Jan Vincent Agay joined New York City’s Fisher Brothers as the information technology (IT) infrastructure and cyber security manager in 2024. Jan Vincent Agay managed various responsibilities in this position, including infrastructure optimization, IT operations, and team building and management. As the IT strategy, operations, and infrastructure leader at Fisher Brothers, he successfully guided the company through a network infrastructure refresh and upgraded email security, among other achievements.
Between 2013 and 2024, Mr. Agay served as the director of IT and security at HYTORC in Mahwah, New Jersey. During this time, he helped the company make several major improvements to enterprise infrastructure, such as the development of disaster recovery and business continuity strategy that emphasized the protection of critical digital assets. He also maintained the organization’s on-premises virtual server infrastructure using strategies that reduced operational costs by 40 percent. Furthermore, he migrated HYTORC to a custom-built virtual desktop infrastructure that reduced end user computing costs by 30 percent.
Mr. Agay graduated magna cum laude with an information technology degree from Marist College. He was a member of the Alpha Kappa Psi co-ed business fraternity. His interests include traveling and CrossFit training.
What is your typical day, and how do you make it productive?
As an IT leader, my typical day is structured around balancing strategic alignment, team empowerment, and operational resilience. Because the technology landscape and business needs move quickly, I deliberately anchor my day in three distinct phases to maximize productivity:
• The Morning Focus (Proactive Alignment and Strategy): I start my day before the noise begins by reviewing key operational dashboards, critical metrics, and system health reports across infrastructure and security pillars. This ensures I have a pulse on the environment. I dedicate the remainder of my morning to deep-work initiatives—such as platform modernization strategies, budgeting, architecture planning, and aligning IT roadmaps with broader business goals.
• The Midday Sync (Team Empowerment and Collaboration): Midday is dedicated to people and collaboration. I hold high-impact syncs with my engineering, infrastructure, and helpdesk leads. Rather than micromanaging, my focus here is on removing roadblocks, mentoring, and ensuring the team has the resources they need to execute. I also use this time for cross-functional collaboration with other department heads to ensure IT remains an enabler for the business, not a bottleneck.
• The Afternoon Review (Agility and Continuous Improvement): I dedicate the latter part of the day to reviewing vendor relationships, evaluating emerging technologies, and addressing any escalated operational challenges. I wrap up by reviewing outstanding project milestones and setting my top three non-negotiable priorities for the following day.
How do you bring ideas to life?
In my mind, journaling is not only therapeutic, but it is also the gateway to making ideas become a reality. Putting down ideas on paper is the first step into bringing them into existence. More than that, it helps to make sure I remember every detail about that idea’s genesis. I like to note down what I was feeling at the time, where I was, even the food I was eating if the idea popped into my head during a meal. For the most part, journaling just helps me to remember the details I might easily forget later on.
What’s one trend that excites you?
I am energized by the shift away from legacy debt and toward building scalable, secure, and highly automated enterprise infrastructure. I see modernizing platforms not just as a technical upgrade, but as a strategic way to empower engineering teams, eliminate operational friction, and drive massive business value. At my core, I am an engineer, and I am most driven by building infrastructure, teams, and relationships.
What is one habit that helps you be productive?
This took me a long time to get used to, but not hitting snooze after my alarm goes off definitely keeps me productive. I have found that I am more alert and energetic after getting out of bed versus hitting snooze and just torturing myself with short stints of sleep.
What advice would you give your younger self?
Stay in the moment and try not to worry so much about things that have not even happened. Our mind is powerful and, sometimes, it can think things that we fail to realize is irrational or unrealistic. Learn how to self-regulate as soon as possible and the rest of your life will be infinitely easier!
Tell us something you believe that almost nobody agrees with you on.
Most IT organizations live and die by SLA (service level agreement) metrics, like closing tickets under 15 minutes. I believe that highly optimized ticketing metrics often mask a completely failing IT department.
What is the one thing you repeatedly do and recommend everyone else do?
I constantly look for what we can deprecate, turn off, or consolidate, and I recommend regular “simplification audits” for any technical environment.
When you feel overwhelmed or unfocused, what do you do?
Be active and expend some energy. Going for walks, getting on your bike, hitting the gym—do anything to spend some energy and redirect the negative energy your body is producing into something productive.
What is one strategy that has helped you grow your business or advance in your career?
Find any kind of motivation to do your job to the best of your ability, whatever that might be. Including keeping in mind that the business can and will replace you at any time. Nothing is promised to us and so work as hard as possible at what you do to make yourself irreplaceable.
What is one failure in your career, how did you overcome it, and what lessons did you take away from it?
Early on in my career, while I was fresh out of college working at a hedge fund, I disconnected and reconnected some cables incorrectly. At the moment, I thought I was being smart and making improvements but unfortunately the next day one of the firm’s key traders was completely unable to work. This mistake lives with me to this day, and it’s a reminder for not just double checking your work but checking it over and over and over until you are green in the face.
What is one business idea you’re willing to give away to our readers?
The business idea: Shadow IT Cleaners.
Launch a specialized, boutique consultancy that plugs into a mid-sized company’s network for a fixed 30-day window to hunt down, audit, and remediate their hidden software sprawl.
What is one piece of software that helps you be productive? How do you use it?
Aside from the numerous AI tools available these days, I heavily rely on tools like Smartsheet to organize my projects and tasks. It has an intuitive interface and sharing options that make collaboration a breeze. I use this in every facet of my life.
What is the best $100 you recently spent? What and why?
I recently purchased an e-bike, and I could not be happier. Somehow, I feel I have more freedom to go and see places I could not see before. It gives me motivation to get out of the house and explore. It gives me opportunities to be in the sun and soak in everything nature has to offer us.
Do you have a favorite book or podcast you’ve gotten a ton of value from and why?
She is quite popular and helpful, so I spend quite a bit of time listening to “The Mel Robbins Podcast.” There are periods in my life where I go through bouts of anxiety, and her podcasts recenter me, giving me the reminders I need to self-regulate my emotions.
What’s a movie or series you recently enjoyed and why?
I recently finished watching “The Pitt,” and I just enjoy the high level of detail the show displays. The acting is phenomenal and really draws the viewer into the story. The show successfully captures your attention and evokes emotions that make you truly feel for the characters.
Key learnings
- Work to make yourself irreplaceable.
- Be active to redirect any negative energy your body is creating.
- Do things for yourself that help you enjoy what life and nature has to offer.
- Don’t just double-check your work—triple- and quadruple-check it.
- Don’t just let an idea be a memory—take the first step to making it real and write it down.