Julie Nel and Gary Thomas are two new directors of the Association of Security Consultants (ASC). They were appointed in May 2017 as Jon Laws and Bob Martin stepped down. Gary takes over from Bob as treasurer.
After service in the RAF, Julie, pictured, served for 23 years as a UK police officer, with the Metropolitan Police, Essex Police, Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary (HMIC) and the City of London Police forces, leaving in 2015 at the rank of Detective Superintendent. She is completing a part-time masters degree in Intelligence and Security Studies at Brunel University in west London.
Julie specialised in serious and organised crime and covert intelligence and trained as a Senior Investigating Officer, Silver Firearms Commander and Kidnap Senior Investigating Officer, leading numerous operations, covert and overt. Her interest in intelligence has led her to deliver lectures at Cambridge University on the use of covert techniques and how they are regulated; and she continues with this interest, now running her own security consultancy firm B4 Secure Ltd.
Gary Thomas lives in Munich and has been commuting between London and Munich on average every three weeks for the last 20 years. “As extreme as this may seem to some, I’ve made good friends with others on this route that do very similar,” he writes.
“As a keen aviation enthusiast, I managed to get my private pilot’s licence three years ago at Denham. My interest in aviation was probably, to some degree, influenced by my frequent commute. I fly as often as I can and whilst working in the US I took the opportunity to do an FAA conversion.”
Fencing, the sport and not the garden variety, is something that, until recently, he took part in, since school days, until after knee surgery in 2015 he had to hang up his breeches.
Before working in the security industry, where he’s always been self-employed, Gary spent four years at a stockbrokers followed by several years in manufacturing management and five years with the Royal Mail.
Gary says: “It’s a privilege to be a member of the ASC given the stringent membership criteria, and it’s an honour to serve as a board member. I’m looking forward to working with the association’s board and membership, and hope that my term as treasurer will be as successful as my predecessor.”
About the ASC
The ASC holds regular ‘Business Group’ morning meetings in London; the next is on September 28, at Armoury House, City Road, EC1Y 2BQ. Visit https://securityconsultants.org.uk/.
