From Coordinator to Engineer: Meet Stefanie Anderson

When CEC acquired Wisconsin’s A&A Fire and Security in 2010, Stefanie Anderson officially joined the CEC family. More than a decade later, she’s an integral part of our fire and security team.

When she first joined A&A Fire and Security, Stefanie had a wide variety of responsibilities: working on daily deposits, answering phones, programming intrusion panels, and supporting clients in central station monitoring.

In 2009, this experience earned her a promotion: She became a test and inspect coordinator, scheduling inspection crews and handling billing for Green Bay and Madison. She continued in this role during CEC’s acquisition of A&A Fire and Security but decided to take a break in 2012 after the birth of her second son.

After both sons were in school, she returned to CEC in 2016 as a monitoring coordinator before moving into a sales support role and ultimately landing in the engineering department, where she fell in love with all things fire and security.

She started out as an engineering associate, working on fire alarm and security projects. After earning NICET Level I and II certifications, she became a systems engineer, quoting and designing systems to meet customer needs. Today, Stefanie serves as CEC’s Wisconsin engineering supervisor for fire and security technologies. In this role, she quotes fire alarm and security systems and performs engineering project work. Meet CEC’s Wisconsin Engineering Supervisor for Fire & Security Stefanie Anderson!

Q: What makes you most excited about working at CEC?

The best part of working at CEC is my coworkers. I’ve known some of the members of our Green Bay office since I started back in 2007. We’ve been through a lot together over the years. Some of them have become actual family while others feel like they are. 

Q: What do you enjoy most about what you’re doing right now?

I enjoy the challenge of engineering. I have a great team of engineers and one fantastic CAD technician who I enjoy working with every day. As new technologies are released, I’m constantly learning something new or reinforcing what I already know. A wise man once told me that fire alarms are like a science while security is an art. He was right, and I very much enjoy catering to both sides of my brain on a regular basis. There’s never a dull moment!

Q: How does a typical day play out for you at CEC? What are you responsible for?

Each day is a balancing act. On the front end, I put together designs and provide quotes to our sales department. On the post-sales side, I put together submittal documents and drawings for our customers and the state agencies that regulate fire alarms in Wisconsin.

Q: What’s a fun/interesting fact about you that most people don’t know?

I have degrees in criminal justice and psychology from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, which is why I’m fascinated by true crime documentaries! I would love to be behind the camera creating my own one day. My family has two film production companies, so anything is possible. I also started learning Italian when Wisconsin went into COVID-19 shutdown last year. I’ve continued my daily lessons. It has been difficult to fit it in every day, but it’ll be worth it in the future when I can drink wine and eat pasta in Italy while speaking the language!

Q: How do you spend your free time? I spend the cold Wisconsin winters with my husband and our two sons ice skating or at home watching movies with our two very furry, energetic dogs. In the summer, I’m often in our backyard Wine Cave with family and my two best girlfriends listening to music, cooking out, and enjoying a few adult beverages (mocktails for the kids).

Q: Do you have any words of wisdom for new employees?

Be open-minded and work hard. Don’t ever tell yourself that you can’t do something—you’ll only know if you try. If someone would’ve told me in college that this is what I would end up doing as an adult, I would have laughed … but it’s a really good fit for me.

Technologies:

Fire and Security