Association of Continuity Professionals upcoming events

ACP DC Virtual Webinar: BCM Maturity, External Threats and the Case for Technology (10 Aug 2026)

Mon, 10 Aug 2026 21:00:00 GMT

ACP DC Virtual Webinar

BCM Maturity, External Threats and the Case for Technology

August 10 | 5:00 PM ET

How do you know where your BC program actually stands? And how do you move it forward with confidence?

In this one-hour virtual session, Marie-Helene Primeau (Executive Vice President, Premier Continuum) and Senad Cehajic (OMERS/Oxford Properties) will walk through the practical realities of BCM maturity: what it means, how external threats are raising the bar, and how the right technology can give practitioners a clearer, more defensible picture of their programs.

Whether you are building a program from the ground up or looking to advance one that has been running for years, this session offers a practitioner-to-practitioner perspective on what works.

Open to ACP DC members and guests. Registration: https://lp.constantcontactpages.com/ev/reg/nmkz28s

Chapter Webinar with ACP North Carolina (12 Aug 2026)

Wed, 12 Aug 2026 19:00:00 GMT

Webinar with Jeanne Powell - Business Impact Analysis (19 Aug 2026)

Wed, 19 Aug 2026 15:00:00 GMT

Subject: Jeanne Powell - Special Guest - Business Impact Analysis

When: Wednesday, August 19, 2026 10:00 AM-11:30 AM (UTC-06:00) CT.
Where: Microsoft Teams Meeting

We hope you will block your calendars for this event!

As an ACP member, you have the opportunity to brush with greatness; Jeanne Powell will be our featured speaker sharing her extensive knowledge and experience with Professional Practice #3.

Jeanne is the CEO/President and Principal Consultant of DAHR Consulting, Inc., and an instructor for the Disaster Recovery Institute International (DRI International). She retired from IBM Corporation after a distinguished 36-year career, including 26 years with IBM Resiliency Services US, where she served as Business Continuity Program Manager overseeing 17 US recovery data centers.

Jeanne holds DRI International's Master Business Continuity Professional (MBCP), Certified Risk Management Professional (CRMP), and Certified Cyber Resilience Professional (CCRP) designations, and she is a member of the Association of Continuity Professionals (ACP). She also held certifications as a Project Management Professional (PMP) through the Project Management Institute and as an IBM Senior Project Manager prior to her retirement. Her deep technical and operational expertise enabled her to support IT disaster recovery efforts for more than 100 companies at IBM hot sites, before she shifted her focus to leading IBM's internal business continuity and recovery programs.

Beyond her corporate career, Jeanne has spent more than 20 years as a leader in her local Community Emergency Response Team (CERT) and Explorer Post 1. She is a trained and experienced Incident Commander, Search and Rescue responder, and Swift Water Rescue technician, and she serves as a certified CERT instructor.

Jeanne is known for delivering her professional and field-tested knowledge with candor and humor, making her sessions both practical and engaging. .. Just ask about the 3-legged chair!

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Government SIG: Continuity of Operations (COOP) Modernization in a Distributed Workforce (20 Aug 2026)

Thu, 20 Aug 2026 17:00:00 GMT

This session will focus on adapting COOP plans for remote/hybrid government operations. First-hand lessons learned will be shared regarding continuity planning, primarily for a remote/hybrid workforce.

Speakers

Bob Smith

Bob has served in government continuity and resilience for over 20 years. His government service includes serving as a local emergency manager in West Virginia, Virginia, and Florida; serving as a consultant to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security during the Obama administration; developing state-level emergency plans for critical infrastructure; and his current position as Continuity and Emergency Management Program Manager for the Colorado Governor’s Office of Information Technology. Bob has also worked in the private sector, including designing and leading a global crisis management training and exercise program for a Fortune 500 company and leading emergency preparedness efforts for high-profile events, including the Super Bowl, the Olympics, the Iditarod, and the World Cup.

ACP Our Members Speak: Planning for a Mass Attack in the Workplace - Lessons Learned from Those Who Survived (20 Aug 2026)

Thu, 20 Aug 2026 17:00:00 GMT

Presenter: Suzanne Bernier, CEM, CBCP –Author of Disaster Heroes, Vice-President of the Resilience Information Exchange (RIE) – Toronto Chapter & Advocate for mass attack survivors and bereaved families

Outline: In her volunteer time, Suzanne is part of an international team that work with disaster and active shooter survivors and families, helping them heal and give back through art therapy. She has met with survivors or families from across the globe after mass attacks like the Orlando Pulse Nightclub, the Las Vegas outdoor concert, the Parkland High School shooting, the Manchester bombing attacks and sadly many more.

Suzanne has met with and interviewed several survivors and bereaved families, who wanted to share their personal stories and experiences on what went well, what didn’t go well, and provide recommendations on how companies and communities can better plan for, manage, and recover from these types of attacks in the future.

In this presentation, Suzanne will review the findings, observations and recommendations based on the San Bernardino and other mass attack survivors’ perspective, published in a White Paper co-authored by herself and renowned UK-based trauma psychotherapist and author of Power to Recover, Dr. Liz Royle.

While we may not be able to prevent or predict every active shooter, workplace violence, or terror incident in the future, we CAN help ensure communities and organizations can better plan for, respond to, and recover from such tragedies if or when they do occur.

Bio:

Suzanne is a multi-certified, award-winning crisis consultant, speaker, and author, who has helped organizations across the globe plan for, respond to, and recover from disasters for nearly 30 years. She was the first female ever to be appointed to the role of Emergency Management Field Officer in Canada and was named 2016’s ‘Continuity & Resilience Consultant of the Year – North America’ by the Business Continuity Institute (BCI) and had the honor of being a guest speaker at The White House later that same year.

Suzanne has helped respond, rebuild or recover from numerous crises, including the Manchester, San Bernardino, Brussels, and 9/11 terror attacks, Hurricanes Katrina & Sandy, the H1N1 & COVID pandemics, the 2003 SARS epidemic, the 2003 Northeast Blackout, as well as numerous floods, wildfires, and severe storms. Prior to her career in BC/EM, Suzanne was a journalist and government press secretary.

Suzanne’s critically acclaimed 2015 book, Disaster Heroes, tells the stories of ordinary men, women and children who have done extraordinary things to help respond, recover, and rebuild following some of the world’s most significant modern disasters. She is currently working on several new projects, including a Disaster Heroes podcast, documentary series, and the 2^nd Edition of her book, ‘Disaster Heroes TOO – The 2^nd Edition’.

AI for BC Teams: Three Tasks to Automate This Quarter and Two to Never Hand Over (22 Sep 2026)

Tue, 22 Sep 2026 17:00:00 GMT

You’re are being asked to adopt AI. Some uses will help. Others will quietly produce polished, plausible, wrong answers that nobody will notice until an actual event. This session gives you a practical way to tell the difference. Fusion experts will share 3 business continuity tasks where AI can save time this quarter, and call out 2 areas to keep in human hands. Task complexity is the wrong dividing line. The key question is whether the underlying business data is current and governed. AI built on a reliable model of the business is an accelerator. AI built on stale assumptions produces output that reads as finished, then fails when it counts. You will leave with a short list you can act on and a one-question test for whether any given task is safe to automate, something you can take back to your team and defend.

Key Takeaways

Identify 3 BC tasks where AI saves real time this quarter
Recognize the 2 areas where automated output creates hidden risk
Apply a quick test for whether a task is safe to automate
Understand why automated output is only as good as the data beneath it
Bring a defensible AI-use position back to your own team.

Speakers:

Melanie Lucht, MBCP, MBCI, CIC, CCM, ARM

Sr VP, Customer Engagement, Fusion

Tim Hollingsworth

Principal Infrastructure Engineer

Early Careerist SIG: Color Me Resilient: The ABC’s of Bouncing Forward (23 Sep 2026)

Wed, 23 Sep 2026 17:00:00 GMT

Resilient: a word that evokes strength. According to Merriam-Webster, there are two viable definitions: (1) “the capacity to withstand or to recover quickly from difficulties; toughness,” and (2) “the ability of a substance or object to spring back into shape; elasticity.” While I greatly respect this longstanding dictionary, I contend that there may be two different messages being communicated. The first sets the stage for strength in the face of challenge. The second, while noting the reference to elasticity, includes a word that may be a bit problematic in the overall definition: “back.” When recovering from difficulties, do we really want to revert to the same shape, or is the goal to expand past what we knew, to settle into an evolved understanding?

Speakers

Michele Turner

Marriott International

Michele L. Turner, MBCP, FBCI, CISA, CRISC, CCRP, CRMP, CHPCP, is an Amazon #1 bestselling author, keynote speaker, and resiliency leader with over 30 years’ experience in the areas of Governance, Risk, and Compliance. She is the Chairperson of the Board of Directors for the Disaster Recovery Institute (DRI) International, and Head of Global Business Resilience and Program Services for Marriott International. This global role includes Above-Property Operational Resilience Planning, Risk Mitigation, Product Management, and Program Services for the Risk Management organization. Prior roles include Head of Global Business Resiliency for Amazon Corporate, as well as Governance, Risk, Compliance, and Business Continuity roles within Microsoft.

DRJ Fall Conference (27 Sep 2026)

Sun, 27 Sep 2026 05:00:00 GMT

Learn more and register on DRJ's website here.

Education SIG: The Value of AI to Assist with Emergency Planning, Training, and Exercising: From the Classroom to the Simulation Lab (22 Oct 2026)

Thu, 22 Oct 2026 17:00:00 GMT

Artificial intelligence is rapidly reshaping how emergency managers plan for, train against, and exercise responses to an increasingly complex threat landscape. This 30-minute presentation explores the practical value of AI across the full preparedness cycle, examining how emerging tools can strengthen hazard and risk assessment, accelerate plan development and review, generate realistic exercise scenarios and injects, and enhance after-action analysis and continuous improvement.

Speakers

Dr. Bernard Jones, MBCP

St. John's University

Dr. Bernard Jones is an Associate Professor at St. John’s University in the Division of Criminal Justice and Homeland Security. He is a certified business continuity and disaster recovery professional with over 25 years of experience designing, implementing, and managing enterprise-level business continuity, disaster recovery, and emergency management programs across both the public and private sectors.

Cybersecurity/IT SIG: Cybersecurity / IT SIG Roundtable Panel Discussion (19 Nov 2026)

Thu, 19 Nov 2026 18:00:00 GMT

Banking & Finance SIG: Enterprise Risk Management: Topics in the Financial Industry: Focus on the Current Risk Landscape (17 Dec 2026)

Thu, 17 Dec 2026 18:00:00 GMT