Highlights

2007 Highlights

A “Great Collaboration”
BENS Praised for Rapid Response to California Wildfires
In the aftermath of the fall’s devastating firestorms in Southern California, residents can thank the rapid response of emergency officials, firefighters and volunteers—and the BENS Business Force—for averting an even worse tragedy.

In the largest response ever by the Business Force to a real-world emergency, BENS served as a crucial bridge between the public and private sectors during the blazes.  For the first time in California, private-sector liaisons—from BENS’ Bay Area Business Force and Los Angeles Business Force/Homeland Security Advisory Council—worked side-by-side with federal, state and local officials inside emergency operations centers to quickly match local needs with business assets.

In that role, Business Force staff helped route millions of dollars worth of food and supplies—including 200,000 bottles of water and 10,000 pillows for evacuees—to affected areas.  Just as importantly, they helped prevent major duplications in requests for and delivery of emergency donations and volunteers.

Praising this “great collaboration,” OES Southern Region Director Stephen Sellers used a nationally-televised press conference with Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger to commend the “very organized fashion” in which companies assisted during the largest evacuation in California history.

 

BENS to Honor Rubin & Hayden
Eisenhower Award for Stewards of American Prosperity & Security
As our 25th anniversary year continues, BENS is proud to announce that the next recipients of our prestigious Eisenhower Award—to be presented November 15 in New York City—will be two leaders who have dedicated their lives to ensuring our nation’s prosperity and security: former Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin and Gen. Michael Hayden, Director of the Central Intelligence Agency

Rubin, now Chairman of the Executive Committee of Citigroup, Inc., served as President Bill Clinton’s Secretary of the Treasury from 1995 to 1999, where he responded deftly to a series of global financial crises that threatened to upend markets and economies around the world.

Gen. Hayden of the Air Force—the highest-ranking intelligence officer in the Armed Forces—became the 18th director of the CIA in May 2006, after tours as the first Principal Deputy Director of National Intelligence from 2005-2006 and Director of the National Security Agency from 1999-2005.

For more information on the November 15 gala, to be held at 583 Park Avenue, contact Jennie Moonis at (202) 296-2125 or jmoonis@bens.org.

 

BENS Takes the Hill
Task Force Leaders Testify on Business Role in Crisis Response
Under the hot lights of an oak-paneled Senate hearing room June 21, it became clear Congress agrees with what many already know: BENS is the national model for public-private partnering in homeland security.

That afternoon, the work of BENS’ Business Response Task Force featured heavily before a standing room-only crowd at the inaugural hearing of the public-private preparedness subcommittee of the Senate Homeland Security & Governmental Affairs Committee. To an enthusiastic reception from the senators, Task Force Chair Duane Ackerman, former chairman and CEO of BellSouth, wasted no time in driving home the central point: "The private sector must be included in the planning, practice, and execution" of any disaster response scenario.  Read his full statement here.

In addition, Task Force co-chair John Breaux, former senator from Louisiana, advocated creating a nationwide body of "disaster law" and argued that private-sector involvement "must be more formalized, institutionalized, and in writing." Read his full statement here.

Click here to read the Task Force's report, Getting Down to Business.

 

On 25th Anniversary, BENS Celebrates Past Successes & Future Mission
During an unprecedented two days of policy, praise, pomp and circumstance, hundreds of BENS members and friends gathered in Washington, DC May 9-10 to mark BENS’ 25 years of achievement and the first-ever passing of the Chairman’s gavel.

• Deputy Secretary of Defense Gordon England headlined the May 9 black-tie Eisenhower Dinner by presenting Founder Stanley A. Weiss with the Department of Defense Medal for Distinguished Public Service, its highest honor for civilians, for his “visionary leadership.”
• In a special tribute, following toasts from BENS board members, former BENS President & CEO and longtime counselor Larry Smith said that “Americans are safer” because of Stanley Weiss’ “quiet passion to serve.” Weiss, who upon stepping down the next day as Chairman assumed the title of Founding Chairman, used his final address to urge Americans to embrace the spirit of BENS – “a sense of debt and duty to country.”
• In a moving reminder of the individuals behind the institutions that BENS works to strengthen, BENS President and CEO Chuck Boyd welcomed to the Eisenhower Dinner four service members from the Army, Navy, Air Force, and Marines, calling them “a category above VIP – extraordinarily important people.”
  
  

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