Kay C. Goss

President World Disaster Management

Kay C. Goss, CEM®, is president of World Disaster Management, U.S. president of The International Emergency Management Society, and president of the Council on Accreditation of Emergency Management Education. She is also part-time faculty in the Executive Master’s Program in Crisis and Emergency Management at the University of Nevada at Las Vegas and in the Graduate Program in Emergency Management and Homeland Security at Metropolitan College of New York. Previous positions include: executive in residence at the University of Arkansas; senior principal and senior advisor of emergency management and continuity programs at SRA International (2007-2011); senior advisor of emergency management, homeland security, and business security at Electronic Data Systems (2001-2007); associate Federal Emergency Management Agency director in charge of national preparedness, training, and exercises, appointed by President William Jefferson Clinton and confirmed unanimously by the U.S. Senate (1993-2001); senior assistant to the governor for intergovernmental relations, Governor William Jefferson Clinton (1982-1993); chief deputy state auditor at the Arkansas State Capitol (1981-1982); project director at the Association of Arkansas Counties (1979-1981); research director at the Arkansas State Constitutional Convention, Arkansas State Capitol (1979); project director of the Educational Finance Study Commission, Arkansas General Assembly, Arkansas State Capitol (1977-1979).

Charles J. Guddemi

Federal Law Enforcement Officer

Charles J. Guddemi is currently a federal law enforcement officer with 23 years of experience.  He has worked in several different cities, including: San Francisco, New York, Philadelphia, and Washington, D.C. He has held positions as a patrol officer, patrol supervisor, station commander, regional law enforcement specialist, commander of special operations, special events, and technical services.

Martin Masiuk

Executive Director for PLC and Former Publisher Emeritus of DomesticPreparedness.com

Martin (Marty) Masiuk is the Founder and Executive Director of the Preparedness Leadership council.  He is the former Publisher Emeritus of DomesticPreparedness.com.  On October 1, 2021, DomPrep's owership was transfered to The Texas Division of Emergency Management (TDEM) under The Texas A&M University System. In 2013, Masiuk founded the Preparedness Leadership Council as a thought leadership group intended to lessen the burden on and increase the effectiveness of operational preparedness professionals and help policy professionals make better-informed decisions.  Prior to that, he was employed by McGraw Hill’s Business Week and Aviation Week & Space Technology publications.

David M. Olive

Founder and Principal, Catalyst Partners LLC

David M. Olive, J.D., is the founder and a principal of Catalyst Partners LLC, a government relations, business development, and public affairs firm based in Washington, D.C. With more than 30 years of experience in business, politics, law, and public affairs, he previously served as: chief of staff, U.S. Rep. Asa Hutchinson, R-Ark.3; staffer, U.S. Sen. Jim Allen, D-Ala.; senior vice president, public affairs firm Powell Tate; president, Care First Inc., a nursing home management company in Fort Smith, Ark.; and law partner, McMillan & Spratling (Ala.). He established and currently serves as the moderator of The Washington Homeland Security Roundtable and is a frequent contributor to Security DeBrief, a homeland security blog.

Vayl S. Oxford

Senior Executive Service

Vayl S. Oxford, a member of the senior executive service (SES), is the former Director of the Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA). The DTRA mission is to safeguard the U.S. and its allies from weapons of mass destruction (WMD), specifically chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear, and high-yield explosive threats, and improvised threats by providing the means to prevent and counter the proliferation of WMD and improvised threats and to reduce, eliminate, and mitigate their effects. Before being named DTRA Director, he was the National Security Executive Policy Advisor at the Department of Energy’s Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) where he was responsible for guiding the strategic direction and vision for national security issues. Before joining PNNL, Mr. Oxford spent a short time in private industry after 35 years of public service that combined time in the military and as a government civilian employee, almost all of it focused on countering weapons of mass destruction. He served in multiple positions in the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) from 2003 to 2009, as the Policy Advisor to the Under Secretary of Science & Technology, as Acting Director of the Homeland Security Advanced Research Projects Agency, and as the first Director of the Domestic Nuclear Detection Office (DNDO), which was created to be the single entity in the U.S. government to protect the nation against nuclear terrorism. Appointed by President George W. Bush and reporting to the DHS Secretary, he led the development of the National Strategy to Combat Nuclear Terrorism. Prior to his appointment to DHS, Mr. Oxford served as the Director for Counterproliferation at the National Security Council, where he supported the development of the President’s National Strategy to Combat WMD, the policy and strategy for WMD interdiction, and represented the NSC in the development of the National Biodefense Strategy.

Stephen Reeves

Major General USA (Ret.)

MG Stephen Reeves, USA (Ret.), is a highly accomplished senior executive and an internationally recognized expert on chemical and biological defense and defense acquisition. He has testified as an expert witness on multiple occasions before the U.S. Congress and has been interviewed on numerous occasions by the national and international print and television press. He is a frequent speaker at both national and international defense and homeland security conferences. Experienced in leading and managing large, diverse, global, multi-billion dollar organizations, he established, and for seven years led, the first Department of Defense Joint Program Executive Office for Chemical and Biological Defense.

Jeffrey D. Stern, Ph.D.

Superintendent of the Emergency Management Institute

Dr. Jeff Stern is the Superintendent of the Emergency Management Institute in Emmitsburg, Maryland. He previously led the Virginia Department of Emergency Management, where he was responsible for disaster and homeland security preparedness, mitigation, response, and recovery efforts across the Commonwealth. Dr. Stern led Virginia through nearly 50 emergency declarations over 6 years and deployed Virginia’s first responders to disasters across the United States, including Hawaii, Alaska, California, Texas, Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, West Virginia, Maryland, Pennsylvania, New York, Massachusetts, Puerto Rico, and the U.S. Virgin Islands. He also chaired the Virginia 911 Board and oversaw all the Commonwealth’s homeland security and emergency management grant programs. Dr. Stern served for more than three decades as an emergency manager, first responder, agency executive, adviser, and consultant. Over the course of his career, he served in local, state, and federal government positions, in the private sector, and in academe, including presidential appointments as a White House Fellow at the Department of the Interior and the White House Homeland Security Council, and as Executive Director of the Homeland Security Advisory Council, the advisory board to the Secretary of Homeland Security. Dr. Stern began his career as a firefighter and paramedic, serving through the rank of battalion chief with departments in Maryland, Virginia, and Colorado, and deployed with incident management teams to Hurricanes Charley (2004) and Katrina (2005), and the Haiti earthquake (2010).

Elizabeth B. Armstrong

Chief Executive Officer, International Association of Emergency Managers (IAEM)

Elizabeth B. Armstrong is the chief executive officer of the International Association of Emergency Managers (IAEM). She ensures that the association supports its members in developing emergency management policy, as well as in providing leadership in the development and improvement of local emergency management programs. She also is the chief staff executive for the National Association of State Emergency Medical Services Officials and for the National Association of Government Communicators. She received a Bachelor of Business Administration in marketing from the College of William and Mary and a Masters of Association Management from George Washington University. She was inducted into the Hall of Fame for International Women in Homeland Security and Emergency Management in 2012.

Asha M. George, DrPH

Co-Director for the Blue Ribbon Study Panel for Biodefense and Principal at Strategic Operational Solutions

Asha M. George, DrPH, is a Co-Director for the Blue Ribbon Study Panel for Biodefense and Principal at Strategic Operational Solutions (STOPSO). Previously, she served in the US House of Representatives as subcommittee staff director and senior professional staff at the House Committee on Homeland Security. DHS, the FBI, and HCFA have recognized her homeland security, public health, public policy, and emergency management contributions. Dr. George is also a decorated Desert Storm veteran, having served on active duty in the U.S. Army as a military intelligence officer and as a paratrooper. Dr. George holds a doctorate in Public Health from the University of Hawaii, a Master of Science in Public Health from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and a Bachelor of Arts from Johns Hopkins University. She is also a graduate of the National Preparedness Leadership Initiative, run by the Harvard University Kennedy School of Government.

Linda Langston

Director of Strategic Relations, National Association of Counties (NACo)

Linda Langston is the Director of Strategic Relations at the National Association of Counties (NACo) and on the Linn County, Iowa, Board of Supervisors representing District 2. Active in NACo since 2003, she has held many leadership positions, including chair of: the Health Steering Committee, the Healthy Counties Advisory Board, the Finance Committee, and the Arts and Culture Commission. In addition she also serves on the National Advisory Council for FEMA and is a member of National Academies of Science newest roundtable – Resilience and Extreme Events. In 2002, she was elected to the Linn County Board of Supervisors, where she has served on a variety of boards, commissions, and community organizations. Before that, she was a museum director and a psychotherapist in private practice, as well as a small business owner. She graduated from Knox College in Galesburg, Ill., with a degree in history and, in 2007, graduated from Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government for State and Local Officials.

John Morton

Senior Strategic Advisor

John Morton has been a member of Team DomPrep since its founding in 1998 and currently serves as the senior strategic advisor. Previously, he held the role of managing editor for writer assignments and interviewer for scores of DomPrep audio interviews. He was the Homeland Security Team lead for the Project on National Security Reform (PNSR).