Meet Gayle Moore, a lady whose career path is the stuff we all dream about.

Today, Gayle is the head of the MGM Studio’s security services; a job most of us would love to have. Her new title is Vice President, Director of Corporate Security. But Gayle’s trip to the west coast and title change were preceded by other interesting and exciting career moves that she personally credits to networking and having good connections.

In 1971 Gayle started out as a student of Police Science at Washington State University. In 1975 she was hired as a police officer at WSU and from there (through people knowing her work) got on the Washington State Patrol in a special commissioned position to do undercover drug work.

In 1979 she went to the ATF as a Special Agent. Later she worked in their crime lab and was the only woman there at the time.

Around 1982, the ATF and the Secret Service were in the process of planning a merger so Gayle was brought over to the Secret Service early in anticipation of this union.

Although the merger never took place, Gayle stayed with the Secret Service for the next 20 years.

The Secret Service has a typical career path within its own structure. For the first 5 years the agent is in the field learning his/her craft and can be sent wherever the agency pleases – this certainly doesn’t make it easy for an agent with a family. The next 3 to 5 years are spent on protection detail which could be from guarding the President and his family to guarding a visiting dignitary. After that, the agent goes back in the field and has the option of bidding on supervisory positions.

With Gayle’s 20 years in the Secret Service, she had done it all and been all over the world. Her protection duties included many foreign dignitaries and with the assignments to Presidents Ford and Clinton came several flights on Air Force One. 

The only problem she ever had in a foreign country was in Budapest when she was in charge of transportation for President Clinton. Gayle says that the Budapest security men were shocked that a woman would be driving President Clinton’s limousine. She says that the look of disbelief on their faces as she slid behind the wheel and drove away was something she will remember for ever! 

Gayle was also assigned to criminal investigations in the Treasury. She did Protective Intelligence work – the art of profiling a mentally ill person who makes threats against the President, dignitaries or movie stars. She’s been in just about every state in the union and in Chile, Russia, Tahiti, Budapest and Japan. 

Her last few years with the Secret Service were served in L.A. where she supervised 12 special agents assigned to the Bank Fraud Squad. Gayle says that bank fraud is a huge problem with the counterfeiting of commercial bank checks and 80% of this is coming from outside the United States.

Then in August of 2002, Gayle retired from the Secret Service to start a new phase in her career path – head of security for the MGM Studios. 

MGM is the smallest of the 7 major studios and does not have its own studio lot so everything is off site. Since Gayle is in charge of security for all studio products, productions, property, Internal 
Affairs, corruption, physical security and fraud, this can present some logistic problems. However, Gayle says MGM is a “lean, mean company” and it’s easy to manage her new responsibilities.

Some of the typical problems Gayle faces are internal embezzlement with corporate credit cards, people posing on the internet as MGM agents and luring young women into compromising situations and the pirating of pre-release movies.

Gayle is the only woman studio security chief in the United States. She says the other studio security chiefs are very professional, highly competent people who have backgrounds in law enforcement. They all meet once a month to exchange ideas and problems. It is important to keep communication open between them as what effects one studio could become a problem to another.

Gayle is thoroughly enjoying this new challenge in her life. And even though she is an intelligent, highly educated, extremely competent individual, she is not shy about stressing the importance of networking as a key resource to advancement in anyone’s career – which is why she maintains her NAWLEE membership!