Life Safety Alliance Announces Second Annual List of Top 40 Global Thought Leaders in Security and Life Safety
- Jul 15
- 2 min read
Updated: Jul 16
More than half of the recognized candidates are new in 2025, hailing from more than a dozen nations
The Life Safety Alliance (LSA), an organization dedicated to enhancing global life safety and security through partnerships and collaborations, announced the results of its Second Annual List of Top 40 Global Thought Leaders in Security and Life Safety. This honor represents an effort to bring enhanced objectivity, transparency, and rigor to the process of identifying influencers and thought leaders in the field. While several Top 40 thought leaders from 2024 make a repeat appearance, more than half of this year’s honorees are new.
The 40 recognized contenders represent the entire industry, including life safety, physical security, cybersecurity, risk management, loss prevention, and intelligence. Honorees comprise practitioners, service and technology providers, researchers, academics, and other professionals from over a dozen countries.
This year, renowned security expert Andrew Thorburn, Enterprise Security & Risk Manager at Wesco Anixter, formerly of Atlas Gentech NZ Limited in New Zealand, led the effort to identify candidates. He also chaired the committee that revised some of the scoring and categories used in 2024 to better reflect both the breadth and nuances of thought leadership.
Candidate scores were determined using a proprietary algorithm that considered various factors, including conference presentations, webinar and podcast appearances, LinkedIn reach, academic courses taught, and volunteer leadership positions held, among others, from May 1, 2024, to April 30, 2025. A formula weighted these factors to generate a final score.
After reviewing the credentials of hundreds of professionals in the life safety and security fields, LSA contacted more than 200 candidates it identified as some of the most active and influential thought leaders in the industry. Candidates were given the opportunity to provide evidence of the criteria requested to better showcase their activities. For those who didn’t respond, LSA searched for information on LinkedIn, other social media platforms, blogs, professional publications, websites, conference agendas, and various publicly available sources.
“After an inaugural year that exceeded our expectations for both interest in the recognition and quality of the Top 40 recipients, we are delighted to see both repeat honorees from 2024 as well as a large group of fresh faces,” said Becky Lane, acting CEO of LSA.
“As awareness of and interest in this recognition has grown, 2025 was even more competitive than 2024,” Lane continued, “especially since Andrew Thorburn led an effort to draw in as many candidates as possible from everywhere around the world.”
“I'm very proud to lead the LSA Top 40 recognition program because it uniquely reflects the direct and measurable impact of practitioners and academics on thought leadership in security risk management and life safety," said Thorburn. "We cast a wide net to identify individuals who have demonstrated impact, innovation, and ethics, while also considering factors such as geography, market size, and market maturity."
Those who made the list will receive an LSA challenge coin commemorating their achievement as well as a digital certificate.
Download the press announcement:
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