CampusGuard’s VP of Operations, Judi Seguy, emphasizes a leadership philosophy centered on collaboration, support, and accountability. She believes this strengthens the culture of our remote staff, aligns growth with strategic goals, prioritizes customer satisfaction and sustainable delivery, fosters innovation, and supports scaling through skill-building and succession planning.
Judi, who joined CampusGuard 11 years ago, brings excellent care and attention to detail, serving as a steady presence throughout every phase of the organization’s growth.
We spoke with Judi about how she defines operational success, ensures great customer experiences, and the one place in the world she’d love to visit.
1. What’s your philosophy when it comes to leading operations?
When I first met with my new managers, I shared with them my leadership style, which aligns with 3 letters: C, S, A.
“C” is for two things: collaboration and culture. I believe that, while the final decision is my responsibility, I see them as the expert in their area and will want to collaborate with them (e.g., get their input, thoughts, ideas, etc.) to ensure we are making the best decision for the company and the team. As a fully remote organization, I believe we have been successful over the years because of the strong culture we have built. Specifically, our teams work well together, care about each other, and consider their colleagues their friends. As a leader, I will continue to promote and model that, ensuring that we maintain our culture as the company grows.
“S” is for support. As a leader, I am no longer part of the team directly serving our customers, but I need to ensure that I am available to them, to support them in their work with customers, and ensure that, as the company grows, there are career growth opportunities as well.
Lastly, “A” is for accountability. Just as I am accountable to my management, I hold my team accountable for their work. Whether it’s meeting a deadline, communicating with their peers, or doing their best for a customer, we have a standard to uphold, and we need to ensure we are hitting it. Now, does that mean I’m inflexible? Absolutely not! Things happen (hey, I’ve had kids, we ALL know how your day can go sideways very quickly with a sick child), but that just means we need to communicate, take responsibility, and let someone know.
Maybe a little oversharing, but I am older than most other CampusGuardians, so I tell my team I’m like their “mom.” I care about them each as individuals. I want what is best for them. I want to hear about their achievements, but I am also going to ask about any shortcomings so that we can find ways to grow and improve.
2. How do you align operations with the company’s long-term strategic goals?
The future vision for CampusGuard is to have a world-class cybersecurity and compliance platform and the subject matter experts who can support the programs our customers track within that platform. This means a transition from a services company to a software-forward organization.
I see it as my role to partner with my peer leaders to ensure our strategic vision is sustainable and gets us to the goal we are seeking, while also ensuring that Operations is growing, moving, and changing in alignment with that vision. This may mean offering new services, growing team member skills, or building out new teams of experts.
3. What metrics do you track most closely to measure operational success?
Like any other business, we have metrics that we use to analyze the quality and profitability of the organization. However, the metrics that are closer to my heart are those that directly result in how our customers perceive our performance. I believe that customer satisfaction directly translates to recurring and growing opportunities that our customers bring to us.
The highest compliment that we can receive from a customer is that of a referral to another organization. Their own reputation is at risk when making such a referral, but they know and trust that we will take great care of their referral, so they are happy to do so.
I also monitor our service delivery metrics. Specifically, I focus on the sustainability of our service delivery, having a process that is easy to follow, is repeatable for consistency of quality, and is also efficient to keep things moving along in a timely manner. I believe we have strong processes in place that allow the team to move smoothly through each step, yet flexible enough that team collaboration and input ensure each step stays current.
4. How do you ensure collaboration across departments?
There are several key ingredients for cross-departmental collaboration to be successful in any organization, regardless of size. First, I believe it’s incumbent on leadership to encourage their team to reach out to others as part of their role. Developing or defining new services, processes for delivery, or enhancements within one group are very likely to impact another, and wouldn’t you prefer to find out if there are any conflicts before your team makes changes? This is also a great way to ensure you avoid wasting efforts on potentially duplicating the efforts of another team.
Next, our culture promotes inclusion in our business processes in that we have weekly or bi-weekly meetings with our team managers. During these calls, new ideas or opportunities are discussed, and every department leader can respond as to the possible impact on their team.
Lastly, although there can be a negative connotation to the word, I have set the expectation that collaboration is critical to our success. In my own role, I know I don’t have all the answers, so I have found that the best decision most often comes from my discussions with my team, my peers, or my managers. By working with others across the organization, we have built a strong culture of collaboration that is foundational for our success.
5. How do you prepare for scaling Operations as the business grows?
A growing business is a great problem to have, isn’t it? 😊 Our Sales team does a terrific job of bringing in new business, and it is my responsibility to ensure that we provide those deliverables to our customers in a timely and efficient manner. But growing the business doesn’t automatically mean growing the team. We know our products and services, and have defined processes for delivering the best engagements for our customers.
With the popularity and widespread adoption of AI tools, we are identifying ways to improve our processes while maintaining that same level of quality in our service delivery. Using technology to keep us on top of customer needs, due dates, and timelines, or other operational statistics, allows our team to focus on areas that require their expertise without missing anything.
As the business grows, the staffing needs change too, so I always want to make sure we are looking for and providing opportunities for our team to grow. This means being deliberate in our annual and mid-year reviews of our team, talking with them about where they want to grow their career, and then watching for opportunities where that growth path may be opening up.
Coaching and mentoring the team, along with ensuring they take advantage of the educational opportunities available, ensures they are well-positioned to take on new roles when they open up. In a similar way, succession planning must also be part of the planning for growth. It is my responsibility to identify the future leaders and then ensure they have the skills and expertise necessary to keep the company moving forward.
6. How do you foster a mindset of innovation within your Operations team?
This is one of those areas where the old adage “lead by example” is key. I may have ideas or preferences on how we should do things, but I am always open to new ideas. I am incredibly fortunate to get to work with the team that I have. They all bring different perspectives, histories, and ideas to the team.
By ensuring that I am asking for input, ideas, feedback, etc., on all that we do, I know that we will land on the best solution for our whole team.
Recently, our new President, Mike Wright, added an “Ideas” link on our SharePoint site so that every team member has an easy way to submit new ideas for business opportunities, ways we can improve our services, or how to integrate AI into what we do. By providing new paths for them to share and collaborate and inviting the team to innovate, they know we are truly interested in hearing what they have come up with.
7. How do you ensure the customer experience is reflected in operational decisions?
As we meet to discuss new services or products, or changes to what we are providing, one of the first questions we consider is “how does this impact our customers?” If there isn’t at least an improvement or positive outcome for our customers, then it doesn’t make sense for us to make the change as proposed. If the customer isn’t considered first, then why are we even making the change?
We will ask for direct input or feedback from clients so that we can see things from their perspective, learn what works or doesn’t, and then improve what we are doing. Our CampusGuard Central® Development Team invited several trusted customers to be beta users before we launched the platform. Getting their comments ahead of the public launch helped us to better prioritize the changes we had in queue, ensuring the ones that were done first were the ones most important to them.
Lastly, our team attends a number of conferences each year. While these are great learning opportunities for the team members, they also provide wonderful opportunities to speak with our clients and get to know them and their needs on a more personal level.
8. Who has influenced your leadership style the most?
My husband, Bob. We first met many years ago, when we both worked at Baxter International. I was a consultant for the Environmental, Health, and Safety team; part of a development team building out an application for them to track their sustainability metrics globally.
We had a team that we worked with that was incredibly diverse – from multiple countries around the world, multiple business units within Baxter, and even different consulting organizations as part of the larger team.
Even though we were many parts, with many different roles, Bob always just spoke of us as “the team.” We were one, and that is how we approached everything we did. We worked together, we ate lunch together, and we even socialized with each other outside of work. He modeled the “Servant Leader” behavior, and that permeated the team. I hope that my team sees me in that same way. I’ve been given the privilege of being the team leader, but I am here to work alongside them and celebrate our successes together.
9. How have your earlier jobs helped to influence your career and the path you took?
As I was considering this question and thinking back over the jobs I have had in my life, I can see that the one constant was a “helping people with technology” component to each role.
My early career at Motorola was working in the Midwest Area Computer Center (MACC), where I was part of a team that set up the network configuration files. Though I had studied programming, this role was a combination of working with technology, but also working to help the people who used the technology.
Similarly, my later roles working at Baxter, or as the Sales Engineer at SecureNet, or as a Customer Relationship Manager for infiNET/Nelnet Business Solutions, I was again able to combine my love of working with people and helping them understand how technology worked.
I’ll never forget being at Baxter, as part of a large IT team, and discussing the results of the recent Myers-Briggs testing we had done. Of a 50-person organization, I was one of only three people on the side who measured as an “extrovert.” I think it was right there and then that I realized that my love of people and technology was a unique combination. I have been very fortunate to have had the opportunities I have had that led me to my current role.
10. What would you be doing if you weren’t a VP of Operations?
I have always been fascinated by space, going to the Planetarium in Chicago frequently as a child and even writing to NASA to get copies of pictures of the planets for an elementary school project. I had thought that I wanted to go to work for NASA and study the stars when I got older.
So if I weren’t the Operations VP for CampusGuard, I would likely be doing research at NASA, studying black holes (my favorite movie is Contact).
11. If you could visit one location anywhere in the world, what would it be and why?
One day I would like to go to Malta. One of my uncles did a family history and was able to go back five generations, but everything stops in Malta, where there appears to be an adoption for which there is no information. I would love to go there just to see it and to also see if there is additional research that I can do.
