Alan Berman, Sgt, USAF (Ret), MBCP, CBCLA, CCRP
President, DRI Foundation
Alan Berman is a member of the ASIS BS25999 technical committee, a member of the Committee of Experts for ANSI-ANAB, a former member of the New York City Partnership for Security and Risk Management and the co-chair for the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation committee to create the new standard for the U.S. Private Sector Preparedness Act (PL 110-53). Over a career that has spanned 25 years, he has served as a President and CIO for a major financial institution, National Practice Leader for Operational Resiliency for PricewaterhouseCoopers and Global Business Continuity practice leader for Marsh. He holds the following DRI International certifications: Master Business Continuity Professional (MBCP), Certified Business Continuity Lead Auditor (CBCLA), and Certified Cyber Resilience Professional (CCRP).
Jerry Vevon, LtCol, Army (Ret), MBCP, CPSCP
Board Vice Chair, DRI Foundation
Senior Manager, BDO United States
Jerry Vevon is The DRI Foundation Board Vice Chair and is a Senior Manager at BDO. He has decades of management, leadership, and analytical experience including strategic planning, continuity of operations, business continuity planning, crisis management, assessments, and force protection. He served on active duty in the U.S. Army as a Ranger-qualified Master Parachutist. Following military retirement, he has served as a senior resilience practitioner providing focused support to the numerous intelligence agencies, the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA), Internal Revenue Service (IRS), and U.S. Census Bureau as well as numerous commercial and manufacturing organizations. He has received the CIA National Intelligence Certificate of Distinction, the U.S. Army Military Intelligence Knowlton Award, and is a life member of the Veterans of Foreign Wars. He holds the following DRI International certifications: Master Business Continuity Professional; (MBCP) and Certified Public Sector Continuity Professional (CPSCP).
Duane Bygum, Jr, MSgt, USAF (Ret), MBCP, CRMP, CEDP, MEMS
VOP Chair
Continuity Coordinator, Texas General Land Office
Duane Bygum is a practitioner-leader in continuity, emergency management, and organizational resilience with more than 25 years of experience spanning military, federal, and state environments. He currently serves as Continuity Coordinator for the Texas General Land Office, leading mission assurance, business continuity, crisis management, and disaster recovery across a statewide portfolio. Bygum serves as a volunteer executive consultant with DRI International, chairs the US Continuity Council for the State of Texas, and is a Board Member of the DRI Foundation Veterans Outreach Program.
His public service is grounded in a distinguished military career spanning both the U.S. Marine Corps and Air Force, retiring as a Master Sergeant and law enforcement officer. Key roles included Deputy Chief of Police (DoD), Wing Antiterrorism Officer, and enterprise-wide deployment lead for the Biometric Identification Fingerprint System across 100 installations. He also served as a federal law enforcement officer at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, graduating top of his class from FLETC.
Bygum holds a master’s in organizational development and a bachelor’s in criminology from the University of La Verne and is a FEMA Master Continuity Practitioner/Instructor. For over 11 years he has served as a professor in National University’s Homeland Security and Emergency Management programs and as a DRI International instructor. He holds the DRI International Master Business Continuity Professional (MBCP) certification. His contributions to the veteran community were recognized with the 2024 U.S. House of Representatives Congressional Veteran Commendation. Bygum lives in Texas with his wife Beth-Anne and they have two children.
Elizabeth Frasure, MBCP
Manager, Mentorship Program
Risk and Compliance Advisor Lead, a Fortune 100 financial institution
Elizabeth (Beth) Frasure, MBCP, is a risk and compliance advisor lead at a Fortune 100 financial institution, where she leads oversight of operational resiliency. In this role she provides governance and strategic leadership across business continuity (BC), information technology disaster recovery (ITDR), crisis management, resiliency testing, and third‑party resiliency programs, ensuring people, processes, and technology are prepared to respond to and recover from operational disruptions. Her work encompasses the full lifecycle of resiliency plan development and maintenance, IT recovery coordination, exercises and testing, crisis communications, and governance to meet regulatory and enterprise expectations. Frasure holds a B.S. in Business and Psychology, and is pursuing an M.S. in Enterprise Risk Management from Boston University, anticipated May 2026.
Frasure’s commitment to supporting veterans is deeply personal: her father and two of her brothers served in the military, and she spent much of her childhood as a military dependent, experiencing firsthand the resilience, sacrifice, and unique challenges of military families. Those early experiences shaped her belief that leadership, discipline, and teamwork veterans bring are invaluable in civilian resiliency and risk roles. In outreach and mentorship settings she offers guidance on career paths in BC/ITDR and crisis management, helps veterans translate their operational skills for corporate roles, and conducts practical workshops on incident leadership and communications under stress. She holds the DRI International Master Business Continuity Professional (MBCP) certification.
Alan Lake, Col, USAF (Ret), CBCP
Special Projects
Independent Resilience Consultant
Alan Lake is an internationally recognized senior executive and expert in enterprise resilience, business continuity, and crisis management. He created the enterprise resilience (continuity preparation and crisis response) vision, teams, architecture, and transformation strategy for Fortune 31, 151, 191, and smaller companies, and helped in crisis management exercises with smaller companies such as Confluent. He aided the Department of Defense as a colonel and crisis commander for U.S.-level crisis management and response. His highly successful management and vision prepared companies for all natural and manmade disasters. His expert analysis on risk process and company health, planning, leadership, and teamwork with senior leaders allowed proper risk identification and critical process identification to enable proper strategy selection for mitigation. This empowered companies to respond in an exceptionally fast manner that protected critical processes with reduced/prevented impact, protecting millions to billions of dollars in financial, operational, reputational and regulatory objectives, as well as, helping companies not only to recover but also gain competitive advantage.
Specifically, he helped Amgen protect and recover their $16B operation in Puerto Rico during Hurricane Maria, ensuring no delays in delivering drug products to patients. He also created the resilience transformation for Dell Technologies ahead of the Covid-19 pandemic, allowing them to continue operations and increase company progress, gain competitive advantage, and more than double their stock price in four years (2020-2024). He also led at Discover Financial Services on two crisis events that could have had regulatory and reputational potential impacts. Additionally, he advised Moderna and consulted with KPMG (who had their own business continuity and crisis management program) to create their enterprise resilience offices.
Prior to his time in the corporate world, Lake led military bases in Florida, Baghdad and Texas and was the USAF’s 1st On-Call Commander for U.S. crises (911, Katrina, etc.). He holds the DRI International Certified Business Continuity Professional (CBCP) certification.
Keith Pierson, MSgt, USAF (Ret), MBCP
Deputy Director
Senior Analyst of Business Continuity, BankUnited
Having more than 20 years of cross functional experience in asset management, security operations, emergency management, crisis management, disaster recovery, business continuity, crisis communications, risk management and information security, Pierson reinforces employee safety as his number one priority as well as ensuring the risk appetite of the business is aligned with stakeholders.
Pierson is a Senior Analyst of Business Continuity at BankUnited and volunteers his spare time to oversee the DRI Foundation’s Veterans Outreach Program (VOP) mentorship operations. He was awarded the DRI Foundation Distinguished Service Award for 2024, recognizing his commitment to helping military service members successfully transition into the business continuity industry.
Pierson served in the U.S. Air Force and is a retired Master Sergeant. In his military career, Keith started out as a Special Purpose Vehicle Mechanic; then his willingness to take on additional scope through his additional duties led him into exercise planning, active shooter response/recovery, governance of regulations, anti-terrorism, force protection, readiness reporting to the Pentagon, and emergency management as his final special duty assignment. Throughout his career, he was stationed in Europe for seven years and deployed to Kuwait and Iraq where he displayed resiliency in austere situations. His most notable accomplishments include management of Mine Resistant Ambush Protected (MRAP) vehicles under Special Operations control and guidance of California mutual aid equipment during state level fire response and mudslides. The culmination of his career efforts resulted in two Meritorious Service Medals, two Commendation Medals, three Achievement Medals, and multiple Campaign Medals.
Finally, in Pierson’s current role at BankUnited, he oversees operational resilience, BCM TPDD, crisis communications via enterprise notification system, as well as hurricane and severe weather reporting to executive management. During his time at the bank, he executed nine IT exercises in production environments, response/recovery of five hurricane events, implantation of controls/automation aligned with governance, and authored policy and plans supporting the Crisis Management Team (CMT) and Incident Response Team (IRT). He holds the DRI International Certified Business Continuity Professional (CBCP) certification.
Daniel Lougee, SFC, Army (Ret), MBCP
Director, Mentorship Program
Senior Manager of Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery, Norfolk Southern
Daniel Lougee, CBCP, is from Newberg, OR, and is a seasoned Senior Manager of Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery at Norfolk Southern, where he spearheads initiatives to enhance organizational resilience through meticulous planning and strategic program development. With a robust career spanning over two decades, he has cultivated a deep expertise in integrating essential elements of business continuity, crisis management, supplier resilience, and technology resilience. He is a strong proponent of continuous improvement and education.
As a dedicated DRI Foundation mentor in the veteran community, he extends his influence by building excellence and shaping the next generation of leaders. His journey in the field of business continuity began in the military, where he dedicated 20 years to enhancing operational readiness and response strategies. This foundational experience instilled in him a profound understanding of the critical importance of preparedness and adaptive response strategies, skills he has seamlessly transferred to the corporate sector. His military background has also endowed him with a unique perspective on leadership and crisis management, qualities that have proven invaluable in his corporate roles.
Since transitioning to the corporate world, Lougee has demonstrated a keen ability to navigate complex challenges and drive significant improvements in business continuity and disaster recovery planning. He holds a Master’s in Transportation and Logistics Management from American Public University System and isa PMI Project Management Professional, as well as a CompTIA Advance Security Practitioner. He is fluent in German and Afghan Pashto, with emerging proficiency in additional languages. He holds the DRI International Certified Business Continuity Professional (CBCP) certification.
Past Leadership
Catherine Cooper, MBCP
VOP Co-Chair
Senior Business Continuity Analyst, AdvocateAurora Health
Catherine Cooper started in the field in the early 1980s at a nuclear power plant in California. Cooper worked in several industries, including public utilities, banking, mortgage banking, healthcare, mental health, insurance, and retail. She spent 25 years in California, before returning to Wisconsin Cooper currently works for AdvocateAurora Health as a senior business continuity analyst in the IT department.
Cooper is a past president and currently the public private partnership liaison to the Business Resiliency Professionals of Wisconsin. She is a partner in Wisconsin Emergency Management Business Emergency Operations Center in the State EOC. Catherine is the co-chairperson of the DRI Foundation’s Veterans Outreach Program, providing scholarships for training and certification of military personnel in business continuity. She holds the DRI International Master Business Continuity Professional (MBCP) certification.