at the family business, Guelph, Ont.-based Hammond Manufacturing. Two years later, looking for new markets, they made a significant jump into security. “Security companies were transitioning into IP, and a lot of security professionals didn’t really understand what that involved,” he says. “And I saw an opportunity to get involved with CANASA and help educate individuals on the type of products that would be utilized when working with IP products.” Hammond joined the regional council of the Golden Horseshoe in 2010 and has been working with CANASA since. “That’s really been the fun side of security industry, volunteering with CANASA.” The fourth generation to work in the business, founded in 1916, Hammond is sales and marketing manager for Hammond’s DBS Division (datacomm, broadcast and security) and is responsible for North America. “My role is to ensure we have the right partners in place and ensure we’re positioning ourselves in the right areas to grow our business and make sure this business is around for another 100 years.”
tr a c y lo n g Tyco Integrated Fire and Security, 38
Tracy Long became president of Tyco Integrated Fire and Security, Canada, in 2013. In 2014, she and her team won Tyco’s CEO Award for Excellence for delivering significant business results while the company was integrating the fire and security businesses. In the same year, she became a Canada’s Most Powerful Women: Top 100 Award Winner. In her role, Long leads the short- and longterm strategy of the Canadian company. She sees herself as a customer advocate. “I want to help customers solve not just their safety and security problems but also help them run their businesses more efficiently.” Long, who was the chairperson of Tyco’s Global Women’s Growth Network (2010–15), graduated from the Stanford School of Business. There, she attended a talk by former GE CEO Jack Welch. He spoke of post–9/11 security needs and of how demands on infrastructure would greatly expand.
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“That’s how I went into infrastructure in general, and security has been one of three infrastructure verticals I’ve worked in,” Long says. One of her main goals now is to help drive the company’s new Internet of things strategy, she says. “Security is becoming intricately intertwined with the businesses of our customers throughout Canada.”
M a r k P h illip p i SecurTek Monitoring Solutions, 36
As director of station operations at Yorkton, Sask.-based SecurTek Monitoring Solutions, Mark Phillippi manages monitoring stations in Yorkton, Winnipeg and Aurora, Ont., overseeing the alarm, technical support and data entry aspects of the business, along with any other lines of business, such as operator services, they need to handle. Phillippi is very big on life safety and thinks monitoring for seniors living alone and lone worker services present the greatest opportunities for stations today. One challenge he sees, however, is working with emergency agencies and establishing best practices. “In some ways, we’re splintered across the country. We’re doing one thing, and another company might be doing another thing. We need to be getting everyone together, talking it out and saying, okay, this is best practice.” Phillippi began his career as a station attendant. From there, he worked his way up, first to floor supervisor, then to central station manager and, lastly, to his current job. “I went through from the very bottom to where I am today. So I have an understanding of everything along the way, what the front-line staff goes through right up to the director position. I always wanted a challenge.”
da v i d si m e Contava, 36 Before assuming his new role as president of Edmonton-based Contava, David Sime was vice-president of engineering for several years. In that role, he oversaw the engineering team, which does pre-sale design and detailed engineering for the company’s integration projects. In addition to organizing the engineering team, he was also responsible for business development and some sales. (Contava also won SP&T News’ Integrator of the Year award in 2011.) Sime points to the transition from analogue to integrated IT-based systems as one of the
biggest challenges he’s seen during his career. “Getting everybody on board for that transition — whether it was an internal resource, or the customer or the supplier — was definitely a challenge.” Contava’s approach, he says, was to hire people from enterprise IT and teach them physical security. “So we definitely had specialized roles in the organization, where our IT people are really good at the IT side of things, and we don’t ask them to hang cameras. And, vice versa, our installers are really good at physical security competencies, but we haven’t tried to train them on the enterprise IT concepts.” Sime says he came into security by happenstance. Contava was looking for expertise in IT, engineering and project management. “That’s where I came from,” he says. “And I landed here.”
sc o t t yo u n g GardaWorld, 30 In 2016, Scott Young marks his tenth year working for Montreal-based GardaWorld. In his current position, director of business development for Western Canada, he is responsible for RFP and proposal strategy for Western Canada, price-point determination and all business development and marketing initiatives from Vancouver to Winnipeg. Young began working in security while still in high school. His father, an ex-police officer, started his own security company, later acquired by GardaWorld. Young, who had worked with his father, joined GardaWorld as an account manager in 2006, then worked in sales and business development, and then, in Calgary, went on to manage business development for Alberta. In 2014, he took on his current position in Vancouver. Young has been very involved with ASIS, serving as Young Professionals liaison in Calgary and later in Vancouver. He is also a chapter chair. “I really enjoy that. It allows me to connect with the industry; there’s some great networking, some great education.” Young, who has just completed an MBA, says the security industry as a whole is maturing and professionalizing. “It’s been exciting for me to be a part of that and see the industry evolve over the past 10 years.” — Top 10 profiles by Linda Johnson