The 2023 to 2024 school year was the last year that LHP was under the security of Mr. Conan Bickford, beloved by the Lake Highland community for 23 years. After announcing his departure, the community was heartbroken to see Mr. Bickford go, considering that Reverend Joe Sims also announced his plan to retire not long before. The man who has taken Mr. Bickford’s place as Director of Security at LHP is an ex-U.S. Secret Service agent, Mr. John Shuman. Mr. Shuman brings 30 years of experience to protect the Lake Highland community, from being around former Vice President Cheney as a U.S. Secret Service agent to managing 73,000 people as Chief Security Officer of the U.S. Bank. Mr. Shuman’s mission is to, “Have a really good security program, a very good department, and professionals that get up every day and think in a way that doesn’t create distractions or interruptions in the learning that has to take place.”
Mr. Shuman stated, “There’s kind of a balancing act” with his mission for the security of LHP, and the goal is to, “Build out and deliver a security program that has never really existed here previously.” There needs to be a strong balance among security, the environment, and the community. Mr. Shuman explained, “You’re never going, nor should you, ever get the enterprise to conform to your culture.” It has been an adjustment for the Lake Highland community to conform to the new security protocols that have been introduced. The community has seen new faces on the security team that are different from last year’s members, as well as different additions to our daily lives. Some new procedures include having to show identification to get through the gate. It is kind of a give-and-pull act, where to move forward, feedback from not only the community but our, “Orlando Police Department officers that support our school every day,” is needed, explained Mr. Shuman. He went on to state, “As I observe things and I see things happening the way I envision or I expect them to happen, I think that’s validation that we’re moving in the right direction.”
Mr. Shuman has done a lot in his 30 years of experience in the security field. Right after college, he applied to the U.S. Secret Service. Mr. Shuman worked as the Administrative Paraprofessional at a metropolitan high school in Minnesota for three years, where, as the school did not have a Dean of Students, he took on some disciplinary and attendance responsibilities. He had a deep passion for his job, as he also had the opportunity to coach some sports. Mr. Shuman transitioned to the U.S. Secret Service, where he was an agent for 14 years, starting in Minneapolis and then moving to Washington D.C. for seven years. In D.C., he worked alongside former Vice President Cheney from 2004 to 2008 and was the instructor of his academy from 2008 to 2011. Then, he was transferred to Chicago for three years, and afterwards, “Corporate America came calling.”
Target Corporation called Mr. Shuman and asked him to move back to Minnesota to become the Director of Corporate Security at their headquarters. Then, Mr. Shuman had the pleasure of meeting Mr. Richard Davis, the CEO of the U.S. Bank. Mr. Shuman described him as, “One of the greatest leaders” he had ever seen. Mr. Davis asked Mr. Shuman to become his Chief Security Officer, where he became responsible for, “73,000 people and their safety, along with a couple of thousand buildings, facilities, and retail facilities across the country. I had an overseas team in Europe because we did a lot of payment service business through a subsidiary called Elavon that the U.S. Bank owns.” However, COVID hit, Mr. Davis retired, and Mr. Shuman, after being in Corporate America for over a decade, decided to do some consulting for a few years.
Later, he got a call from Lake Highland asking if he would be interested in becoming the new Director of Security. Mr. Shuman explained, “So, I looked at the opportunity, you know, really talked and met and came down a lot and sort of started to get to know everybody.” That was when he took the opportunity to move his family from Minnesota to Florida to serve as the Director of Security for the LHP community.
Mr. Shuman has taken on much bigger responsibilities than securing Lake Highland’s campus, but there are still two challenges that he faces. The first, Mr. Shuman stated, “Is developing my department, my organization, and my team around the culture, the ideals, and what makes up and drives Lake Highland. That’s part of my job is to professionally develop everyone so that everyone understands that culture, buys it entirely to it, and contributes to it, becomes a part of it, because once you do, then you understand what a special, powerful, unique community and culture we have here, which I’m still learning,” which entails to shaping his staff and mechanics around the environment of Lake Highland.
The second challenge circles back to the idea of balance: transitioning Lake Highland’s community into a security program that they are not used to. Mr. Shuman and his team are very dedicated to the safety and security of LHP’s community and campus. Mr. Shuman said, “During every meeting we have after the pledge and the prayer, we read our vision and our mission statement. It’s not something that’s just on a piece of paper that gets dusted off once in a while. I mean, we live it, which I really appreciate.”
The long-term goals include, “Looking at a comprehensive capital expenditure project that would provide new access control, electronic surveillance, badging, visitor access management, and more. We want to do that because we want to modernize. We want to unify everything. We want to make it very intuitive, and we want to leverage the power of technology to help keep everyone on our campuses safe. I think the second long-term goal for me is that we want to inject security and security-minded thinking into the culture here because I think the culture previously didn’t know that security had a space inside that culture.”
Mr. Shuman asks the community for understanding of what they are doing along with patience. He is very open to the idea of feedback, whether that be validation, suggestions, or questions. As Mr. Shuman says, “A security program in part is only as good as the people interacting with it.” With 132 school shootings in the state of Florida, the Lake Highland community is grateful to be in the good hands of Secret Service-level security.
