989 Anna Redmond: Building Workplace Safety

Preserving Hero Stories for Military and First Responders

Workplace safety and security is a growing issue, and not just from external threats. All too often, companies have to deal with unstable employees or spillover from domestic violence, where an irate spouse follows an employee into work.

Every company with an office needs good security, but it’s not just about installing cameras and systems. It’s vital that team members have full transparency and input on the process, and when it’s done right, it helps employee wellbeing and retention.

Anna Redmond is the visionary force behind a cutting-edge approach to corporate physical security as well as the digital transformation of challenge coins for veterans and first responders. 

 

She’s the CEO and Founder of the fractional security agency Braav, where she deploys experienced Chief Security Officers into organizations on a fractional basis, giving companies top class security systems without the cost or rigidity of a full-time hire. She focuses on helping organizations navigate modern risk, including workplace violence prevention, operational security, and compliance requirements such as California’s SB553.

Today Anna shares best practices for building safer, happier teams, as well as how she is innovating in the time-honored traditions of first responder culture with a groundbreaking challenge coin platform. The coins are longstanding symbols of identity and recognition within military and first responder communities, and her NextGen platform creates a secure digital twin for each physical coin, preserving not just the artifact, but the story behind it. By bridging physical and digital, she is transforming challenge coins into tools for identity, community-building, and engagement, with future applications in access, fundraising, and networked recognition.

Her path into security was anything but traditional. Anna began her career in venture capital and studied at Harvard, where she developed a strong foundation in evaluating risk, scaling businesses, and identifying market gaps. That lens ultimately led her into the security space, where she saw a clear disconnect: most organizations were underprepared for real-world threats, yet lacked practical, accessible ways to address them. Braav was built to close that gap.

🔑Key Takeaways🔑

🚨 Security Isn’t Just About Crisis—It’s About Culture: Workplace violence often comes not from external threats, but from domestic situations that spill into the office, so it’s vital to focus on compliance and employee wellbeing. Think of a workplace safety plan not just as risk mitigation: it’s about retention and morale boosting.

🪙 Challenge Coins: A Tradition Reimagined: How Anna has innovated to create a digital platform to preserve and celebrate challenge coins, cherished tokens of recognition among veterans and first responders. She’s dedicated to protecting the stories behind these coins for 30 million holders, creating “a space where valor and courage and kindness are celebrated and preserved”.

💡 Not Your Average NFT: Why the platform is intentionally avoiding a spammy marketplace, by creating a space for authentic story-sharing and community connection.

🎯 Transparency in Security: Balancing surveillance tech with employee buy in by ensuring employees are included in decision-making about security practices with a visible plan so they know how and why cameras are used in workplaces.

🛡️ Is Your Business Protected? Why Anna recommends every business get an annual security assessment—even if it’s just to understand vulnerabilities.

More about Anna Redmond at braav.co

Anna Redmond

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More about Anna at Braav.co

More about the challenge coins at allcoin.braav.co

Anna Redmond is the Founder and CEO of Braav, where she deploys experienced Chief Security Officers into organizations that need to get serious about safety and risks. Her path into security was unconventional; she started in venture capital and studied at Harvard before shifting into the security world after recognizing how unprepared most companies are for real-world threats. She is now focused on modernizing challenge coins for military and first responders by building the first platform that gives these legacy symbols a digital twin—preserving not just the coin itself, but the story behind it. Her goal is to transform challenge coins from private artifacts into tools for identity, community, recognition, and eventually access and fundraising.

 

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