About the Speakers
Howard Brod Brownstein
PRESIDENT, THE BROWNSTEIN CORPORATION; DIRECTOR, P&F INDUSTRIES (NASDAQGS: PFIN), MERAKEY, NACD PHILADELPHIA CHAPTER
Howard Brod Brownstein, CTP, is a nationally-known turnaround and restructuring professional, and regularly provides programs for Women in the Boardroom. He is President of Brownstein Corporation, which provides turnaround management and advisory services, as well as investment banking, fiduciary services, litigation consulting, investigations and valuation services. He regularly serves on the boards of directors of public and private companies, and currently serves on the boards of: P&F Industries (Nasdaq: PFIN) where he chairs the Nominating/Governance and Strategic Planning & Risk Assessment Committees, Renew Financial, where he serves as chair of the Risk Committee, and Merakey, a nonprofit with over 10,000 employees. He is a Certified Turnaround Professional, and also an NACD Board Leadership Fellow and Immediate Past President and Board Chair of the NACD Philadelphia Chapter. He has authored ninety articles and textbook chapters, is a Contributing Editor at two publications, and is a regular guest-lecturer at Harvard Business School, Wharton, NYU and elsewhere. He received JD and MBA degrees at Harvard, and B.S. (Wharton) and B.A. degrees from the University of Pennsylvania.
Andrea Bonime-Blanc
Founder & CEO of GEC Risk Advisory
Andrea Bonime-Blanc, JD/PhD, is CEO and Founder of GEC Risk Advisory and a global governance, risk, ESG, ethics, cyber and crisis strategist, serving business, nonprofits, and government. Since 2017, she has served as the Independent Ethics Advisor to the Financial Oversight and Management Board for Puerto Rico. She serves on several Boards and Advisory Boards including Greenward Partners (a Spanish green energy firm), Ethical Intelligence (an EU-based AI ethics firm), ProtectedBy.AI (A US based AI cybersecurity firm), Epic Theatre Ensemble (a NYC nonprofit), the NACD New Jersey Chapter and NYU Stern-based think tank, Ethical Systems. She also serves as a Governance Mentor at Plug & Play Tech Centre, a global start-up eco-system. She is a NACD Board Leadership Fellow and Governance faculty and holds the Carnegie Mellon CERT Certification in Cyber-Risk Oversight.
Dr. Bonime-Blanc spent two decades as a c-suite global corporate executive at Bertelsmann, Verint, and PSEG overseeing legal, governance, risk, ethics, CSR, compliance, audit, InfoSec and environmental health and safety. She began her career as an international corporate lawyer at Cleary Gottlieb, was born and raised in Europe and is multilingual.
She is a global keynote speaker and graduate faculty at NYU teaching “cyber-leadership, risk & resilience”. She is an extensively published author of many articles and several books including The Reputation Risk Handbook, Emerging Practices in Cyber-Risk Governance and The Artificial Intelligence Imperative. Her latest book, Gloom to Boom: How Leaders Transform Risk into Resilience and Value (Routledge 2020) debuted as an Amazon #1 Hot Release in Business Ethics and Game Theory. She lives in New York City with her family and is an avid photographer and artist.
Sandy Brown, CPA
Independent NYSE/NASDAQ Director; SEC/SOX Financial Expert; Carnegie Mellon Certificate in Cybersecurity Oversight; Fortune 100 CEO & President; NYSE CFO
A CPA for over 32 years and a Qualified SEC Financial Expert, Sandy Brown serves as an independent director for both NYSE & Nasdaq companies. A Director and member of the Audit and Governance Committees of the FPA Funds Board, she is a former Fortune 100 subsidiary CEO, President and NYSE CFO. Sandy has extensive experience with financial audits, statements and operations, and recently obtained a Cyber Security CERT from Carnegie Mellon.
While directing domestic and international divisions of JP Morgan Chase, Bank of America and Transamerica, Sandy honed her financial expertise in banking, investments, insurance and real estate by serving as CEO & President of 27 subsidiaries and Limited Partnerships. She offers particular expertise in $multi-billion M&As involving complex derivatives.
Sandy served proudly as an inaugural member of Bank of America’s National Diversity Council – the first organization of its type in the Fortune 100.
Dennis Cagan
Principal, Caganco Incorporated
Dennis Jay Cagan is a noted high-technology entrepreneur, respected CEO, professional board director – 67 corporate fiduciary boards, venture investor, mentor, consultant, and Shadow CEO™. He has founded or co-founded over a dozen different companies, taken some public, and has been the CEO of both public and private companies. He is in the IT Hall of Fame, and his book, The Board of Directors of a Private Enterprise, released in 2017, is considered by many to be the most authoritative perspective available on private company boards and governance issues. He has an impressive track record of both start-up and turn-around situations.
In addition to leading the numerous companies he has founded or co-founded, Dennis has served as an interim CEO for many years. As examples, he has served as interim President, CEO and Managing Member of a cybersecurity software developer; as President and CEO of a SaaS financial services company; as Chairman, CEO and President of a public company providing distance learning-based workplace training internationally; and CEO of a public company providing proprietary Internet email messaging services.
Charla Griffy-Brown, PhD
Pepperdine Graziadio Business School, Professor, Associate Dean
Dr. Griffy-Brown is a tenured full-professor at Pepperdine University who has trained hundreds of executives in the areas of business innovation leveraging digital systems, analytics, and optimizing cyber risk. She is a seasoned board member, and currently serves as a Director on two Corporate Boards and two non-profit boards as well as the California Technology Council. She has experience serving on Risk, Audit, Governance, and Strategy Committees. She provides board leadership in digital marketing and cyber security. Charla has worked with business leaders and executives to deploy a risk-based approach cyber security working with leaders in organizations such as Johnson & Johnson, Paramount Pictures, and Nintendo. Her research on emerging technologies, digital innovation, and risk has been funded by a Denny Endowment, an SAP University Alliance Grant, the Pacific TelecommunicationsCommission, the Rothschild Research Endowment, and the Graziadio School of Business Funds for Excellence. She is the Editor-in-Chief of the international journal, Technology in Society.
Dr. Griffy-Brown graduated from Harvard University, is a former Fulbright Scholar, and holds a Ph.D. in Technology Management from Griffith University in Queensland, Australia. Dr. Griffy-Brown also served as an associate professor at the Tokyo Institute of Technology. During 2012 she served as a Visiting Fellow at Tsinghua University in China and Aoyama Gakuin University in Japan. In 2017, she was a visiting fellow at Jyvlaskyla University in Finland. She was an invited guest speaker for the US State Department in the area of emerging technologies and development. She has also worked with NASA, the European Commission, and the UN Global Environmental Facility.