Cybersecurity is a serious business and La Jolla Logic, in just nine years of existence, has grown into a small business to be reckoned with in the cybersecurity sphere.
But CEO Stacey Anfuso still has fun. For example, take the name of the company itself: La Jolla Logic is not based in La Jolla, but in Old Town. So why is the company named La Jolla Logic?
“I just made it up; I liked the sound of it,” Anfuso said. “I just liked the flow of the words together. It was different and something regional.”
Her efforts have been recognized with a leadership award in the small company Top Workplace category.
Throughout her career, it seems Anfuso has parted from the conventional. Even though she did not have a military or security background at first, Anfuso has built La Jolla Logic from a one-woman consultancy firm primarily focused on s she built with the U.S. Navy to a firm with a staff of about 60 that includes clients across the governmental and private sectors.
From cybersecurity and engineering, La Jolla Logic has added artificial intelligence, machine learning capabilities and other technologies to its repertoire.
This interview has been condensed for space and clarity.
What’s your leadership style?
When it comes to technology, things are always changing and we continue to grow and jump into the next big thing. I just really want to energize and inspire people to help make sure everyone is moving in the right direction.
When it comes to values, ethics is essential to our business. Our mantra is really to just be kind, be professional and own it.
With COVID-19, how many of your employees are working from home?
We’re all working remotely, for the most part. A lot of the of the engineering team either work on customer sites or they work remotely so it wasn’t that big a shift for us. Sometimes I’ll go in the office. It’s just one block from my house.
I looked at your LinkedIn profile. You have a degree in biology and a master’s in oceanography. So how did you end up in cybersecurity?
I was actually an oceanographer at Scripps for about 10 years. And through that, I got very interested in computers. I spent a lot of that time doing chemical analysis on the ships and also learning computers. When I was ready to have a family, I put my resumé out and got picked up in the defense contracting industry as a computer engineer.
When you started La Jolla Logic, did you know what you were about to face?
No. I started the company as a consultant — one person — to just some of the customers I had within the government that I knew over the years. And it just happened I was doing something that was growing in demand. I had built a lot of nice relationships with other engineers who were interested in what I was doing. As the demand increased from the client base, I was able to pull people in that I knew could handle the work and learn the craft. We just kind of built from there.
Can you give me a sense of how the company grew?
It’s actually been a pretty nice glide. I’ve grown the company at a pace I could keep up with. We’ve never been in the red, we’ve always been able to make payroll, we’ve never taken any loans or had to use any lines of credit. So we’ve always been able to fund everything we’ve done within the company by pacing our growth over time.
