Interview with Randy Raw, VP of Information Security at Veterans United Home Loans

Vidal: Good morning, Randy. Welcome to the Manager’s Club show. How are you?



RANDY: Thank you. It’s great to be here. I’m doing well.



Tell us about Yourself



Vidal: Maybe we could start off, tell us about your background. Well actually where do you work now? What’s your current role?



RANDY: Sure, I’m the vice president of information security at Veterans United Home Loans. We are a VA loan origination company, so our, our mission is to get our veteran heroes into homes at competitive interest rates, faster than anybody else in the industry. We do a very good job of that. Prior to being here, I actually worked for an organization in Missouri called MOREnet. That was the Missouri Research and Education Network. We provided internet connectivity to the public schools, the universities and colleges and public libraries. Most of my career prior to that was also spent in government and education doing mostly system administration work initially, and then switching over as the internet became a thing and as we saw the increased need for security and moving into security when I moved to the role at MOREnet and now here at Veterans United.



Vidal: That’s awesome that you’ve been doing stuff for veterans and also in education. I think that’s really great. Thank you. Thank you for doing those things.



RANDY: It’s our pleasure. It’s a great industry to be involved with, especially now helping veteran heroes. They’ve put their life on the line for us. This is our opportunity to give back and to serve them



What’s your background and how did you get into management?



Vidal: That’s just awesome. Could you say a little bit about how you got into management? How did you transition to being manager?



RANDY: I think like probably a lot of us, back in the early days, you do system administration work and you continue on. Then there’s a recognition that there’s a need for actually having a team instead of just an individual or a few individual contributors. Part of it was the first position that I actually had was at a small K-12 school. I hired a couple of people to be assistants for me and also actually utilize some high school students at the time in an unofficial capacity where they just were interested in technology. I really started accidentally essentially get into management from that perspective. Then it was just more intentional about seeking careers that had opportunity for both technical growth and also management growth. Each position that I moved into, I changed jobs a couple of times. That had additional people that were reporting to me and gradually just continued on to where I’m at now.



Vidal: How many people report to you now? How big a team do you manage?



RANDY: I’ve got eight direct reports right now and we also have a concept of something we call dotted in. We have three other people who are parts of other teams, but we bring them on to the information security team, so that they can really be a liaison back to those other teams that they work on. They are essential and integrated into the components of keeping our systems and our data secure.



What are the biggest challenges you face?



Vidal: Yeah, it makes sense. Yeah. I think several companies, a lot of companies have that concept. Okay. What would you say are some of the biggest challenges you face a...