End Users '20 under 40' 2014—Kimberly Saint Laurent

Kimberly Saint Laurent, 34

Site account manager, Pinkerton, on assignment at Pfizer La Jolla, San Diego, Calif.

Saint Laurent got her start with AlliedBarton, became a security manager for Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan and then moved on to Pfizer, where she is responsible for planning and implementing physical, electronic and procedural security for five buildings, upwards of 1,000 employees and a 24-hour command center. She currently co-leads a global security training initiative at Pfizer. She has two master's degrees, one in architecture, the other in security administration.�

What inspired you to get into the security industry?

It's a long and convoluted story. I went to college to become an architect. I was in a master's program for architecture when I discovered CPTED (crime prevention through environmental design). I very much fell in love with the security industry. I am a big security geek.

If you could have any technology you wanted, without regard to budget, what would it be?

Any technology has to complement what we do here on our sites. Technology has to be considered in terms of how it enhances other procedural and physical efforts.� That said, active technologies with facial recognition and other analytics would be welcome, especially by system monitors who need to move from simply viewing toward analyzing and decision-making roles.

What's your biggest physical security challenge today, and what do you think it will be five years from now?

Domestic terrorism is a great threat to all businesses and pharmaceutical companies are, by no means, an exception.� That threat is ever evolving and will remain a challenge in the future. Certainly, more and more threats are being seen to IT systems.� A strong partnership with IT can help both disciplines in identifying and addressing threats. The healthcare system, pharmaceutical, and security industries are so dynamic, we don't know where the new challenges might be in five years. �Our success will be in knowing the business of our clients as well as we know our own.� We need to proactively move with the businesses we protect, not reactively move behind them.� We can't become stale.