh if we get you know five that you know that would be great um but we we definitely exceeded that um so i wanted to say that uh we were very impressed by all the applicants who applied to the scholarship um i know that we we did ask um you know for some questions on uh you know what inspires you how do you how we how will you advance the the security industry and everyone had great answers so um we were basically it was just very difficult to grade some of these because we got such great applications um and again like very impressed we actually got to learn a lot about people's journeys you know in their careers but also in life uh you know what we heard sorry not heard but like read stories about um you know what inspired people to kind of go this path or the path that they picked and i just um it was very meaningful uh rewarding um and you know i i certainly see that in my day job um being an hr uh well we see everything in hr but um you know but reading these types of applications um and what people will do with uh with the award um and or how this will help them advance um it was just so meaningful um and everyone on the committee who was grading these um you know felt the same way they all were just it was it was difficult so i can't wait for next year when we get to do this again um and we have you know three times the applications and we're reading through all these stories um i feel like it does certainly let us um it helps us get to know the people um who are gonna grow the industry with us so i was very excited to do that yeah you know it brings to mind maybe we should lean on dawn and i don't know i don't know if there's privacy issues with this but maybe all those ideas for growth that and those those ideas that they expressed in those applications could be abound into a compendium of ideas for industry growth or that we could bring inside of the uh women's security forum as you know here here's the things we're hearing from our applicants about what we need or what's lacking what's missing or what they want to do that's an awesome source of information not even consider yeah i will say too that um even though it was the women in security forum scholarship um men were also able to apply for the scholarship um we didn't get any men who applied for the scholarship but um to nicole's point from earlier and you know in the conversation here um we discovered that women have great ideas for growing the industry so we need women in this industry so whatever we can do to uh make sure that this scholarship is you know front and center that every woman that's in our industry is thinking about this scholarship as an opportunity um or that they just know about the w isf um and are part of it uh we have great ideas to bring to the table so we need to be heard also um i look forward to that that's awesome yeah i agree a hundred percent nicole did um uh so i know i know brief steve under these steve reels are a good company a great company you probably get a lot of um great motivation and great leadership over there did um when you were reaching out to these companies were any of them surprised that we had taken this on did you get any feedback like you're going to do what you're giving to who like i i don't know i know we i know we may have talked about that a bit before but i don't recall the conversations about any of the difficulties you may have experienced yeah there was a lot of but it's covid you know um so yes we're still going to ask for donations because it doesn't matter what's going on in the world we still need to advance our industry we still need to advance you know when women all of our future leaders so you know i'm really hoping that now that this is you know a real thing and we're going to be doing this next year that we can get the world out early and and really build up not only the number of applicants but the number of funds that we can award to applicants so you know put that as a plug you know everyone get ready we're going to be calling you um because we're going to look to do you know twice as much if not more next year so i think you know the success that we had despite everything is a true testament to our industry and the amazing people in our industry but it's it's important now more than ever to make these investments and encourage folks to continue to grow their careers because the security industry is an amazing place to be it's an amazing place to work and now more than ever in the world that we live in it's it's in a very important industry to to really help grow and nurture so i'm excited for next year i'm hoping we we crush the records and we do twice if not more than what we did this year it's awesome yeah and i i do i love the fact that security is just top of mind across all governments all every everyone in the world today's paying a lot more attention to security and and hopefully our industry is getting more visibility because that in a national security discussion in some places where we weren't always considered um so i want to go back to our awardees um maybe a couple for your final thoughts on our motivations for others to apply or just whatever you'd like to share with our audience we've got a couple minutes left uh holly we'll start with you uh take the chance erin i would have told you that had i known you were considering and and known you now i know you but take that chance it doesn't hurt if you see an opportunity um just you know try it and um the only thing it can do is is improve you you might not get awarded but um you know you'll you'll meet people you'll um get practice with applying for things like this um and also just show up overall and erin you mentioned maureen i i talked to her and she kind of them put the plug in of show up and so i use that all the time now just show up in the industry and great things you know are bound to happen awesome thank you maureen's our president she is one amazing force i love maureen erin your final thoughts are do you like to share with our audience i completely agree with holly take the chance apply for it there's no reason not to if you have an opportunity to just go out and get it not everyone has these opportunities so who are we to waste them but kind of like holly said it'll help you build your network it'll help you make some really impactful connections with people in the industry and it might introduce you to to someone or something that you never thought about um that can really help advance your career even if you you win or you don't um but when you get to where you're going extend the hand behind you to help someone follow in your path because that that's the only reason we're doing any of this so that would be my advice and then call to action awesome love that call to action i really appreciate all of you joining me today um was a little quick i know it was a short sort of short hey can you jump on an episode so thank you this was the first of many i'm going to try to get all of our awardees on um the rest of our committee members on uh over the coming month so thanks again for joining me today i hope you all have a great rest of the week uh loha from hawai take care everybody