As a full-service security company, we pride ourselves in providing high-profile, professionally trained Security Officers partnered with state-of-the-art technology. Beyond Security Officers, we also provide career paths for those interested in Investigations and Personal Protection, Security Risk Assessments and Emergency Management Planning and Consulting along with Parking Management.
Adrian Koornneef, a previous intern for our Emergency Management and Business Continuity (EMBC), shares his hands-on experience with one of Paladin’s specialized services.
During the early weeks of December, 2017, I hung up my phone after a detailed, yet slightly unconventional interview with Paladin’s EMBC Manager, Katie Subbotina. At the time, I was seeking out an internship in the field. Despite ongoing discussions with different organizations, I knew Paladin Security was going to be the right fit.
After my phone conversation with Katie, I knew I wanted to gain hands-on experience with many different types of tangible projects. And being a part of a lean team meant I was going to avoid being a small cog in a big machine. As a bonus, it also didn’t hurt to have the opportunity to work under someone who sounded as genuinely passionate as I am about EMBC.
Shortly after starting my role in the EMBC department with Paladin, these opportunities quickly materialized into extremely relevant projects. One of them included conducting a Business Impact Analysis and Risk Assessment for a critical internal department, providing feedback and helping write drafts on client after-action reports and assembling a tailored table top emergency exercise.
Although these projects may or may not sound as exciting to the average reader, I personally found these opportunities to be thrilling, enlightening and they validated the hard work I was putting forth in University. Interestingly, however, as I begin to reflect on my time with Paladin, these projects take a backseat to another component of my extensive internship – the mentorship experience. Katie’s enthusiasm about Emergency Management and her willingness to engage in discussion originally sounded like the icing on top of my selection process cake, but they were the foundation on which my education with Paladin was built.
Katie did not see me as an assistant to help lighten the workload. She instead assured me that she was genuinely interested in tailoring the right experience necessary for my development. Grooming a new EMBC specialist was something she fully dedicated herself in doing throughout my internship. She fully believed in the importance of contributing to a field that is rapidly growing in importance. Kati regularly took the time to discuss the intricacies of ongoing projects as well as the industry to a level of detail that no manager has ever shared with me before. We even co-produced an extracurricular white paper based on our ongoing discussions.
In an environment filled with chaos, it can be easy to look at things with tunnel vision, focusing simply on one’s own self and task at hand. However, my time with Paladin Security demonstrated a strong organizational culture that is willing to reflect on and share personal knowledge when it came to strategies, tactics and intricacies of the security and emergency management industries. This is an organizational quality I hope to see in any workplace or a supply chain partner in the future.
A big thanks to Paladin Security and Katie Subbotina for the opportunity!