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An atypical life
SECURITY EXPERT SCOTT BIONDO FORGES TIES, HELPS KEEP JEWISH COMMUNITY SAFE BY ELLEN FUTTERMAN EDITOR-IN-CHIEF
To unwind at the end of a long day, Scott Biondo watches movies, especially ones about sports. His favorite is the 1986 film “Hoosiers,” which tells the story of a small-town Indiana high school basketball team in 1954 that makes the state championship. “I also like disaster movies,” he says. “I know people get hurt in those movies and it’s kind of sad to see that happen, but I like to see the rescue and the triumph. What I do not like, what I don’t need to see, are movies about real-life . . . I get that every day.” To be sure. Biondo is community security director at Jewish Federation of St. Louis. He looks out for the safety and well-being of more than 60 organizations and 75,000-plus people working in the greater St. Louis Jewish community. His responsibilities also extend to Jewish entities in outstate Missouri, southern Illinois and western Kentucky. His life could easily turn into a plot for a movie in both the worst ways and the best ways. People get hurt. Rescue. Triumph. In “real life,” as he says, he does his utmost to prevent harm from happening. His role as security chief encompasses enforcing security policy, protecting dignitaries, assessing vulnerabilities, monitoring threats, investigating hate crimes and conducting training of all kinds. He regularly assists organizations — both Jewish and other religious denominations — when they apply for grants from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. And he oversees a staff of 10 community security officers. “A typical day is not typical,” says Biondo, a compact man with slicked-back silver hair, ruddy complexion and ready smile. Nor is he. Biondo, as his surname implies, is not Jewish. At age 60, he is well seasoned in security, but his interests and passions extend way beyond public safety. He is a professional drummer, the latest in a long line of percussionists in his family. He is a genealogy buff. You can find a 750-word writeup on just that in a 2006 edition of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. It notes that he created a 125-foot family tree after which he organized a family reunion attended by more than 200 relatives. He is also a father to eight children, grandfather to 18, the youngest of whom was born two weeks ago, and husband to Lynne-Dale Biondo, who he has been married to for 33 years.
AND IN HIS SPARE TIME … He sat down with me to talk about his day job, which he has held since 2020. He started with what’s typical. “I can expect to have to review the community security officers’ reports on any given day. I can expect to have to respond to community requests for assistance and/or information on any given day. And of course, I have projects I know are forthcoming, like special events, galas, community-wide meetings, that kind of thing.” He keeps track of those events and more on a giant white board in his office at Federation. But it was the atypical that brought him from working as a security consultant for Federation to full-time and more. In 2017, as Biondo was working with Federation executives on security measures for its new headquarters building, the nearby Jewish Community Center received a bomb threat. “I asked if I could come along,” Biondo recalls as Federation executives met with Lynn Wittels, the J’s president and CEO, to plan a response. “I was watching at first,” he continues. “I just sensed that I should offer some input and asked if they would mind. Lynn was like I would love for you to offer some suggestions. “So we worked the process out and it worked out well. I think Don (Hannon, Federation’s COO at the time) saw that my background was not only varied on paper but that I had a much broader skill set than just physical security during construction projects. I had done more than that in my previous life.”
PRACTICING INTELLIGENCE-LED SECURITY Biondo’s hiring was part of a massive change in the way federations approached security. In 2018, while Biondo was consulting, only 25 of 150 federations nationwide employed a community security director. Now there are 93. “I didn’t think the job was for me, but I was happy to help them build it,” Biondo says, adding that his own private security business that he began in 2009 — the Scott Biondo Detective Agency — was doing well. He wasn’t looking to make a change. “It was a ‘Field of Dreams’ kind of thing. I had a vision of how to build something like this that is effective, productive and sustainable. The problem was that I knew to do that it would actually take doing that. This was something that needed to be built out in real time and built out in person.” What Biondo “built” and continues to grow are trusted relationships with hundreds of employees See SCOTT BIONDO on page 8
PHOTO: BILL MOTCHAN