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Staff Biographies

Click here for the biographies of our regional staff.

Cliff Ainsworth Lynne Kidder
Danielle Camner Lindholm Steven Lowe
David Guthrie Susan Maybaumwisniewski
Henry "Butch" L. Hinton Linda Moseley
Devin Holmes Steven Naplan
Paul Taibl
Josh Wellner



Cliff Ainsworth
Communications Director
cainsworth@bens.org 

Cliff Ainsworth joined the BENS staff in October 2008.  He is responsible for writing and editing BENS publications, including the monthly Update, and updating BENS website content.  Cliff has worked as a reporter and editor at newspapers in the Midwest and also has experience in the IT industry.  He graduated summa cum laude with a master’s from the Missouri School of Journalism and holds a bachelor’s in political science from the University of Southern Indiana.  Cliff has lived and studied abroad in Helsinki, Finland, and Beijing, China.

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Danielle Camner Lindholm
Vice President for Policy
dlindholm@bens.org

Danielle Lindholm manages a portfolio that includes threat finance/anti-money laundering, intelligence transformation, homeland security, and federal outreach projects.  Specializing in economic and commercial aspects of national security, she has worked in a comprehensive range of positions: doing international auto-standard harmonization at the Department of Transportation, as the Country Manager for the Middle East and North Africa at the U.S. Trade and Development Agency, as a Special Assistant to the Under Secretary of State for Economic, Business, and Agricultural Affairs (doing worldwide commercial issues), and as an Advisor for International Economic Policy at the National Economic Council.  She has also spent time as the Vice President of Government Affairs for BankUnited, headquartered in Florida.  Before joining BENS in January 2005, she served as the Senior Policy Advisor to a U.S. Congressman, working on issues that included financial services, national and homeland security, and foreign affairs.

Danielle holds a B.A. (Classics) from Tufts University and a J.D. from the University of Miami.  She is a member of the DC, Florida, and American Bar Associations, a former Term Member of the Council on Foreign Relations, a participant in the Aspen Institute’s Socrates Society, and an active mentor with Women in International Security (WIIS) and the Tufts CASE Network.  She is also the founder of the Devi Society, a work-life group for women and families in the National Security field, and served as the Chief of Staff to the Legal Working Group of the Project on National Security Reform (PNSR).

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David Guthrie
Vice President, Business Force
dguthrie@bens.org

David Guthrie joined BENS in January 2005. Previously, he was an account manager at COMSYS, Inc., an IT company, where he expanded the company’s language practice with several federal government programs. David also worked for companies specializing in data collection, data modeling and pattern recognition technology and authored an article advocating such technology’s use in fighting terrorists three years before Sept. 11, 2001. A former member of the United State Marine Corp Reserve, he attended the University of Texas at Austin and San Antonio College.

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Henry (Butch) L. Hinton, Jr.
Senior Vice President for Policy
hhinton@bens.org

As Senior Vice President for Policy, Butch oversees planning and execution of projects and engagements approved by the BENS Board of Directors.  In doing so he works with government client-partners in the executive and legislative branches, leveraging the resources and experience of senior executives from the business community to help improve government operations and save taxpayer dollars.

Butch joined BENS in June 2008 after serving more than 37 years with the U.S. Government Accountability Office where he examined how taxpayers’ dollars are spent and advised lawmakers and agency heads about ways to make government work better.  As a senior executive at GAO, he assisted the Comptroller General of the United States in directing the overall operations of the agency and overseeing work to improve the management and accountability of national security, space, and international affairs programs. 

In his last seven years in government, he directed and oversaw GAO’s work involving the Department of Defense, the military services, and the defense agencies, covering issues involving defense planning, force structure, operations, readiness, acquisition, homeland defense, personnel, logistics support, infrastructure, and business operations.  He has extensive experience interacting with members of Congress, their staffs, and top agency officials of executive departments and agencies and in serving as GAO’s principal witness before congressional committees.     

Butch received his B.S. degree (Management) from the University of Richmond, Virginia, in 1970.  He attended Seminar XXI for Foreign Politics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, in 1989-1990.  He also attended the National and International Security Program, J.F.K. School of Government, Harvard University, 1992. He and his wife, Margie, reside in Burke, Virginia.  They have two sons:  Brian and Justin.    

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Devin Holmes

Warrior Gateway Project Manager
dholmes@bens.org

Devin joined BENS after 15 years of technology experience in a variety of roles at start-ups and large corporations, building innovative, business-driven, technology-savvy organizations. He has led software development and professional services teams globally as well as held executive management team positions at YUDU Media, The New York Times Company and OneSoft Corporation.  Most recently, Devin was a consultant at Cisco Systems to help IT and Marketing executives in a $1 billion initiative. Additionally, in the last two years he helped launch several Silicon Valley-based social media start-ups from idea conception through initial funding rounds.  Devin holds MBAs from London and Columbia Business Schools and a BS in Engineering from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. He has dual Italian (EU) and US citizenship and is fluent in English and Italian.     

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Lynne Kidder
Senior Vice President, Regional Partnerships
lkidder@bens.org

Lynne Kidder directs BENS’ national efforts to facilitate public-private partnerships that strengthen homeland security and all-hazards resilience.  In addition to working on related federal policy, she consults with new and prospective partnerships at the state and local level.  Kidder has led a BENS-convened coalition of national business leaders, professional/trade organizations, academics, NGOs, military, and agency partners working to build consensus on a framework for effective public-private collaboration at all levels of government.  She is a member of the National Homeland Security Consortium and the Institute of Medicine’s Forum on Medical and Public Health Preparedness for Catastrophic Events – co-chairing its working group on countermeasure dispensing.  In April 2009, she was one of ten individuals appointed by the National Research Council to its project on Private-Public Sector Collaboration to Enhance Community Disaster Resilience.

Kidder’s previous experience includes executive level management in state government, corporate government affairs, and eight years as professional staff in the U.S. Senate.  Prior to joining BENS in 2005, she served as the executive director of a non-profit organization of C-level executives in Northern California, where she led numerous collaborative initiatives between private employers, public officials and other civic leaders.  Kidder holds a BA from Indiana University, a Masters from the University of Texas at Austin, and did additional post graduate study in Public Administration at George Mason University. 

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Steven W. Lowe
Chief Financial Officer
slowe@bens.org

Joining BENS in October 2002, Steve Lowe brings over twenty years of senior managerial experience in operations, finance and information technology. Most recently, he served as Senior Vice President and CFO of AIIM International where he oversaw acquisitions and mergers, designed a new Financial Reporting system, and led cost-cutting and consolidation operations. Steve earned his Bachelors and Masters Degrees from Purdue University.

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Susan C. Maybaumwisniewski
Vice President for Policy
smaybaumwisniewski@bens.org

Susan Maybaumwisniewski is Vice President for Policy.  She brings over twenty years of senior management experience with the Department of Defense. During her thirty year career as a Naval Officer, Susan had the leadership responsibility for command at all levels. She has expertise in anti-submarine warfare, education and training, and facilities management. Prior to joining BENS in June 2008, She was a professor of Acquisition at the Industrial College of the Armed Forces, a college of National Defense University, Washington DC.

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Linda Moseley
Executive Assistant to the President & CEO
lmoseley@bens.org

Ms. Moseley has been with BENS as Executive Assistant to the President & CEO since January 1997.  She serves as the point of contact for all aspects of the office of the President.  From 1987—1996, Ms. Moseley worked at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government in their National Security Program office.  Her primary responsibilities included curriculum and guest speaker coordination, as well as event planning for the numerous executive education programs conducted under a contract for the Department of Defense.

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Steven J. Naplan
Vice President for Policy
snaplan@bens.org

Before joining BENS, Steve Naplan served as a counterterrorism and homeland security policy advisor to former President Bill Clinton, former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright and former National Security Advisor Samuel R. Berger.

From 1995-2001 Naplan worked at the White House, including service as Director for Multilateral and Humanitarian Affairs at the National Security Council.  In addition to advising on policy matters and strategic planning, Naplan represented the White House on diplomatic missions to China, Pakistan, Indonesia, Laos and Thailand.

Prior to his appointment at the NSC, Naplan served for two years in the Office of the Secretary of Defense where he worked on Operation Restore Democracy ( Haiti contingency) and NATO exercises Cooperative Nugget ’95.  For these and other efforts, Naplan was awarded the Secretary of Defense Medal for Outstanding Public Service.

Steve Naplan graduated cum laude from the George Washington University in 1993 and is a Term Member of the Council on Foreign Relations.

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Paul E. Taibl
Vice President for Policy
ptaibl@bens.org

Paul Taibl, a BENS staff member since 1994, is an expert in the defense industrial base, defense management reform, outsourcing and privatization of defense infrastructure, base closure issues and the defense budget. He has focused on implementation of Tail-to-Tooth Commission recommendations over the past several years. He is a retired Air Force officer and former command pilot, airlift planner and senior fellow in the Institute for National Strategic Studies at the National Defense University.

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Josh Wellner
Director of National and International Programs
jwellner@bens.org

Josh Wellner joined BENS in February 2010 as the Director of National and International Programs.  Previously, he served as a Project Manager with the Irregular Warfare Support Program within the Combating Terrorism Technical Support Office under the Assistant Secretary of Defense, Special Operations/Low Intensity Conflict and Interdependent Capabilities. There he managed approximately $45 Million in research and development projects focused on non-material solutions to enhance joint and inter-agency capabilities in irregular warfare and the counter-insurgency arena.  Prior to that, he lived and worked in Saudi Arabia for 6 months as a consultant on a modernization and transformation project.  He served in the United States Navy as  Surface Warfare Officer for six years, four of those years on Sea duty in various Division officer roles.  Following his tours at sea, he was selected to serve as a Senate Liaison Officer for the U.S. Navy’s Office of Legislative Affairs.  In that position, he escorted Members of Congress and their staffs on official domestic and international travel. 
He holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in Political Science from The Citadel, The Military College of South Carolina.

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