Joe Olivarez, Jr.: Opening the Aperture for Community and Collaboration
Joe Olivarez, Jr., MBA, has worked his way from the ground up in security, starting as a security assistant at General Dynamics before becoming a security analyst, performing investigative work for NASA, working executive protection for high-level dignitaries, building anti-corruption programs, and eventually landing the top job at Jacobs, a provider of science-based consulting and advisory solutions, as the organization’s first CSO. There, he expanded his role to include safety, quality, and resilience, aiming to support the business as it grows worldwide. Throughout that career journey, Olivarez was supported by his involvement in ASIS International.
“ASIS has played a very, very big part in my career,” he says. “I’ve never waned from it.”
His involvement in ASIS enabled Olivarez to network with other security practitioners in his home state of Texas to study legislative changes, find mentors, and learn how to make security a value-generating element of the business. He leveraged ASIS resources to share information and keep up to date on worldwide developments through subject area communities and peer-to-peer connections, and he joined the CSO Center—eventually becoming the CSO Center president—to further advance the security profession and connect with other leaders.
Now, he is taking up the mantle of 2025 ASIS International president. In that role, he aims to bring his philosophy around global leadership, kindness, duty of care, and connection to the association as a whole.
Olivarez’s personal leadership philosophy is heavily influenced by his parents, Joe and Gloria, who taught him the value of kindness even during times of hardship. That philosophy continued to weave through Olivarez’s security career, including integrating security into BeyondZero at Jacobs. This program challenged traditional workplace safety to advocate for emerging areas such as supporting mental health as an element of employee care. In the seven years of growth within the Positive Mental Health (PMH) program, the company has trained more than 2,000 positive mental health champions worldwide and now offers a free mental health check-in app.
“We’ve continued to evolve, and now our work includes overall psychological safety, creating an open and transparent environment for our people—one where you feel comfortable voicing issues or opportunities and bringing your whole self to work,” Olivarez says. BeyondZero is in Jacobs’ DNA as part of the company’s “Culture of Caring,” and it feeds into Olivarez’s belief that it is his and the organization’s responsibility to cultivate a caring and kind workplace culture.
“If your people can feel safe at work, they’re more productive,” he says. “If your people feel safe and that you’re genuinely caring for them 24 hours a day, no matter where they are, not only are they productive, but your retention goes up. Your ability to potentially attract new talent becomes another value differentiator. Then, for your clients, if your people are feeling good and they’re always delivering, it adds to the essence of consistency—that we’re always going to deliver for you.”
This aligns with his mission as president at ASIS.
“Taking care of one another is all of our responsibility,” he says. “You can’t really keep people or organizations safe and secure as an individual endeavor. It takes a whole community. At ASIS, we have a strong community within our association—enabled by our HQ staff, the global volunteers who serve on global boards, regional boards, chapters, and so forth—that arm-in-arm takes care of people around the world.”
You can’t really keep people or organizations safe and secure as an individual endeavor. It takes a community.
This concept extends across the entire security ecosystem, connecting security practitioners, leaders, manufacturers, innovators, technologists, and installers. ASIS’s new strategic mission as a facilitator—connecting previously disparate or siloed groups to better enable learning, growth, and security—can help break down some historical barriers and enable deeper conversations about culture, caring, and connection. This mission also expands security leaders’ position as one of influence, both in individual organizations and beyond.
“It’s incumbent upon us at ASIS to lead from the front, to open our arms, to let people in the house to see what we have to offer, and really to create opportunities to lean into what others are doing in their respective areas. This allows us to learn from one another and collaborate to improve overall outcomes,” Olivarez says. “We’ve got a tremendous opportunity to be able to affect change and evolve and mature in this space.”
He notes the value of ASIS’s new regional boards in this effort. “They’re not there just for governance,” he says. “They are there to be in tune with the communities and constituents they serve. If we do this well and leverage one of the critical elements of leadership—listening—we will consume global information with richer context that will ultimately lead to improved deliverables for our constituents and safer spaces for our communities.
“There are different varieties and flavors of how to become part of this organization,” Olivarez adds. “Don’t restrict yourself—open your aperture.”
This open-arms posture extends outside the security industry. Alongside the development of a School Security Standard, ASIS is connecting with stakeholders across primary and secondary education associations and groups—including security professionals but also school principals, psychologists, counsellors, facilities professionals, and parent-teacher associations—to build a coalition of parties that can share resources and information while advocating for positive change.
This facilitator model may feel familiar to experienced security leaders who are used to reaching outside their security bubble to partner with procurement, logistics, human resources, legal, safety, enterprise risk, finance, R&D, and other teams to make their organizations and industries more resilient and effective, Olivarez says. The ASIS facilitator model takes that concept and runs with it, although Olivarez notes that it’s essential to right-size grandiose ideas to ones that ASIS has the resources to feasibly tackle. Those decisions start with getting context and listening closely to what stakeholders say they need rather than decreeing next steps without getting the right input, he adds.
“What’s really important is creating platforms for our colleagues to be able to communicate their message about what they need even further,” Olivarez says. “This is a membership of 34,000; no one member has the answer. However, if we truly engage our global constituency—who often have a deep understanding of the challenges we are trying to solve for—we can accelerate positive motion and galvanize change, if that’s what needs to happen.”
The community-based approach has served Olivarez well in the past, including in his own career journey. His mentorship from past ASIS leaders and industry leaders —including Russell Cancilla, Ty Richmond, Ray O’Hara, CPP, and Don Walker—was instrumental.
“Definitely lean on others, because they’re there to help you,” he says. “I will tell you—this industry, this community, and these professionals have their hands out. They’re willing to lift you up if you just ask. Sometimes those of us who have been around a little longer, we’ve got to do a better job of making sure people feel like the door’s open. But there’s never been anyone that I’ve ever asked for help that has said ‘no’ in this community—not one in 36 years.”
At the end of his tenure as ASIS president, Olivarez hopes to have met two key goals:
- “Learning more about our constituents’ needs intimately around the world, so we can use that information to lead with intentionality, affect change, or put products in their hands that make a difference.”
- “Come away energized because we’ve broken down partnership and facilitation silos that truly help the industry people better understand what ASIS International is, what it stands for, and that it leads from the front.”
Olivarez wants to thank his wife, Marian, and their three children, whose sacrifices and support enabled him to continue to safeguard people and the places where they live, work, and play. Their help made his career possible, he says.
As a parting note, take a listen to one of Olivarez’s favorite songs, "With or Without You," from U2’s The Joshua Tree album.
“That’s been part of my career—I’ve spent so much time on the road and missing and longing for my family, but knowing I was trying to make the world a better and safer place,” Olivarez says. “When you look at that tree [on the album cover] standing out amongst an arid desert—it doesn’t matter how harsh the environment might be around you, that tree is always out with its arms spread, welcoming, covering the ground, protecting what’s there. That’s the essence of me personally wanting to help people up… perseverance, taking care of people—that’s what it’s all about.”
Claire Meyer is editor-in-chief of Security Management. Connect with her on LinkedIn or via email at [email protected].