The ACP National Board consists of 12 directors elected by the membership. Each director is elected for a three-year term and may serve two consecutive terms. The Board has three executive officer positions: chairperson, secretary and treasurer. Officers are elected annually by the National Board. The elections for vacant board seats and officers occur each year by December 31.
ACP National Board Chair
Michael Gifford
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Executive Committee Co-Chair
Strategic Partnerships Committee Co-Chair
Michael Gifford returns to the National Board, having served 5 years, including as National Chair (2012-2013). He was one of the founding members or the Alamo Chapter – San Antonio, TX, and served as its first Chapter President.
Michael has a very broad range of business continuity, disaster recovery, and crisis management experience. His professional experience includes progressive senior leadership roles in Information Technology, having worked in both the financial and retail sectors.
As an experienced senior leader and practitioner, Michael has served as BCM Program “Champion”, coach, and mentor. He’s an accomplished storyteller who can help business teams understand the “why” through sharing real event experiences.
Michael has a passion for helping others that can be seen through his involvement with numerous Non-Profit Organizations, including ACP. Michael believes there is no greater reward that giving back and making a difference in your community.
ACP National Board Treasurer
Allan Schmidt, MBCP, MBCI, CPSPC
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Marketing Committee Co-Chair
Allan serves as a Senior Professional, Business Continuity with CoreLogic. He is a seasoned Business Continuity Management Professional with a technology driven business background and MBA degree who utilizes a risk management approach in assessing both internal and external client needs in order to determine the optimal solutions for ensuring resilience and recovery capability. Having a diverse business background, Allan’s areas of expertise includes Business Continuity and Resiliency, Crisis Management, Disaster Recovery Planning, and Business Process Improvement with special interest in Strategic Planning and Management.
In 2016, Allan earned his Master Business Continuity Professional (MBCP) certification with DRII and his Member Grade (MBCI) with the international Business Continuity Institute. In 2018, he earned his Certified Public Sector Continuity Professional (CPSCP) with DRII, reflecting his years of experience working in and with the public sector. Having joined ACP and the North Texas Chapter of ACP in 2013, he is honored to continue to serve on the National Board of ACP.
ACP National Board Secretary
Dr. Roberta (Robbie) LaRocca, CPP, MBCI
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Education Committee Co-Chair
Dr. Roberta LaRocca has been working in the pharmaceutical industry for most of her career within various functions including the past 15 years establishing Business Continuity Programs first at Wyeth and most recently at Merck. She is also a Principle at ProTinue which focuses on enterprise risk management services. In addition to North America, she has done business continuity work in Latin America, Europe, Middle East, Africa and Asia.
Her doctorate is in Educational Leadership and her doctoral research centered on public/private partnerships during an infectious disease outbreak. She is also a Certified Fraud Examiner, a Certified Protection Professional and a member and former board member of the Business Continuity Institute.
ACP National Board Member
Megan Epperson, CBCP, CBCV
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Chapter Development Committee Co-Chair
Megan Epperson is an extremely passionate and forward-thinking security leader who is an extremely unique position of the intersection of cyber risk management, business continuity and cloud security with demonstrated experience at several highly regulated firms.
She is currently the Director of Cyber Risk & Resiliency for IHS Markit, a position she has operated in for almost 4 years reporting to the CISO. Her current role focuses on driving Cyber Risk/Business Continuity/Crisis Management/DR cloud migrating programs plus engineering the transition to an overarching Operational Resiliency framework through strategy development and resource allocation for a $48B Global Firm. Prior to working at IHS Markit, Megan was the Associate Director of Organizational Risk & Resiliency Management for Ipreo, where she redesigned traditional Business Continuity plans to advance the firms overall resiliency by design methodology. This enhancement successfully eliminated the requirement to maintain multiple BC plans across the firm. She has also operated as the Lead Consultant for a large retail chain, advising them on best practices and focusing on enhancing their longstanding Disaster Recovery & Resiliency programs. Before that, she spent roughly 6 years working in the Financial Services industry concentrating on identifying risks and testing mitigations strategies with varying threat scenarios. Megan has spent the past 15 years working in information security and risk management, starting in the private sector as an enlisted soldier and working her way up to a company grade officer in the US Army.
Megan has demonstrable experience leading cross-functional information security and risk teams towards successful risk reduction in support of security programs in multiple industries such as financial services, energy, transportation, and retail. Noteworthy achievements include creating a multidisciplinary bespoke impact and risk assessment methodology to identify crown jewel products/services and applications by scaling various risk domains and spanning across 42 global businesses. She has also successfully implemented BC/DR programs, for numerous organizations, by staying current on industry trends and the continuously evolving threat landscape.
Megan has obtained a few noteworthy industry certifications: Certified Information Security Manager (CISM), Certified Data Privacy Solution Engineer (CDPSE), Business Continuity Institute’s Member (MBCI), Certified Business Continuity Professional (CBCP), and Certified Business Continuity Vendor (CBCV)
Megan enjoys spending her free time traveling and presenting at various industry conferences, mentoring women in technology, continue to advance knowledge on infosec & cloud risks, and serving on the Association of Continuity Professionals (ACP) National Board; co-chairing the Chapter Development Committee.
ACP National Board Member
Dr. Bernard A. Jones
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Innovations Committee Co-chair
Dr. Bernard Jones is an Assistant Professor at St. John’s University in the College of Professional Studies, Division of Criminal Justice, Legal Studies and Homeland Security. He is a certified business continuity, disaster recovery, and emergency management profession with more than 20 years of experience with the review, implementation, and management of enterprise business continuity, disaster recovery, and emergency management programs.
Dr. Jones earned a D. Sc. degree from New Jersey City University in Civil Security Leadership, Management and Policy, a M.S. degree from New Jersey Institute of Technology in Emergency Management & Business Continuity, a M.S. degree from Kean University in Management Information Systems and a B.S. degree from the University of Phoenix in Management Information Systems.
His professional, research and teaching agenda focuses on organizational resilience, homeland security, critical infrastructure protection and analysis, disaster preparedness, and emergency management. He is passionate and focused on assisting organizations in quantifying their resilience posture, allowing them to work toward addressing their resilience weaknesses driving toward enhancing disaster preparedness. His focus continues to center on how to help impart a culture of disaster preparedness, serving as a means toward enhanced resilience.
ACP National Board Member
Stuart Murray, CBCP
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Strategic Partnerships Committee Co-Chair
Stuart Murray is the head of Global Information Resiliency at Jabil, Inc., a Fortune 150 global manufacturing services company. Stuart leads an IT team focused on developing DR strategies and plans for Jabil’s global IT operations that span 125 locations in 30+ countries.
Stuart has developed expert level of business continuity, disaster recovery and crisis management in his 25+ year IT career. As a member of the Tampa Bay chapter of ACP and now as a national board member, he hopes to leverage his experience to enhance the Strategic Partnerships that the ACP develops.
ACP National Board Member
Todd Ray
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Innovations Committee Co-Chair
Todd Ray is President of RMANAGING Consulting LLCand a Business Resilience and Continuity professional with more than 25years of strategic and operational experience in Enterprise Risk Management, Crisis Management, Disaster Recovery and Emergency Response.Todd specializesin creatingand managingcomplete Business ContinuityManagement SystemsandIT Service Continuity Programsforhighly regulated companies such as Novartis Pharmaceutical and Pfizer.In addition,he is anactive member of InfraGard and a Certified Critical InfrastructureLiaisonOfficefor the US Government.Todd has held positions of escalating responsibility working for various internationalorganizations and served as a Non-Commission Officer in the U.S. Air Force. He was in charge of U.S. andAir Force Space Command C3 (Command, Control & Communications) teams.
ACP National Board Member
Catherine (Cathy) Robbins, MBCP
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Marketing Committee Co-Chair
Cathy is the Director of Risk Management & Corporate Services at GuideWell Source. She oversees corporate home office support services on behalf of four operating companies, spanning 10 offices in six states, Puerto Rico and US Virgin Islands, serving as the nation's largest administrator of the Medicare program.
Cathy’s responsibilities include establishing and maintaining programs that integrate risk management with existing management processes to evaluate effective strategies for managing the companies' risk exposure. She also leads a best-practice enterprise business continuity and disaster recovery program that exceeds stringent Federal contracting information security requirements and complies with ISO certification standards. Other areas of accountability include leading the enterprise’s incident management and safety programs and recently launched a comprehensive workplace violence prevention program.
Cathy has over 12 years’ experience in the business continuity and disaster recovery profession. She received her B.S. in Health Care Administration from Southern Illinois University and her MBCP from DRI International. Cathy is also a member of the ACP Northeast Florida chapter.
ACP National Board Member
Jennifer Rosario
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Membership Engagement Committee Co-Chair
Jennifer Rosario is the CISO for Spreedly, a financial technology company based out of Durham, NC. She has over 20 years of experience in IT Operations, IT Service Management, and Information Security (IS). She has a proven background in delivering expert-level cyber security guidance, developing, implementing and maturing IS programs. Her passion comes from bringing people, process and technology together to deliver value to the business. Jennifer’s certifications include CISSP (Certified Information Systems Security Professional), CRISC (Certified in Risk and Information Systems Control), and ITIL (IT Infrastructure Library) Foundation. Jennifer graduated from the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill with a Bachelor of Science degree in Information Science.
ACP National Board Member
Alicia Stevens
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Member Engagement Committee Co-Chair
Alicia Stevens is an accomplished staffing professional with over 20 years of combined HR and Staffing experience. Alicia is responsible for implementing strategies that enable BC Management to recruit, a high-performing and motivated workforce for her clients. Alicia specializes in talent management, staffing execuitve search, employment development, compensation analysis, and coaching and career development.
Alicia currently services on the National Board of Directors for the Association of Contingency Planners as the Co-chair of Membership Engagement and she has previously served as the Director of Program Development and Membership for the Association of Contingency Planners Orange County Chapter. Additionally, Alicia is a member of the Business Resumption Managers Association. Alicia holds a Bachelor of Science in Behavioral Science from National University in San Diego, California and she is an active participant in the Disaster Recovery Journal and Continuity Insights annual conferences.
