Renee Watkis on security, leadership, and service

SECURITY is often understood through cameras, access controls, guards and gates. For Renee Watkis, however, the deeper lessons are about people behaviour, leadership, judgement and service. Those ideas sit at the centre of Beyond the Gate: Human Behaviour, Leadership, and the Future of Security, which examines how behaviour, leadership, and organisational culture influence whether security systems work as intended.

Her second book, Standing at the Gate: A Woman’s Journey in Security, Leadership, and Service turns the focus inward, exploring the experiences that shaped the woman behind the professional journey. Together, the books tell two connected stories: one about the profession and the other about the woman growing within it. Growing up, Watkis’s family could not afford to send her to university, and at 16 she entered the workforce.

She remained with her first employer for 19 years, learning through experience long before university became an option. Years later, after the death of her stepfather, her younger brother was preparing to enter university. Watkis decided to help finance his education.

Not long afterwards, her son was also preparing to enter university. She was supporting two young men through higher education while still without a degree herself. Then came a realisation: “If I can send two people to university, then I can send myself too.” At 42, Watkis began pursuing her first degree.

By then, she had already spent approximately 11 years in the security industry. University gave her the theory behind much of what she had learned through practice. Throughout the four-year programme, she took what she was learning back into the workplace, strengthening processes, reconsidering procedures and sharing knowledge with her team.

For Watkis, education was never simply something to place on a résumé. Her career took another turn when she was offered an operations management position with a security company. The role broadened her understanding of the industry and allowed her to strengthen policies, processes and organisational structure.