Having served in the Marines, led Boy Scout troops for years, founded the Mars Area Scouting Association, and as the chief global AP officer and CSO at American Eagle Outfitters, Scott McBride can teach us some lessons on leadership. I got the chance to catch up with him after a busy NRF PROTECT conference. Below are excerpts from our conversation about McBride’s extensive involvement with the NRF LP Council and as the chair over the last two years, including legislative advocacy efforts and advice for the incoming chair, John Talamo. McBride also shared positive takeaways from the PROTECT show, including a professional development committee and a scholarship program for students interested in LP as a career.
Stefanie Hoover: How did you get involved with the NRF and the LP Council?
Scott McBride: My whole career, I’ve been a proponent of networking. Realizing very early on that I don’t know everything and that there is strength in numbers, I tried to develop a network of peers that I could reach out to and share information where appropriate. We kept running into each other and sharing tips on organized crime and then it was probably Joe LaRocca who really brought me into the NRF fold. DC is only four hours away for me, so it was easy to engage with the NRF and Joe. He was very responsive, and I looked at him sort of like a mentor. He also appreciated my help and expertise, so it just naturally grew from there, and I got involved with the council. Bob Moraca later asked me to join the Executive Council as vice-chair. I got much more involved in steering content, whether at PROTECT, webinars, or the council meetings. I’ve now served the last two years as chair and will be moving into chair emeritus while John Talamo steps into the chair position. It feels strange moving on, but I have loved the last two years and am proud of all we have achieved.
Hoover: What are some of the things you are especially proud of having achieved or being involved in during your time at the NRF LP Council?
McBride: I love being involved in the committees that we’ve stood up and the existing ones that we’ve always had with content for the PROTECT show and some of the other research and education committees, but we now have mall violence as a working group and a few others that are fairly new and they’re being very productive. They’re really helping the industry swing the pendulum back a little bit the other way on some of the things that got way out of whack, like the propositions and the decriminalization of property crimes, and some of the other legislation that was passed years ago. I don’t think it will ever swing to where we don’t have to worry about [restrictive laws] anymore. They’re always going to be there, but we got 70 percent of the voters in the state of California to agree that the law was bad and to change it. I don’t know that anybody’s ever done that for 70 percent of the California voters to do anything. I think that’s pretty incredible. And when I say “we,” I mean the advocacy. It was being public with what we could talk about and showing the public the cases and how our associates were being treated and how our customers were even getting injured and run over or stepped on in some of these crimes that were going on. And that they were habitual. People were stealing $899 a day and not getting held accountable for it. And if they were held accountable, it was a traffic ticket, at best a citation. Now we have aggregation. We can show a pattern of behavior that’s antisocial, criminal, and habitual, and DAs and law enforcement are taking action, doing their job, and being empowered to do their job in a better way.
We have better cooperation with our mall landlords and better coordination with our tenants and law enforcement in the community. And so the malls are becoming less and less of a place to go act a fool. We’re making a difference, and it’s not as bad as it was. We still have work to do, and we’re still going to be fighting the good fight for a long time. But it makes you feel good that you can make a difference.
Hoover: What was it like to participate in the meetings in DC on the Hill with the NRF?
McBride: It felt great that the NRF membership trusted me to represent them on the Hill. I have been there three times in attempts to get CORCA passed. We’ve had no less than twenty LP leaders and sometimes as many as sixty there to represent retailers. We can split up and have hundreds of meetings in a week—we’ve gotten really good at telling our story. We are getting even better at anticipating the pitfalls and pushback. We focus on why this is important and provide evidence, really getting down to the brass tacks of how it affects the community, the nation, the economy, and the people of the United States and their constituents.
I really thought I’d have a harder time getting approval from AEO leadership to participate, but they were very supportive of me representing the brand in these conversations with congressional and senate members.
Hoover: What advice can you offer to John Talamo as he steps into the Council Chair?
McBride: I think he’s going to do a fantastic job, and he brings even more experience than I had. He’s had different experiences than I had with his early days in New York City and being a store detective. I was in a specialty the whole time; I didn’t have big-box experience. He’s got a lot to bring.
As the chair keep in mind you’re representing the entire population of the council so you get to speak with the power of all the voices of every member of the council so be emboldened to do that and speak from that position of strength and position of having those people right behind you because we trust him, they trust us. That’s part of the benefits package of being an NRF member and a council member. You pay your fees and you’re in the club, and you’re getting the power of a long-term, seasoned, tenured LP professional who represents the diversity of all retail: the product lines, the verticals, and the diversity of each of the teams that are in those asset protection departments.
Hoover: How did PROTECT 2025 turn out?
McBride: I was very pleased with the attendance both on the show floor with our solution providers, and the sessions came off great as well. I think our content committee did a bang-up job this year. We had a good mix of presentations to meet the expectations of elevating the thinking and vision of the LP professional. As an EC we are focused on ways to encourage everyone to think bigger and to think about ways they can do more in their role. We want to provide some direction on where people have been successful in doing more and gaining more responsibility, but also more care, custody, and control of their organizations, maybe steering those ships in a way, becoming even higher-level leaders within their leadership teams back at their respective brands.
We also had three NRF scholarship recipients attend in our pilot year this year, and they had glowing feedback. Students from California Baptist University, Northern Michigan, and Eastern Kentucky University all attended the PROTECT conference. That is something that we will definitely look to expand next year. Their eyes have been opened up and their horizons broadened by the experience. All credit to those retailers who signed up to mentor those students and help make it a success.
Hoover: Any closing thoughts?
McBride: Just a call-out to join the LP Council. We’re adding people every quarter because they’re signing up as NRF members and then realizing they can send their asset protection person, or they’ve had a membership for a long time and are getting their AP person to step up.
You get what you give, right? So, if you’re involved and you’re coming on the calls, you’re joining a task force or a working group, you’re on a committee as the head of LP or asset protection from your company, you’re going to get the value proposition that the NRF is promising. If you’re sitting back and waiting for it to fall in your lap, it’s just not going to happen. You’re going to have to show up to the meetings, and then you’re going to be able to get those takeaways, but you’re also going to find out what everybody else is doing, and you’re going to learn from their successes, and then you can replicate that. That’s the big message of what the council’s true organic purpose is: to make every member’s AP team that much better.