Not long after Victoria Bondoc founded Gemini Industries at 26 years old, she was contacted by the US Army to investigate black market crime in Panama. More than 30 years later, Bondoc’s Burlington-based national security firm has more than $500 million in contracts — most with the Department of Defense and Department of Homeland Security — and has contributed to several high-profile operations, including the search for the Boston Marathon bombing suspects. Bondoc came to the United States as a baby with her parents, both doctors from the Phillipines, and earned degrees at MIT and Boston University before starting her career working on the Star Wars missile defense system. Earlier this year, the Small Business Administration awarded her the 2017 Small Business Person of the Year and Woman-Owned Small Business of the Year for Massachusetts. Bondoc, 57, recently talked to Globe reporter Katie Johnston about overcoming adversity and the advantage of being a woman in a man’s world.
1Gemini has employees in 12 locations — Bondoc will only say that she has created 1,300 jobs — who provide logistics and strategic plans for security missions around the world.
“If a Navy Seal team has to rescue a hostage, they can’t just parachute in and start to look, because that would be chaos. They need technology, they need communications, they need night vision equipment. They also need information such as where they’re going to, where the individual is likely to be held, how many guards are there likely to be, what’s the best approach.’’
2Bondoc’s physical appearance helped her land her first contract, collecting information about the illegal resale of US products from military facilities in Panama.
“I wasn’t even 100 pounds, I’m not even 5 feet tall, so the last thing I looked like is somebody who is associated with the Army. And they said, ‘Well, you could pass for a local.’ ’’
3Bondoc was born with cone dystrophy, a retinal disorder that impairs vision clarity and causes color blindness and extreme sensitivity to light. She is open about her condition now — which forces her to memorize presentations and rely on others to identify people — but it wasn’t always that way.
“When I first started out, it was a big secret, because I didn’t want to tell anybody that I had this issue because then you look like you can’t do it. ‘Wow, this is defense, we’re working with missiles, and we’re going to let the blind one do it? Couldn’t you find somebody deaf too?’ So I didn’t tell anybody.’’
4Bondoc conducts a workshop called “Battlefield to the Boardroom’’ that details how business executives can use military concepts to run a company.
“When you’ve got a tough decision to make, the first thing I do is picture the win. What does the world look like if the decision that I made got everything I wanted and more — put the company, our customers, the team in the best light. Write all the details of that picture down. Now you see where you’re going. Now you see what it is that you want to create.’’
5She says being a woman in a male-dominated profession is an advantage.
“Most people are looking for a way to stand out. A woman in a male-dominated industry automatically stands out. But that’s the good news. The hard news is when you stand out and everybody’s looking at you, you better be the most credible, you better have the best attention to detail, and you better be ready to make the best decision, because they’re all watching you.’’
Katie Johnston can be reached at katie.johnston@globe.com. Follow her on Twitter @ktkjohnston.
