Women in Security: Angie Wong of Ojo Technology Inc.

FREMONT, Calif.—Angie Wong, president of Ojo Technology Inc., an integration company based here, started an IT networking company back in 1994, and in 2002, after the dot-com bust, was looking for a more viable business plan.

“One of our engineers, and one of our salesmen and myself, we took about a year to explore different verticals and market factors,” she explained. “And we decided, with our IT background and with IP video surveillance coming, we thought it would pretty easy for us to leverage our IT experience to do video and access control security systems. So we have both the IT and physical side of things covered.”

She continued, “Very quickly we realized that the physical aspects of a security system are so important—installation, infrastructure, outdoor environments, construction management, etc.—and it is so different than IT networking that typically happens in a data center or the server room. Even though most new systems are IP today, we still have a lot of existing analog systems out there, so it has taken a long time to ramp up from when we started back in 2002.”

Wong said that it is important to not only look at the business from 30,000 feet, but from the ground level as well.

“My job is to look at the future of the company but also get down in the trenches,” she said. “I have a big capacity for information and I am able to understand the many projects that we are involved with, be a resource and guide, answer questions and be valuable to my team. The industry is always changing and becoming more commoditized, so we are always looking at different and new verticals, determining what areas are the best fit and worth entering. We continue to grow and I must be sure we are not complacent and that we remain relevant.”

Ojo Technology started with camera systems and education early on and has evolved to work in many other verticals. “That is how we grew, going from one school to the next, K-12, then higher education and then we got into transportation, which is a big vertical for us,” said Wong.

The company is doing well “both culturally and financially, growing 20 percent in revenue year to year,” she said.

Wong said that while she sees more women in administrative, accounting, payroll and some contract- and project management positions, “it is definitely male-dominated on the general-contractor and construction side, and with engineers and architects as well,” she said, noting that she would like to see more women involved in engineering, installation and management, skills that have served her well during her career.

“We need more [women] to rise up into leadership roles,” she asserted. “As the industry moves more to the IT side and cloud and Security-as-a-Service, there will be more in those roles.”