BCI USA Chapter announces new Committee and fresh initiatives
The BCI is pleased to announce the newly appointed committee for the BCI USA Chapter, which includes:
- Melissa Mack MBCI – Leader
- Cary Jasgur FBCI – Vice leader
- Austin Cruz – Committee member
- Gayle Anders MBCI – Committee member
- Andrew Tillman CBCI – Committee member
- Robin Ploeger CBCI – Future leader
Melissa Mack, the new leader of the Chapter, commented: “The 2023-24 BCI USA Chapter Committee Members are excited to get to work! We’ve already had an initial brainstorming session, and I’m delighted to be serving alongside our new vice leader, Cary Jasgur.”
Here, Melissa has elaborated on some of the themes and initiatives that the committee will be focusing on this year:
Member engagement – We want to ensure that BCI USA Chapter members are seeing value in their memberships. Austin Cruz leads our member engagement collaboration stream and is passionate about finding ways for BCI members to stay connected in meaningful ways. We have ideas in the works to help ensure that the topics, events, and research reports relevant to our Chapter are accessible and well-communicated.
It’s important to us that our members know what opportunities are available to them. We will also be continuing our bi-monthly newsletter, highlighting initiatives that we are working on, member spotlights, and offering ways for Chapter members to get involved. We’re grateful to the Thought Leadership team, led by Rachael Elliott, for their excellent research reports, and especially for the region-specific webinars to launch the reports and highlight the findings for our region. Additionally, our BCI USA Chapter thought leadership collaboration stream, led by Scott Baldwin MBCI and John Beattie FBCI, will be finding ways to share innovative strategies with our members that are US-specific.
Bringing new talent into the industry – we see tremendous growth potential for the resilience industry in the US, and we want to help bring new people into the field and support them along the way. We are planning several ways to accomplish this; with our diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) collaboration stream, led by Mikaela Mitchell and Aimee Galindo-Pena CBCI, working on initiatives to enhance DEI and belonging in the industry. New BCI USA Chapter committee member Gayle Anders has also identified a great opportunity to work with active duty and recently retired military members looking to transition into the private sector. Elsewhere, new Chapter committee member Andy Tillman is developing an initiative to support people who are entering the resilience industry from a different background. So many of us have come from other disciplines and industries and have been “voluntold” that we are now business continuity planners. We will be developing ways to support folks who are new to the industry, even if they did not explicitly choose this path.
Ongoing programmes
The BCI USA Chapter has been a leader in developing programmes that can be rolled out by other Chapters or at a global level. For example, the Future Leader programme was started in the BCI USA Chapter. Our newest Future Leader, Robin Ploeger CBCI, is now starting her 2-year term and is bringing fresh eyes and new ideas to our initiatives.
Another successful programme is our monthly Happy Hour and Fireside Chat. These informal chats are the highlight of my month! Open to anyone in the resilience industry, we encourage folks to show up with any questions or topics they would like to discuss, or just join in for the networking fun. Since our Chapter is so geographically large, it makes in-person events difficult. The Happy Hour and Fireside Chats have become a great face-to-face (albeit virtual) networking opportunity that is very difficult to come by outside of conferences or other in-person events. We hold a Happy Hour and Fireside Chat on the third Thursday of each month at 4:30 p.m. ET. We encourage anyone interested in attending to register here: https://www.thebci.org/event-detail/event-calendar/bci-usa-chapter-fireside-chat.html
Getting in contact
Finally, we want to ensure that our members know how to reach out to us with any questions, ideas, or comments. The BCI USA Chapter committee members can be reached at: [email protected] We also have our BCI USA Chapter LinkedIn group: https://www.linkedin.com/groups/1883327/