Allan “Al” Moore is the Director of Security & Crisis Management at Spire Energy, but his reach extends far outside of just the organization. A leader at the American Gas Association (AGA), St. Louis Area Corporate Security Leadership Organization (SLACSLO), St. Louis Mayor’s Downtown Engagement and Public Safety Initiative, and an advocate for the American Red Cross, Moore has leveraged his security and leadership acumen into giving back to his community.
That drive to contribute to society was one of the reasons Moore became a police officer earlier in his career. “I wanted to do something more,” he says. Following in the footsteps of his mother, who had an over 50-year career in the nursing field, and his father, a former St. Louis police commissioner, Moore entered the public sector as a law enforcement officer for the St. Louis Metropolitan Police Department (SLMPD).
Moore held multiple roles across the SLMPD, including in the Patrol, Narcotics and Gang units and Intelligence Division, before being promoted to Sergeant, Bureau Detective Sergeant and then Lieutenant. The varied opportunities and goals of the law enforcement field drew him in further. “I was really impressed by the number of different assignments and divisions within the police department — I thought I could never be bored with the opportunity to serve on that many levels,” he says.
He served in the Internal Affairs department and Special Operations unit until the St. Louis police chief at the time approached him to create and lead a tactical unit meant to reduce crime in the city. As the Commander of the Crime Suppression unit, Moore built the team and led its efforts to get weapons off the streets and reduce violence throughout the metropolitan area. “The team did a phenomenal job with the arrests made,” Moore says, “and the amount of illegal weaponry removed from the street and the reduction in crime was really impactful.”
Building up the unit was no easy task, but Moore is no stranger to taking on new challenges. In fact, for 15 of the 20 years he served on the police force, he also worked a secondary security job as a security officer at Laclede Gas, a small energy company local to the St. Louis area. “I’m really a workaholic, but I enjoy it,” he says.
As his career grew, so did the organizations he supported. When the opportunity came along to rise to the security manager role at Laclede Gas, Moore’s mentor encouraged him to make the switch to the private sector. Moore led the security function through a five-year period of growth, building the security department into the operation it is today. Soon enough, Laclede Gas became Spire Energy, and Moore rose to the role of Director of Security & Crisis Management at the firm.
Moore has developed the security function at Spire for nearly 10 years, leading the department and organization through a rapidly changing threat landscape facing the energy sector. “Today, the department and team are very high functioning, and the operation is state-of-the-art,” says Moore. The team, which now includes approximately 14 employees and three security operations centers (SOCs), expanded to meet the needs of the entire enterprise. “I really am proud of my team and the work they do every day,” he adds.
Moore’s policing experience helped prepare him for the private sector, but he also had to think quickly and learn on the job at Spire. “As the Commander of a police department, you deal with budgets and you deal with resources. But the corporate environment is a little different,” he says. A critical factor leading to Moore’s success was the initiative he took to join and learn from external organizations in the energy and public safety sectors.
Over his career, Moore’s involvement in sector and community organizations helped him create the Field Worker Assault Prevention Program at Spire, putting police officers in areas where energy workers feel most at-risk. Using GPS mapping and data analysis, officers can patrol areas where Spire workers have planned work and are dispatched, serving as a deterrent to criminal activity and ready to intervene should a violent situation arise.
Maximizing manpower and available resources has helped Moore create teams that secure wide areas effectively. He helped institute an incident reporting system to streamline communication at Spire and collect valuable threat intelligence to help allocate future resources to regions in need.
When Moore started at Spire, he immersed himself in the American Gas Association (AGA) to learn more about the energy sector, developing connections with industry peers and learning about the industry as a whole. “I networked with others, got involved in and eventually led many of the initiatives and brought those lessons back to Spire to develop a strategy to move the security operation forward. And I think we’ve done a pretty good job of that.” Eventually, Moore rose to the role of Chairman of the AGA’s Natural Gas Security Taskforce, a position he held for three years.
Moore constantly looks for ways to support the safety of not only his organization, but the larger community as well. As Chair of SLACSLO, Moore leads the executive board for the chief security officers (CSOs) of more than 35 organizations in the St. Louis region for meetings centered on information sharing and helping the community remain on top of emerging threats. Moore also formed an external Utility Task Force, which allows utility security leaders to meet each week to discuss sector-specific developments. He also created a group of SLACSLO members with law enforcement backgrounds to further public-private partnerships in public safety with the city.
“I love building bridges, putting people together to solve problems, if you can’t tell,” laughs Moore. Now, Moore also chairs the greater St. Louis Red Cross. By increasing blood drives, Moore has led Spire’s efforts to support greatly needed blood donations, aiming to increase donation levels throughout the region.
The accomplishments of these organizations speak for themselves — with the SLACSLO public safety taskforce, Moore led a symposium for public safety attended by government officials and enterprise security leaders from around the country, sharing security strategies and building connections between the public and private sectors. “I just want to continue that and continue to help the community,” Moore says. “I’ve been re-energized with this work around public safety and public-private partnerships.”
Looking forward, Moore aims to support and develop more leaders in both the energy sector and the wider community. As an enterprise security leader, he values investing in and working for the needs of his community. After all of his accomplishments, he knows the work isn’t finished. Instead, Moore asks, “What can we do for the communities we serve?”