Marlon Lynch, assistant vice chancellor and chief of police at Vanderbilt University, has made Security Magazine‘s Top 25 Most Influential People in the Security Industry list for 2008. Others on the list include government leaders, industry authors, chief security officers and research pioneers.
Lynch ranks No. 14 on the list, which also includes notable names such as Los Angeles police chief William Bratton and Jeanne Clery, ranked at No. 6 and No. 7, respectively. Clery was a college student whose murder in her dorm room led to the 1990 Campus Security Act, later named the Jeanne Clery Act in 1998, which was the first federal law mandating open college crime reporting.
Rounding out the top five are Robert W. Bastida, senior director corporate security for Oracle Corporation; Norman Bates, founder of Liability Consultants; Bruce H. Bonsall, vice president and chief information security officer for MassMutual Financial Group; Roy Bordes, president of security firm The Bordes Group, and Jerry Brennan, managing director and founder of Security Management Resources (SMR), an international recruitment firm focused exclusively on professional and executive-level corporate security positions.
Lynch joined Vanderbilt in 2005 as the university’s assistant police chief and was promoted to the top spot in 2007. As chief, he oversees one of Tennessee’s larger law enforcement agencies, which provides comprehensive law enforcement and security services to all components of Vanderbilt including the academic campus, medical center and a variety of university-owned facilities throughout the Davidson County area.
He is president-elect of the International Association of Campus Law Enforcement Administrators (IACLEA).
Lynch began his law enforcement career as a police officer with the Meridian Township Police Department in Okemos, Mich. Prior to joining Vanderbilt, he served as chief and director of the University of North Carolina at Charlotte’s Police and Public Safety Department. He also was a lieutenant with the Southern Methodist University Police Department in Dallas, Texas, before moving on to positions as assistant director of the Davidson College Department of Public Safety in Davidson, N.C., major/deputy director with the UNC Charlotte Police and Public Safety Department, and chief/assistant vice chancellor for Public Safety at North Carolina A&T State University in Greensboro, N.C.
Lynch holds bachelor’s and master’s degrees in criminal justice and is a graduate of the FBI National Academy. He earned his bachelor’s degree from Michigan State University and his master’s degree from Boston University.
Media contact: Princine Lewis, 615-322-NEWS
princine.lewis@vanderbilt.edu