** UPDATE!**
The ASIS Chapter 119 Annual Law Enforcement Appreciation Banquet has been postponed until January. A date will be released as soon as it is confirmed. Thank you for your patience.
The Guest Speaker will be Dr. Jennifer Hesterman.
Dr. Jennifer Hesterman, U.S. Air Force (retired), was commissioned in 1986 as a graduate of Air Force ROTC at Penn State University. Dr. Hesterman served in three Pentagon tours, and commanded in the field multiple times during her military career. Her final assignment was Vice Commander at Andrews Air Force Base, Maryland, where she was responsible for installation security, force support, and the 1st Helicopter Squadron. She regularly escorted the President and other heads of State on the ramp. Her decorations include the Legion of Merit, the Meritorious Service Medal with five oak leaf clusters and the Global War on Terror medal.
She holds a doctoral degree from Benedictine University, Master of Science degrees from Johns Hopkins University and Air University, and a Bachelor of Science from Penn State University. In 2003, she was a National Defense Fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, D.C. and immersed in a year-long study of the nexus between organized crime and terrorism. Her resulting book won the 2004 Air Force research prize and was published by AU Press. She is also a 2006 alumnus of the Harvard Senior Executive Fellows program.
Since her military retirement in 2007, Dr. Hesterman continued serving as a cleared professional, studying international and domestic terrorist organizations, transnational threats, and organized crime. She is one of very few analysts specializing in the terror-crime nexus, detecting the liaising, sharing or mirroring of operational tactics and financing methods between groups. Dr. Hesterman performs operational research on terrorist exploitation of the Internet through social networking, nonbank, Internet auction and Dark Web sites. She is also a consultant on soft target vulnerabilities and hardening tactics for schools, churches, hospitals, malls and sporting and recreational venues. She instructs and designs courses for federal government law enforcement and security organizations and serves on the ASIS School Safety and Security Council. She was a senior fellow at the Center for Cyber and Homeland Security at George Washington University from 2016-2018.
An academic author for Taylor and Francis, CRC Press, her book, Soft Target Hardening: Protecting People from Attack, was selected by ASIS as the Security Book of the Year for 2015. The second edition was released in December, 2018. She co-authored Soft Target Crisis Management: What Emergency Planners and Security Professionals Need to Know (2016) and authored The Terrorist-Criminal Nexus: An Alliance of International Drug Cartels, Organized Crime, and Terror Groups (2013).
Dr. Hesterman is a sought after public speaker, with thirty-five keynote and guest speaking and training events in the U.S. and abroad since 2007 for the FBI, DHS, DoD, state and local law enforcement, and Major League Baseball.
A mentor and career coach for many up-and-coming leaders, she also speaks to audiences on personal development topics including cross-generational/gender/culture mentoring, and how women can attain work/life balance and achieve in the demanding security realm. An explorer and lover of nature and the great outdoors, she climbed Mt Kilimanjaro in July,
2017 and explored Antarctica in January, 2018, including an overnight trip to the South Pole. Dr. Hesterman will attempt to reach the North Pole in June, 2019, on a Russian icebreaker ship.
She is married and has a daughter, Sarah, 20, who is a renowned human rights activist and studies abroad.
