Lindsey Wilkinson is a News Media Major and Political Science & French Minor at the University of Alabama. She is Food & Health editor for Alice - where she also serves as editor-in-chief for the 2021-2022 school year, a contributing writer for The Crimson White, quarterly article chair for Moxie Alabama, resident advisor in Presidential Village 1, and a mentor for the Media Writing Center. Lindsey started her internship at Homeland Security Today in 2021.
Brock Long is the former Administrator of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). Confirmed in June 2017 by the U.S. Senate with strong bipartisan support (95-4), Brock served as the nation’s principal advisor to the president responsible for coordinating the entire array of federal government resources down through 50 states, 573 tribal governments, and 16 island territories to assist them with executing disaster preparedness, mitigation, response, and recovery. Brock is the 10th Administrator and the youngest to hold the office. While serving as Administrator, Brock coordinated the federal government’s response to over 144 presidentially declared disasters and 112 wildfires, including three of the nation’s most devastating hurricanes and five of the worst wildfires ever experienced. During this time, nearly $44 billion of disaster activity occurred under the various federal recovery programs. As the FEMA Administrator, Brock led major initiatives that will have long-lasting impacts on the emergency management community. He rapidly transformed the agency’s business enterprise by implementing innovative Community Lifeline and FEMA Integration Team concepts to strengthen public-private partnerships and permanently embed full-time staff within the offices of state and tribal governments to better meet constituent needs. Further, as the result of his effective advocacy and eight influential congressional testimonies, the Disaster Recovery Reform Act (DRRA) became law in October 2018, making pre-disaster mitigation a national priority with the Building Resilient Infrastructure and Communities (BRIC) grant program. The DRRA also provided meaningful changes to the FEMA workforce and bolstered state and local emergency management capabilities. From 2008-2011, Brock served as Director of Alabama’s Emergency Management Agency (AEMA) under Governor Bob Riley. As Director, he served as the State Coordinating Officer for 14 disasters, including eight presidentially declared events. Brock also served as an on-scene State Incident Commander for the Alabama Unified Command during the Deepwater Horizon oil spill.
Patty Cogswell joined Guidehouse in September 2020 as a senior strategic advisor, working in the areas of innovation, organization and mission transformation and redesign across the national security sector.
Ms. Cogswell is a homeland and national security executive with 24 years of experience;13 years as a senior executive. She has led programs at the White House, Department of Homeland Security, and Department of Justice, in transportation, intelligence, policy, border security, screening, and information sharing initiatives. She possesses substantive expertise in: aviation, maritime, and surface transportation security, US government and foreign partner screening and vetting programs, counter terrorism, transnational organized crime, intelligence, information sharing and associated technology architectures, and immigration and border processes.
She has led multiple organizations through strategy, policy, technology execution, and operations in support of national security missions, as well as how to construct and implement both business and technical architectures. She led complex initiatives across the federal government and with international partners. She negotiated international agreements.
Prior to her arrival, she served in a number of roles within the Department of Homeland Security, including as the Deputy Administrator of the Transportation Security Administration, Assistant Director for Intelligence at the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Acting Undersecretary within the Office of Intelligence and Analysis, Acting Assistant Secretary for Policy Integration and Implementation, and Deputy Assistant Secretary for Screening Coordination. She previously served at the National Security Council as Acting Deputy Assistant to the President for Homeland Security and Counterterrorism, and as Special Assistant to the President for Transborder Security.
During her time in government, Ms. Cogswell received the DHS Outstanding Service Medal, the DHS Secretary’s Award, and the DHS Thought Leadership Award.
Ms. Cogswell received a Bachelor of Arts degree in Mathematics from the University of Pennsylvania with a minor in Economics and a Juris Doctor degree from the College of William and Mary, Marshall-Wythe School of Law.
Maha Ghazi is a research fellow at ICSVE studying the effects of ICSVE counternarratives in Arab countries, interviewing ex jihadists and working on issues of terrorist repatriation, rehabilitation and reintegration efforts. Maha is a Moroccan/ Egyptian Ph.D. candidate in University Mohamed V- Rabat (Morocco) in political and international studies. Her dissertation focuses on deradicalization programs in prisons, rehabilitation and reintegration of ex jihadist inmates. Maha’s Master’s thesis, with which she graduated with honors, analyzes the national strategies countering violent extremism inside prisons highlighting the Moroccan “Musalaha” program, launched in 2017. Maha Speaks Arabic (native: Classical, Moroccan, Egyptian and other dialects), English and French.
Kirsten Taylor-McCabe, Ph.D., is a Program Manager in the National Security and Defense. and Intelligence and Emerging Threats Program Offices within Global Security at Los Alamos National Laboratory. She is also the point of contact for the COVID-19 Modeling Team for DOE’s National Virtual Biotechnology Laboratory. Kirsten has spent the past 20 years in technical and programmatic oversight of biodefense projects varying from the detection of biological and chemical threats to novel data stream evaluations for biosurveillance. Kirsten holds a Ph.D. in Molecular Biochemistry from Loyola University Stritch School of Medicine and has served in varied Biosecurity Strategic Road mapping efforts. She may be reached at [email protected].
J. Patrick Fitch, Ph.D., is Associate Laboratory Director at Los Alamos National Laboratory responsible for the Chemical, Earth and Life Sciences Directorate and the Special Office for COVID-19 R&D. He also leads the COVID-19 Testing Team for DOE’s National Virtual Biotechnology Laboratory. For more than a decade, he directed one of the nation’s largest maximum biocontainment laboratories (BSL-2, 3, and 4) and oversaw the National Biological Threat Characterization Center and the National Bioforensic Analysis Center performing thousands of analyses each year. Pat is a biodefense and infectious disease expert with related experience in computing, medical device design, and the human genome program. Pat has chaired and served on biodefense panels of the National Academies and served on the National Science Advisory Board for Biosecurity. He is a Fellow of AAAS and a senior member of IEEE. Pat earned his Ph.D. in Engineering from Purdue University. He may be reached at [email protected].
Andrew Goldsmith was Vice President of Global Marketing at Rapiscan Systems and is now CEO of AGX Marketing (agxmarketing.com), a consulting firm focused on the homeland security technology sector.
Brock Long is the former Administrator of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). Confirmed in June 2017 by the U.S. Senate with strong bipartisan support (95-4), Brock served as the nation’s principal advisor to the president responsible for coordinating the entire array of federal government resources down through 50 states, 573 tribal governments, and 16 island territories to assist them with executing disaster preparedness, mitigation, response, and recovery. Brock is the 10th Administrator and the youngest to hold the office. While serving as Administrator, Brock coordinated the federal government’s response to over 144 presidentially declared disasters and 112 wildfires, including three of the nation’s most devastating hurricanes and five of the worst wildfires ever experienced. During this time, nearly $44 billion of disaster activity occurred under the various federal recovery programs.
As the FEMA Administrator, Brock led major initiatives that will have long-lasting impacts on the emergency management community. He rapidly transformed the agency’s business enterprise by implementing innovative Community Lifeline and FEMA Integration Team concepts to strengthen public-private partnerships and permanently embed full-time staff within the offices of state and tribal governments to better meet constituent needs. Further, as the result of his effective advocacy and eight influential congressional testimonies, the Disaster Recovery Reform Act (DRRA) became law in October 2018, making pre-disaster mitigation a national priority with the Building Resilient Infrastructure and Communities (BRIC) grant program. The DRRA also provided meaningful changes to the FEMA workforce and bolstered state and local emergency management capabilities.
From 2008-2011, Brock served as Director of Alabama’s Emergency Management Agency (AEMA) under Governor Bob Riley. As Director, he served as the State Coordinating Officer for 14 disasters, including eight presidentially declared events. Brock also served as an on-scene State Incident Commander for the Alabama Unified Command during the Deepwater Horizon oil spill.