BRPA Board

Vice President - John Mantsch

John Mantsch has over 18 years of experience in the area of disaster recovery and business continuity planning. John's experience covers hardware recovery, all phases of continuity planning and crisis management.

John currently moved from ABN AMRO to R.J. O'Brien as V.P. of Business Continuity Planning. John has a broad exposure to business continuity with over 20 years experience in the IT field and more then 18 dedicated solely to developing and implementing continuity programs.

Before joining R. J. O'Brien, John spent over 13 years as a business resumption planner at ABN AMRO (parent of LaSalle Bank). John has also worked at Comdisco as a business continuity consultant in their consulting group and he has also worked for the First National Bank of Chicago in their Capital Markets department.

John earned a BA in Business Administration from Loras College and an MBA from Northern Illinois University. He's been a member of BRPA since 1995 and he received his CBCP (Certified Business Continuity Planner) certification in 1998.

Treasurer - Arnold Miller

Sentry Companies
PO Box 1103
Northbrook, IL 60065
Office: 847-417-9270
Fax: 847-480-0910

Born and Raised in Chicago, attended Peterson Grammar School, Von Steuben High School, University of Illinois, Roosevelt University. Member U.S. Army Reserve Corp., 314th Army Security Agency (ASA). While in 3rd year at U of I was called into active service for Berlin Crisis. Subsequently recalled to active duty for “Bay of Pigs” invasion. Served three years active duty, discharged from active Army and finished schooling at Roosevelt University, Chicago.

Director of Security for a large department store chain after completing tour of duty in Army and finishing college. Left department store chain and founded Sentry Systems, a private Telecommunication provider and Security firm which was sold to a national company in fall of 1988. Presently on the Board of Directors of SENTRY Companies and President of SENTRY Alarms One, Inc. (An ADT Security Provider) Northbrook, Il.

In 1971 was asked to be an instructor at the Cook County Sheriff's Training Academy and was employed at the Sheriff 's Department till retirement in 2001, holding many positions including Asst Chief of the Sheriff’s Emergency Management Agency and Director/Coordinator of the Criminal Apprehension and Booking Systems (CABS) unit of the Sheriff’s Police Department.

Affiliations:
Vice President Illinois Electronic Security Association
Emergency Management Coordinator for Niles Township, Illinois.
Treasurer for the Business Resumption Planners Association (BRPA) for the past ten years. (Largest Business continuity planning association in Midwest)
Served as Director & Treasurer of the Illinois Emergency Management
Association (IESMA)
Past President of the Northeast Illinois Emergency Management Council
Previously serving 3 terms as Treasurer, and 3 terms as a Director.
Member of FEMA “Project Impact Task Force”
Certified Mitigation/Disaster Coordinator by U.S. Homeland Defense

Secretary - Alina Rubin

Alina Rubin has been working in DR/BC field for 3 years. After working as HRMS PeopleSoft analyst at Exelon Corporation for 5 years, Alina was promoted to Senior Analyst of Emergency Preparedness team. Alina's duties include coordinating Disaster Recovery exercises, ensuring compliance and readiness across IT, and standardizing documentation. Alina achieved her PMP certification in 2009 and the ABCP certification in 2008. Alina holds a Masters degree in Business and Information Technology, and Bachelors degree in Information Systems from DePaul University. Personal interests include reading, watching movies, and traveling.

Program Director - Dan Johnson

Dan Johnson has been actively working in the business continuity field since 1998 and obtained his Certified Business Continuity Professional (CBCP) in 2003. Dan is currently employed at Bank of America, formerly LaSalle Bank, and is an Assistant Vice-President for the Business Continuity Crisis Management group.

Dan began his career at LaSalle Bank in 1986 in the Information Technology group. He has managed the recovery effort for many disasters, including the Chicago Flood in 1992 and the LaSalle Bank fire in 2004. He continues to facilitate and manage the major datacenter recovery exercises and assist clients on business and technical plan development. He has improved client awareness by presenting recovery materials at LaSalle Bank Business Continuity Awareness Sessions, publishing technical recovery articles in the internal newsletter and designing the business continuity intranet web site for the bank.

As Program Director, Dan will continue to schedule topical presentations for all of the sessions this year and constantly strive to further educate the BRPA members on the best practices in Business Resumption and Disaster Recovery.

Membership Director - Christopher Scarletti

Chris Sarcletti has been working in the BCP field nearly 4 years. After an 8 year career at Accenture in the consulting world that included stints working in the Netherlands and Canada, Chris joined the Allstate Financial BCP team. After 3 years at Allstate Financial, Chris joined CME Group in December, 2007 to continue his career in the BCP world at the world�s largest derivatives exchange.

Chris became a CBCP in February, 2007 and is also a CPA in the State of Illinois.

Personal interests include travelling (he has set foot on 6 continents), volunteering and running (2005 and 2007 Chicago Marathon finisher).

Communications Director - Alane Watkins

Special Events Director - David Pomerantz

BRPA Volunteers

Webmaster - Donald Moore

Donald earned his BA in Philosophy from The University of Illinois in 1995. Combining technology and business continuity skills, he has focused on business continuity since 1998 for ABN AMRO, Fidelity Information Systems, Bank of America, Pepsi Americas, and currently the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago. He has been a Certified Business Continuity Planner (CBCP) since 2004.

Past Board Members

President - Maria Vergara, David P. Miller

Vice President - Bill Lundquist

Membership Director- Kurt Kobylecky

Corresponding Director- Mark Sakowicz

Special Events Director - Jennifer Swearingen, Maha Kashani

Secretary- Lynn Zimmerman, Donald Moore, Jason Merante