LPRC - CrimeScience – The Weekly Review – Episode 235 Ft. Julie Lawson

Episode Date: April 16, 2026

In this special episode of the LPRC CrimeScience Podcast, host Dr. Cory Lowe is joined by Julie Lawson of the Loss Prevention Foundation (LPF). Julie highlights LPF’s 20th anniversary, reflecting on its impact on the industry while sharing exciting updates to their Certification programs. Tune in to hear how LPF continues to evolve and elevate education in loss prevention.

Hi everyone and welcome to crime science. In this podcast, we explore the science of crime and the practical application of this science for loss prevention and asset protection practitioners as well as other professionals. Good morning, good afternoon, and good evening everyone. Welcome to the Crime Science podcast. My name is Corey Lowe. I'm the director of research at the LPRC. And I have the pleasure in honor of being joined today by Julie Lawson with the LP Foundation.

Julie is the director of partnerships and business development there. And speaking of partners, she's an amazing one. A great friend of the LPRC and a great friend to all of our retailers, solution partner members, and other organizations throughout the industry. So Julie, thank you for joining us today. Thank you so much for having me, Corey. It's so exciting to be here, and I'm happy to be on. I'm very happy to have you.

y'all do a ton of important, absolutely critical work in this industry. And I know that you've got some awesome stuff coming up in 2026. So can you tell us what you're up to in 26 and the changes that you're most excited about? Well, I'm very glad that you did not make me pick just one because there are so many awesome things we have going on. For starters, this is our 20th year, which is exciting in and of itself. that's just completely been a launch pad for so many things that we have going on this year. We're very excited to announce that we're in the middle of reworking our courses for today's learner. So what that means is, yeah, we're providing multiple ways for our participant to be able to engage in the course, auditory, visual, etc.

So we're currently targeting October for the release of our LP qualified 2.0. And then we'll follow that up with the LP certified course because that's going to build off of the LP qualified course. And speaking of LP certified, last month in February, we released our new LPF Connect portal. And that portal allows LP certified individuals a much more streamlined way to enter CEUs and stay certified. So it's a much more simple process. And that webinar went great. and we've actually had almost 2,500 entries for CEOs just since we've launched it. It's incredible.

It's been awesome. And we've actually also recently added to our team. So that's going to be part of our student success side, which paves the way to launch our new OneLP program. So OneLP, we just launched it this week. It is a retailer-focused program, and that's going to be designed to simply, training and certification and talent development, all while delivering that hands-on support and measurable outcomes for retail teams. So very excited for that program, and the participation of it is going to signal that commitment to excellence and unified industry standards, and really

leadership that helps move our profession forward. So so many great things to come in 2026. Yeah, and the timing, the timing is interesting because you're releasing 2.0 in October, and there's something else that happens around that time every year that's an amazing event, which is the Leadership Summit that y'all have every single year. How's the content shaping up for that? It sounds like you probably have some plans already, but how's that coming along for the planning? We do. So we have created a content committee, so we're definitely working on content much more earlier

as we have tried to plan as much as possible since this is our 20th year, and we want it to be a great year. So we've already secured several sessions that does support. that executive level training that we have there. We are still soliciting ideas from our attendees to fill out those last few available sessions. But as you know, overall, our goal for the entire event is really to support both learning and networking, which we're totally on track for having another amazing agenda

and another next level event. So super excited, Clearwater Beach, here we come. Yeah. Y'all do tremendous work. Y'all are constantly filling in the gaps in the industry. Where do you see some of the gaps in AP talent right now in terms of capability, leadership, all of those things? I think one of the things that we've really focused on the last couple years is really truly preparing the future leaders in our industry. And that continues to be the biggest gap within AP talent at the moment.

If we're not as a whole strategically thinking about the future and our succession planning, that paves the way for gaps within not just that institutional knowledge, but also leadership as well. And it's important to bring along those folks on that talent journey so that when they're presented with that opportunity, that they're thriving in the opportunity and not trying to survive within that fire, right? So with that, knowing more than just your own business

is also key, just as key as institutional knowledge. Being able to leverage networks and connections like ours, that just helps create a stronger talent pipeline and keep the importance of our function as a whole relevant for years to come. I mean, we've seen senior leaders leave positions that they haven't prepared their potential future leaders in that next in line, which just creates that ripple effect. And so bringing the people along and bringing their individuals along prepares them for their next stages in their leadership journey.

I mean, back in October, we had that session, leadership readiness, where there's great leaders on stage and they they had also those folks that had succeeded them and they talked about what they did to prepare them and some great ideas that came from that were if you're going into a big presentation for maybe another department or maybe who you report into to have that person create the powerpoint for it maybe have them actually go through and do part of the presentation or the whole presentation it doesn't mean that you're any less it means that you're any less it that you're preparing your department for if something happens, if you retire, or if you're on vacation, or if you go on leave. And it's showing that that is a sustainable department and an

important department. Yeah. I think that's also why the certifications that y'all have are so critical. You might, in your function within an LP program, you might pick up and become very good at your function within that department, but the certification program gives you that kind of broad base of knowledge that you can apply throughout the program. That brings us to credentials versus competence. Those are two very different things, credentialing versus whether you actually know your stuff and can actually execute. How can we use certification to drive real performance in this industry? That's a really great question because competence and institutional knowledge is vital. It's equally as essential as also being exposed to those other areas.

areas within our industry. And that includes conferences like LPRC or NRF or RELA because those allow for broader ideas and solutions that can help solve problems. And that's sometimes where I would say competency stops because organizations don't necessarily, whether it's they don't have the funds or they don't have the time, they don't have the bandwidth. There could be a lot of reasons, but they don't send their individuals for that continued education. And sometimes that's where that competency stops at the door. Whereas credentialing, it's incredibly important because professions as a whole, they're built on shared standards that are collectively adopted to ensure consistency and credibility and trust. And that helps bridge the gaps which streamlines processes, and it allows our industry to

collectively advance with shared priorities, shared agenda, shared objectives, which you're seeing with many of the different spaces within our industry for a lot of those objectives. but credentialing it's so incredibly important. Yeah, I mean that's something that differentiates a profession from a job, right? It's having some common definitions. If you think about the medical field, legal field, they have DSM-5 in medicine, right? The standard criteria for understanding what a problem is. That's what a profession has.

If you could align the industry on one common set of definitions, metrics, anything, thing. What would it be and why? That's a loaded question, but aligning on industry standards and credentialing like the LP qualified and LP certified, that does help the definitions and the terms fall into place. Metrics, on the other hand, I'm not going to tackle that one because that is an entirely other bear because organizations, every organization, every vertical within the industry, they all have different metrics that define success. I mean, I was thinking about it earlier. the LPRC, I'm sure you've gotten data where you've tried to streamline some of that data that has come in and an incident over here, maybe an entirely incident over here, and do you really classify that together to quantify that?

So if I only had to pick one, I would probably say for that reason alone, definition surrounding incidents to help align organizations from store A to store B or company A to company B, and then also across the industry as a whole and law enforcement so that we could, quantify some of those metrics. Yes. It's not just throughout the industry, it's also getting in line with law enforcement so that when everyone's talking about apples, they're all talking about the same kind of apples. Exactly. Versus oranges versus pumpkins. It's a challenge. We actually just ran an article in NLP Mag about that and the work that Sam on the team is doing. So Julie, as always, it's been fantastic, spending some time with you and talking with you today. We appreciate you being here

an impact with us, and we appreciate the partnership, which part of your job. So thank you very much, Julie. It's been wonderful. Thank you so much for having me, Corey. I appreciate being here. It's always a pleasure. Thank you. Thanks for listening to the Crime Science Podcast, presented by the Lost Prevention Research Council. If you enjoyed today's episode, you can find more crime science episodes and valuable information at LPRsearch.org. The content provided in the the Crime Science Podcast is for informational purposes only and is not a substitute for legal, financial, or other advice. Views expressed by guests of the Crime Science podcast are those of the authors and do not reflect the opinions or positions of the Loss Prevention Research Council.