Washington, D.C. Metro: News/Updates

BENS Diversity Initiative/BENS Women in National Security Initiative

BENS prides itself on bringing together the brightest minds with preeminent backgrounds to create best practices in government national security, and the Washington DC Metro Region reflects the BENS mission entirely. The BENS Diversity Initiative concentrates membership recruitment efforts on under-represented areas of BENS membership, and further seeks to ensure these new members are thoroughly engaged and utilized in BENS programs and initiatives moving forward.

The BENS Women in National Security (WINS) group was launched at the start of 2011 in the D.C. Metro Region, where female representation is the highest of any BENS region. Founded by Kristi Rogers, President & CEO of Aegis LLC and BENS member, the group was established to bring women executives and government leaders together to discuss, interact, and engage on key issues of national security and foreign policy. BENS WINS provides a forum of support, idea-sharing, and engagement for female executives working in or interested in national security.

The group recently formed a team to create a project to benefit women in conflict areas, empowering their growth and providing for sustainable development, as one example of the ways BENS Members can wholly contribute to ongoing national security policy initiatives at BENS. 

BENS Maryland Initiative

The Baltimore-Washington Corridor, the Beltway and surrounding cities in Maryland and the region around Ft. Meade, MD, are all major players in homeland security and national security in their own right. BENS DC is expanding its involvement and recruitment efforts to focus in part on the Maryland region, particularly in its efforts around Cyber Security.