Sam Botros has been an influential leader to the Baker Hughes, a GE company (BHGE) corporate security team since taking over the responsibilities in late 2017. Botros has driven his team to fully engage and be a reliable source of critical security and risk management expertise to senior leadership and the various business units in order to plan for and mitigate risk exposure throughout the BHGE organization, including business operations in high-risk areas of the world. Botros has developed and retained a highly knowledgeable team of security and risk professionals with deep country level knowledge. His team is continuously tracking and monitoring key country and local level events, including potential developments and their future impacts on risks to business operations that contributes to BHGE continued growth and profitability.
From a team development perspective, Botros has worked on culture, diversity and inclusion. Since 2017, Botros has managed a team that operates in 17 countries, from 18 nationalities, that speak 13 languages with a solid gender split.
Botros is proud of his work during the 2011 Egypt Crisis while he was at GE as a security director. “As a team, we worked for five days straight out of our Ops room in Houston. Having good intelligence, pre-designated local security contractors, evacuation plans and regional recourses allowed us to systematically arrange evacuation and relocation of our employees located in risk zones without incident. That was the easy part. The hard part was reentering Egypt within seven days to support our customers and provide what the people of Egypt needed, which was power and medical care. We were one of the first international companies back in Egypt, and that was due to having good resilience plans and localization. Security rarely gets praise for generating revenue but in this case, we were the primary reason for great profits in Egypt for 2011. Security was awarded the GE Presidential Operational Excellence Award.”
“In our profession, trust and integrity are critical; it takes months/years to build and only seconds to lose,” Botros says. “Once you lose trust with your teams and the people you are responsible for, it becomes near impossible to be the best you can be. One tip I learned years back is to spend 20 minutes each morning understanding what is happening in your area of operations. We are in the field of intelligence; knowing the facts allows you to drive your risk strategy, operational plan and organizational structure. Business leaders rely on us to make informed business decisions that pertain to security and safety.”
