Contingency Planning & Management

Inductees - Practitioner Category

Practitioner Category
individuals who direct, implement, and/or develop business continuity planning strategies or programs and have distinguished themselves as exemplary planners

2007: Mark Spreitzer
2006: Jeffrey M. Goldberg
2005: Elizabeth “Betty” G. Gravois
2004: Steve Yates
2003: Kelley Goggins
2002: Paul Honey
2001: Kathy Criss
2001: Raelene Wong
2000: David John
2000: Mark Thomas
1999: Rich Corcoran
1998: Joan Warren

Mark Spreitzer INDUCTED 2007

Mark Spreitzer is an executive consultant with the CGI Federal Enterprise Security Practice. He holds a degree in management of information systems and has more than 20 years of experience in engagement delivery, program/project management, risk management, emergency management, business continuity planning, disaster recovery and security disciplines. Mark developed and maintains CGI Federal’s BCP offering strategy and has sold and led many security projects, including those in the managed services, healthcare, financial services, and communications and government markets. Mark holds the Certified Business Continuity Planner certification from DRI International and has also been awarded engineering certifications from IBM and Novell.

Jeffrey M. Goldberg, CO-AEM, CHS-III Logistics Chief Palm Beach County Div. of Emergency Management INDUCTED 2006

Mr. Goldberg is Colorado Certified Associate Emergency Manager as well as a Certified Homeland Security Professional Level III and an accomplished and nationally recognized speaker with over 20 years in the emergency management, emergency services, and business continuity professions in field operations, planning and training. He is also the recipient of the 2006 Contingency Planning Management Hall of Fame award for outstanding contributions made to the business continuity planning field. Currently, he is the Logistics Chief with the Palm Beach County Division of Emergency Management. Prior to that, he worked for a number of emergency management consulting companies both pre and post 9/11 and led experienced teams of Special Operations personnel, trainers, exercise planners, facilitators, controllers, and evaluators.

Mr. Goldberg is the former Emergency Management Program Officer for the Library of Congress in Washington D.C. and was responsible for building the Library’s emergency management program from the ground up. While in DC, he coordinated with the FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Force, chaired the Capitol Hill Task Force on Emergency Management, served as the Emergency Response Team leader, and was involved in many other response and recovery programs on Capitol Hill including the State of the Union Address and the anthrax incident.

Elizabeth “Betty” G. Gravois, MBCI is an assistant vice president in the Business Resilience Department of New York Life Insurance Company. She has more than 30 years in the insurance/financial services industry with the last 10 years in business continuity planning initiatives. Gravois is certified by the Business Continuity Institute and has been a speaker at conferences, such as Survive! North America, the International Association of Emergency Managers and the World Conference on Disaster Management. She was an active participant in the 2003 BCI/DRII Joint Committee on Certification Standards and is currently active on the DRII/DRJ Glossary Committee as the BCI liaison and is on the current BCI/DRII Review Committee for Professional Standards. Prior to joining New York Life, Gravois worked as a business continuity consultant for PricewaterhouseCoopers and was a functional vice president in business continuity at Prudential Life Insurance.

Steve Yates, FBCI, is the group business continuity manager for Telewest Global plc. He has been a leader in the business continuity profession for 20 years and founded Corporate Integrity, a successful BC consultancy in England. He is a founding Fellow of the Business Continuity Institute, chairs the BCI’s London Forum and is a member of Contingency Planning Management’s Editorial Advisory Board.

Kelley Goggins is an MBCP and is on the certification board for the DRII. She has been involved in business continuity for 20 years and is recognized as an industry expert and a frequently requested speaker at industry conferences, including CPM. She assisted in the recovery of Fidelity’s office across the street from the World Trade Center following the September 11 terrorist attacks. During that effort, Ms. Goggins spent nine weeks in New Jersey supporting the recovery of Fidelity’s business operations. The alternate site used by Fidelity’s New York facility was built out and tested with Ms. Goggins as the project lead.

Paul Honey Since September 11, Paul Honey has been one of the most vocal and visible champions of business continuity planning. A first-hand participant in business recovery and employee relocation efforts for Merrill Lynch’s offices in lower Manhattan, his efforts have allowed others to learn from his experiences and have increased the awareness of business continuity planning.

Honey also has volunteered to chair the newly created Securities Industry Business Continuity Management Group, an organization aiming to help formulate an industry-wide response to future disasters, share information, and liaise with regulators.

Kathy Criss has been involved in business continuity since 1991, when, as a consultant, she developed, documented, and trained staff on corporate emergency response processes for management of all types of natural and man-made emergencies, conducted testing, coordinated the development of recovery plans, managed a project team to utilize training centers as recovery sites, and created security procedures to ensure safety and provide guidance to employees in the event of an emergency.

In 1998 she joined Magee-Womens Hospital to develop their disaster recovery program, which involved vendor selection, documentation of DR plans, budget development, and devising scenarios for conducting emergency preparedness drills. She serves as chair of the hospital's Emergency Management Subcommittee and acts as their Data Protection Officer.

In September of 1999, Criss was recognized by Pittsburgh Lt. Governor Mark Schweiker for her role in Three Rivers Contingency Planning Association's Y2K preparedness efforts. Criss was instrumental in the private/public partnership formed between the association and Allegheny County, Pa.

Raelene Wong has been Solectron's disaster recovery manager since 1997. She is responsible for the global development and implementation of disaster response and recovery systems and plans.

This includes creation and training of effective building/site emergency response teams; coordination of corporate-wide crisis management and business recovery teams, including establishment of standards, implementation of global data system, and site coordinator support; enhancement of current response procedures; conducting various levels of disaster drills and exercises; and participation on an internal ISO audit team.

Before Solectron, Wong worked for the City of Sunnyvale, Calif., as their emergency preparedness coordinator from 1991 to 1997. There she was charged with ensuring emergency management programs throughout the community and city government were developed, implemented, maintained, and tested. Responsibilities included directly supervising six program managers; coordinating multi-agency disaster exercises; writing /revising emergency plans and procedures; providing primary liaison between federal, state, county, and local government; serving as the designated aide to the director of Emergency Services during activation; and ensuring compliance with SEMS and other regulations.

With financial institutions facing significant change, there has been an on-going need to reduce operational risks by maintaining a solid business contingency plan. The efforts of David John, Director of Information Systems, have been focused on this issue for the past 18 years. His hardline approach to his high security job of Contingency Planner has strengthened Bayerische Landesbank's preparedness and mitigation strategies.

Today, Bayerische Landesbank is well-positioned to confront any type of business interruption due to David John being at the helm of Business Contingency Planning at our New York office. Throughout his career, David has been responsible for streamlining the branch levels of business continuity throughout the Branch by expanding the IT department with state-of-the-art technologies that would safeguard us from any type of disaster. His determination and foresight has been his driving force for establishing new and emerging business-continuity solutions.

The business industry, as a whole, has been in transition during the past few years. Nevertheless, under David's leadership, we have been able to keep pace with improved recovery solutions to protect us from all types of business disruptions. In the past, our recovery efforts primarily consisted of tape backups, power protection (UPS), fire control, microfiche and offsite tape-storage. However, in today's competitive market, David shifted his recovery efforts to include technologies designed to provide full-cycle data replication solutions for our Network and AS/400 systems.

David has been at the forefront of implementing back-office and front-office systems, developing contingency plans, and providing solutions for long-term management of the emerging E-Business, E-Commerce evolution.

As we look ahead to the new Millennium, David will be faced with new challenges, such as creating an enterprise-wide contingency plan to deal with multiple failures across the Bank's mission-critical systems. But with years of experience in contingency planning, David has undoubtedly implemented a solid disaster contingency plan, that in the event of a failure, regardless of the nature of the failure, we at Bayerische Landesbank New York can recover the Bank's data within minutes.

Mark Thomas' career involvement in contingency planning spans more than 22 years, 18 of those years spent with Goldman Sachs. His full-time responsibilities as Vice President and Manager of Information Technology over the last four years have been dedicated to the creation, design, and implementation of firm-wide strategies that enable recoverability, resumption, and normalization of Goldman Sachs' global technology and business units.

Mark was chosen as the senior manager to guide Goldman Sachs in contingency planning because of his diverse background in technology and his skill in managing new projects. During his years as senior manager, Mark has managed the firm-wide corporate data center and the associated technical support groups for all production processing platforms. He has also developed an automated data inventory application for mainframe platforms utilizing relational database technology and automated job control information for disaster recovery planning.

With the introduction of newer technologies being utilized in business areas, Mark concentrates on obtaining a level of authority in controlling the deployment of software tools and the impact they present. He also feels that understanding infrastructure changes is necessary to assist planners with business and technology impacts, and that change control and the determination of recovery implications are key to making the process successful.

Mark embraces all of these industry challenges and uses them to maintain a firm contingency plan for Goldman Sachs. Providing a standard global methodology and making recovery planning a part of everyone's job is one of Mark's major achievements. His work has made a significant difference in protecting Goldman Sachs, its customer assets, and overall loss prevention. With all of his hard work and determination in the contingency field, Mark Thomas is deserving of becoming a member of the CPM Hall of Fame.

Rich Corcoran Eastman Kodak Company Rochester, NY INDUCTED 1999

Rich Corcoran has been involved in disaster recovery for 10 years. He created the first mainframe recovery program at Kodak and is the manager for that program today. He also is the global recovery manager responsible for mainframe, distributed systems, telecommunications, and call center disaster recovery strategies. Corcoran has been a member of the IBM BRS customer advisory board and ITUG. He is the disaster recovery/business continuity champion for all of Kodak.

Corcoran is a keynote speaker at Kodak's worldwide annual I/S conference and has spoken at industry conferences.

Rich Corcoran is disaster recovery at Kodak and most deserving of the Hall of Fame.

Through directing a world-class business continuity program for more than 13 years, Joan Warren exemplifies the caliber of candidate appropriate for the CPM Hall of Fame. Joan's unselfish contributions to the disaster recovery/business continuity industry are exemplified through the Nike mantras of "Just Do It" and "I Can."

The Contingency Planning & Management Plan Profile, "Active Teamwork Gives Resources a Workout" (June 1997), accurately summarizes the breadth of the program that was developed through Joan's guidance. She began her disaster recovery career as the lone voice directing IT recovery. The program has grown to include five full-time staff members addressing non-traditional planning for manufacturing, distribution and warehouse recovery, traditional business areas, and information systems continuity throughout the US, Europe, Asia, Australia, and the Americas, including Latin American and Canadian business areas.

Putting the planning effort to work, Nike, through Joan's efforts, implemented a successful recovery of its Tetra Plastics subsidiary from the severe Midwest floods of 1993. Those lessons learned were incorporated into further planning and business strategies that continue to make Nike the world-class company it is today.

Joan works closely with vendors to not only assist with her needs, but also to help shape the vendors' programs to meet the ever-changing needs of the market on a national and international basis. Joan has also been unselfish in her support for other disaster recovery practitioners, whether through supporting other disaster recovery professionals, speaking at numerous association meetings, and national conferences, leading the development of the Oregon Contingency Planners, or just being there to answer a question or two. Joan's commitment to the business continuity community and to the sound business practices at Nike call for recognition as one of CPM's Hall of Fame inductees.