Bob Wilkerson
With over 30 years of experience in corporate preparedness, Bob pioneered the concept of crisis management as an integrated management process. Early on in his career, he was Chief of the Technological Hazards Division at the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and also served as Director of Public Safety for the State of Florida. In these roles Bob led response efforts to major natural disasters, civil disorders and infrastructure disruptions, including Three Mile Island, Mt. St. Helens and mass evacuations of half a million people for Hurricanes David and Frederick. He created and deployed many of the principals that have become the core practices of emergency response, continuity, and crisis management today.
In the late 1980s, Bob founded the first consultancy devoted entirely to corporate crisis management, which continued as the largest such firm for over a decade, representing leading global corporations, before being acquired by one of the world’s largest risk management firms. He continued to serve for 15 years as a Senior Advisor there before joining Blue Moon Consulting Group
Lynn Tierney
With a career spanning almost 40 years, Lynn Tierney is one of the most experienced crisis communications experts in the country. Prior to joining Blue Moon Consulting Group, Lynn was Vice President of Communications for the ten campus University of California system.
Lynn began her career in emergency management in Massachusetts before moving to New York where she held a number of communications roles at the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, the owner and operator of John F. Kennedy, LaGuardia, and Newark International airports, the World Trade Center, and many other high profile transportation facilities. Assigned to the Port Authority Police, she managed communications for high profile hijackings, airplane crashes, and was a key spokesperson for the 1993 World Trade Center bombing.
In 1996, Lynn was appointed Deputy Fire Commissioner with the New York City Fire Department by Mayor Rudy Giuliani and served in that post for 6 years including during 9/11/01. Nearly killed in the attacks, Lynn was a member of the top management team that Mayor Giuliani assembled to help lead the city through the rescue and recovery. She had primary responsibility for handling the families of the 343 firefighters who were killed in the attacks. She later became the President of the Tribute World Trade Center Visitor Center at Ground Zero. Lynn also served as Assistant Administrator of the Federal Aviation Administration in charge of Communications nationwide, with eight regional offices and a staff of 88.
More recently, Lynn was the Vice President of Communications for the ten Campus University of California system where she designed a new central communications and marketing department. She also managed a range of complex, highly sensitive and high profile Board and policy issues including funding cuts and tuition increases, protest and civil disobedience on campuses, as well as the evacuation of hundreds of students, faculty and researchers from areas of conflict or natural disasters around the world. In addition, she spearheaded crisis leadership and communications training for the top 300 staff, focusing on the nature of crisis leadership.
Lynn is currently Senior Advisor, Crisis Leadership at Blue Moon Consulting Group where she provides real-time crisis communications and decision-making support for clients as well as leads the firm’s educational initiatives on crisis leadership.
Pam Roskowski
Pamela Roskowski holds extensive policing, emergency management, security, public safety policy and executive leadership experience and accomplishments developed through a 40 year career including Municipal, County, State and University public safety service.
As University of California San Francisco Chief of Police and Public Safety Director, (2003-2015), Chief Roskowski re-engineered public safety services to more effectively accomplish community policing and crime suppression goals, improve collaboration with community partners and integrate enterprise-wide public safety and emergency management operations. Chief Roskowski led the implementation of electronic and physical security systems and technology for the UCSF multi-site enterprise, expanded police and security services to the new Mission Bay Campus, implemented enterprise-wide Homeland Security and Emergency Management functions (including functional and table-top emergency drills) and integrated the use of CCTV into a new state-of-the-art 911 Emergency Communications Center. Chief Roskowski also coordinated University of California system-wide security and dignitary protection for the Office of the President and Board of Regents including civil disobedience event management.
In addition to her responsibilities as UCSF Chief of Police, Chief Roskowski served six years as the University of California System-wide Police Services Coordinator responsible for the coordination and development of system-wide public safety planning and policy as well as leadership of the Council of Police Chiefs representing the ten University of California Police Departments. She was instrumental in developing and implementing system-wide police Use of Force and Civil Disobedience policy and participated in development and delivery of system-wide UC executive crisis leadership training to reform civil disobedience management.
As Chief of Police for the City of Corvallis Oregon, (1990-2003) she made advancements in community-policing, collaborative governance, City/University relations, and countywide public safety technology improvements. She also served Oregon as Vice Chair and two-term Governor Appointee to the Oregon Lottery Commission, served eight years as a criminal justice advisor to the Governor as a member of the Oregon Public Safety Policy Council, Oregon Juvenile Crime Prevention Task Force, Governor Elect’s Transition Team on Criminal Justice Matters and Governor’s Task Force on Reform of Oregon’s Alcohol Industry. Chief Roskowski was also elected by her peers to serve the Oregon Association Chiefs of Police in every elected office including President.
Chief Roskowski began her career as a police officer with the Palo Alto (CA) Police Department (1976-1990) promoting to all sworn ranks through Captain of Investigations. She additionally served as a loaned executive to the City Manager responsible for coordinating all of Palo Alto’s Hazardous Materials Programs and assessed Palo Alto’s Infrastructure including development of financing options adding more than $1 million per year for public works improvements. Chief Roskowski holds a Master of Public Administration degree and a Bachelor of Science in Criminal Justice Administration degree both from San Jose State University as well as Executive Law Enforcement certification in both California and Oregon and extensive specialized training. She has received many awards and honors throughout her career including recognition as a diversity champion, National Center for Women in Policing “Breaking the Glass Ceiling Award”, and San Jose State University Distinguished Alumna among others.
Dr. Larry Bergmann, PhD
Larry has over 30 years of experience working with individuals, families, and organizations exposed to life-threatening and traumatic events such as crime victimization, industrial accidents, natural disasters, and combat. He has developed violence prevention programs for businesses and public entities, provided training to more than 100 organizations, trained threat management teams, served as an expert witness in violence related litigation and clinically assessed potentially violent employees. He has assisted more than 25 corrections departments, businesses, and communities and served as a consultant to National Institute of Corrections, U.S. Department of Justice – Office of Victims of Crime, National Academy of Science and the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA).
As a mental health counselor in private practice in Columbia, South Carolina, Larry focuses on the treating individuals suffering from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder and other stress related syndromes, specifically from traumas in the workplace, up to and including active aggressor events. Larry is widely published on various aspects of humanitarian assistance and psychological post-traumatic stress and has provided training, expert witness services and consulting to public and private agencies throughout the United States.
Denise Burgess
A national security expert, Denise Burgess is a seasoned strategist and communicator with a strong track record of leading crisis strategy and response, both in the U.S. and abroad. She brings her experience at the U.S. State Department, the United States Information Agency, as well as CNN to BMGC clients facing complex reputational challenges in rapidly changing environments. She has served on the board of a prominent U.S. academic institution and has guest lectured at institutes of higher education both in the U.S. and overseas.
During her diplomatic career, she lived and worked in a wide variety of countries, served on Secretary of State James Baker’s Executive Secretariat Staff, and manned the State Department’s 24-hour worldwide crisis response and communications center. An experienced global communicator, Burgess was on the front lines of large-scale crises including an Indian Airlines plane crash and the African Embassy Bombings, where she served as a communications first-responder. As a correspondent for CNN, Burgess covered national and international news, reporting live from Baghdad during the Iraq war.
Burgess later returned to national security work as a senior advisor to the Pentagon’s Afghanistan Reconstruction Group, and as a senior advisor leading communication for the Special Inspector for Iraq Reconstruction. In South Sudan, she provided high-level strategic communications, change management, and reputational development to the second in command of the country’s Ministry of Defense and Veterans’ Affairs.
Burgess earned a B.A. in Political Science from Princeton University and a M.S. in Strategic Communications Management from Syracuse University, where she wrote her thesis on The Role of Communications in Change Management.
Amie Hixon
Amie leads BMCG’s approach to social media listening and leverages quantitative and qualitative tools to provide clients with insightful, actionable analysis for informed decision-making. She ensures that our clients are able to clearly visualize and understand stakeholder dialogue, sentiment, and engagement relative to key inflection points, issues, and events in a time when social media listening has become an imperative aspect of managing reputational risk–and often serves as an early warning system for issues and crises. In addition to augmenting media monitoring capabilities, Amie works in partnership with client teams to develop microsites, presentations, and other communications tools that increase stakeholder support and build confidence in leadership.
Amie also supports the development of tailored crisis management, crisis communications, and emergency operations plans as well as functional checklists that helps ensure fast, clear and consistent and coordinated response. She also researches and writes many of our client exercises resulting in realistic and engaging scenarios aligned to learning objectives.
A certified Associate Business Continuity Professional, she collaborates with the greater team to ensure clients build a comprehensive capability—from risk assessments to BIAs to exercises—to respond to the inevitable and withstand today’s highly-scrutinized operating environment.
Jason Cody
Jason brings more than 20 years of experience as a journalist and public relations strategist, with a focus on media relations, crisis communications, emergency planning and internal communications to BMCG. A newspaper journalist by training, Jason held various positions in newsrooms working for Gannett newspapers in Michigan, from reporter to copy editor to city editor, before making the switch to public relations.
While working for a PR agency in Michigan’s state capital, Jason worked on behalf of more than a dozen clients, including statewide organizations, manufacturing firms and nonprofits in the health and social service sectors, creating public relations and marketing campaigns and helping clients respond to real-time issues.
Prior to joining the BMCG in 2020, Jason was the Director of Internal Communications at Michigan State University, where he was responsible for launching a new internal communications initiative for the school’s 13,000 employees. Before that, Jason served as spokesperson for the university for six years and oversaw issues management and crisis communications for the central communications office, helping the university respond to a wide-range of significant issue and crisis situations, including protests, animal care and research, sexual assaults, freedom of speech, financial impropriety and data breaches.
Jason developed the crisis communications plan for the university and helped lead annual training exercises, including planning a full-scale exercise involving an active violence scenario on campus. Additionally, he served as the communications lead as MSU in 2015 became just the fourth higher education institution to achieve accreditation via the federal Emergency Management Accreditation Program.
A graduate of Kent State University’s Honors College, Jason holds a bachelor’s degree in journalism as well as a double minor in history and sociology.
Erin Bossen
A media and public relations strategist, Erin has built upon her 20 years experience as a journalist with expertise in crisis communications, issues management, reputational risk assessment, and emergency response. With a keen understanding of the nature and speed of modern media, she offers clients real-time, discerning advice aligned with their core values and principles.
Most recently, Erin served as senior director of media and public relations for one of California’s top-ranked private universities, Loyola Marymount University, where she was responsible for the institution’s external communications strategy as well as safeguarding and enhancing its public reputation. A trusted adviser to university leadership, she developed plans for and responded to issues surrounding COVID-19, public safety, Title IX, academic freedom, high-profile speakers, DACA, protests, doxxing, public art and imagery, Greek life and athletics. She led the successful campaign to host a presidential debate on campus, elevating the university’s national profile. She also expanded its roster of trained public speakers and media experts, coaching campus leaders and faculty to respond to media inquiries and appear on television, radio, podcasts and digital outlets.
Erin is an Emmy award-winning journalist who served as a senior producer at CNN/HLN where she covered breaking news, civil unrest, extreme weather, the opioid crisis, high-profile trials, the military and politics. She led editorial teams producing live newscasts, talk shows and special programming. Prior to joining the network, she was an executive producer in San Diego covering political debates, elections, wildfires, immigration and environmental issues. She began her journalism career as a news editor at the #1news/talk radio station in Arizona.
Erin earned a Bachelor of Arts in journalism, magna cum laude, from the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication at Arizona State University.
Kent Cassella
Kent has over 30 years of experience as a member of and working with executive leadership teams for large, complex, diverse and dispersed organizations developing strategy in crisis, conflict, emergency and highly hazardous conditions.
A retired U.S. Army officer with more than 20 years of active-duty service, Kent has held a variety of leadership positions and has directed public relations and crisis management and communication strategy around the world. His active service culminated with assignment as director of Public Relations at the United States Military Academy at West Point where he led all communications and reputation management activities for the nation’s premier military academy and national historic landmark campus.
Prior to joining the BMCG in 2018, Kent was the Associate Vice President for Communications and Brand Strategy at Michigan State University for ten years. He was responsible for developing and leading strategic issues planning, brand building, crisis management and crisis communications proactive planning to reduce reputational risk, for one of the world’s leading public research universities.
A graduate of West Virginia University’s communications school, Kent also holds a master’s degree in journalism from Marshall University and an MBA from Touro University International.
Jennifer Rettig
Jen leads the development of BMCG’s crisis readiness assessment methodology and supports clients through the development of crisis management exercises, business resiliency, crisis and communication plans, and facilitated crisis management planning sessions. She also directs stakeholder research and creates proactive messaging platforms including promotional videos and issue dark sites.
Over the past five years, Jen has supported our client response to a variety of issues and crisis events including racial and sexual harassment, whistleblower claims, academic freedom issues, protests, and terrorism. On the planning side, she developed and facilitated both domestic and international tabletop exercises and led functional exercise simulation cells.
Prior to launching BMCG, Jen was a Senior Marketing Manager for Math Solutions, a division of Scholastic where she developed nationally recognized marketing campaigns, a Producer with Sony PlayStation, and a Product Manager for Riverdeep, an educational software division of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.
Jen has an MBA from Cornell, an MA in Japanese Studies from Ehime Daigaku, and a BA in Political Science from the University of Maryland, College Park.