PRESS RELEASES

AFCEA INTERNATIONAL ANNOUNCES THE ELECTION OF NATALIE GIVANS AND ALFRED GRASSO AS ASSOCIATION LEADERS

For Immediate Release May 11, 2010

AFCEA Media Contact:                     

Tobey Jackson

(703) 631-6189

tjackson@afcea.org

FAIRFAX, VA — Ms. Natalie Givans, Senior Vice President, Booz Allen Hamilton, and Mr. Alfred Grasso, President and Chief Executive Officer, The MITRE Corporation, have been elected to lead AFCEA International. Ms. Givans will serve as Chair of the Board and Mr. Grasso will serve as the Vice Chair of the Board.

Ms. Givans is a lifetime member of AFCEA, joining in 1986. For the past two years, Ms. Givans has served as the Vice Chair of the Board and the Chair of the Budget and Finance Committee; she previously served on the Board of Directors for both AFCEA International and the AFCEA International Building Services Committee. In addition she has been active with the AFCEA Educational Foundation and the AFCEA Diversity and Strategic Development Committees. She has also participated with the AFCEA Northern Virginia chapter Programs Committee and Young AFCEAN events as an invited speaker and mentor. As Chair of the AFCEA International Board of Directors, Ms. Givans will chair the Association’s Executive Committee and Compensation Committee and participate on the AFCEA Educational Foundation Board of Directors. She succeeds Mr. Paul Cofoni, President and Chief Executive Officer, CACI International, in this position.

Ms. Givans has more than 26 years of experience as a leader in Booz Allen Hamilton, primarily focused on leading Cyber Security business across the Defense, Civil Agency, and National Security community. Most recently, she led Booz Allen’s Information Assurance and Resilience (A&R) capability team with over 2000 professionals providing cyber defense and secure solutions to the Warfighter and the Federal Government. Her personal focus this coming year is in leading cyber security solutions for the firm’s Health clients and driving the firm’s Technology business across Military Health. She is a senior leader in the firm’s Strategic Technology and Innovation Center of Excellence. Ms. Givans was an active member of the System Security Engineering Capability Maturity Model (SSE-CMM) project, focused on ensuring that security is integrated into all acquisition and systems development lifecycles from their conception and was an author of the SSE-CMM, which obtained its approval as ISO Standard 21827.

Ms. Givans received a B.S. degree in Electrical Engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and an M.S. degree in Electrical Engineering from the Johns Hopkins University. She remains active at MIT through the Alumni Association Board of Directors, and is the President of the Class of 1984. Ms. Givans also serves as an advisor on the George Mason University C4I Center, on the Corporate Partnership Council for the Society of Women Engineers, and on the Women’s Advisory Board of the Girl Scouts of the Nation’s Capital.

Mr. Grasso has been a long time member of AFCEA and has served over five years on the Association’s Executive Committee and Board, as well as its Audit Committee. He is currently the Co-Chair of the Governance Committee. As Vice Chair of AFCEA International he will report to the Chair of the Board and will chair the Budget and Finance Committee. As president and chief executive officer of The MITRE Corporation, he is responsible for developing and leading the corporation's overall strategic and business operations and cultivating key sponsor and customer partnerships. Mr. Grasso is also a member of MITRE's Board of Trustees.

Mr. Grasso has held several leadership and management positions within MITRE since joining the company in 1986. He served as director of the Command, Control, Communications, and Intelligence (C3I) Federally Funded Research and Development Center operated by MITRE for the Department of Defense; senior vice president and general manager of MITRE's Washington Command, Control, and Communications (WC3) Center; and vice president and chief information officer. He also served as technical director for the Battlefield Systems Division at MITRE's Fort Monmouth, N.J., operation and in the Center for Air Force Command and Control Systems. He was appointed president and CEO in 2006. Before joining MITRE, Mr. Grasso was with ARINC Research Corporation and with the Westinghouse Electric Corporation.

Mr. Grasso received his bachelor's degree in electrical engineering from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst in 1980 and his master's degree in computer science from Worcester Polytechnic Institute in 1993. He is a graduate of the Program for Management Development at Harvard Business School. He serves as a member of the Defense Science Board, to which he had previously served as a consultant, a special advisor to the STRATCOM CYBER Strategic Advisory Group, as well as a member of the Stevens Institute Systems Engineering Research Center Advisory Board, the University of Virginia's Department of Systems and Information Engineering and Howard University's Science and Engineering School's Board of Visitors. He has also held positions on the Army Science Board, The Association for Enterprise Information Board of Directors, and the Smith College Picker Engineering Program’s Academic Advisory Committee.

“AFCEA International has been blessed with a long line of distinguished leaders from the C4I community,” stated Kent Schneider, President and CEO of AFCEA International. “Paul Cofoni and Natalie Givens have been a great leadership team as chair and vice chair. I thank Paul personally for his guidance over the past two years. Natalie is a proven leader at Booz Allen Hamilton and in the various roles she has played at AFCEA. We look forward to working with her in her new role as chair. Al Grasso has been an active leader in AFCEA for a number of years, in key roles such as a member of the Executive Committee, member of the Budget and Finance Committee, and co-chair of the Governance Committee. I can think of no one more qualified to step in as Vice Chair.”

In acknowledging her election, Ms. Givans said, “It is an honor to be elected the Chair of the AFCEA International Board of Directors after having served AFCEA for 24 years at multiple levels. AFCEA is unique in its mission to provide an ethical forum for exchange of information between industry and the government in areas critical to the Nation’s security and to our warfighters here and abroad. AFCEA’s members collaborate on Cyber Security, Homeland Defense, and Intelligence, with emphasis on IT and C4I solutions in an environment of increased threats, uncertainty in the economy, and increasing demands on a workforce that isn’t scaling quickly enough to meet the demands in these areas. The Educational Foundation’s work, including the Professional Development Center, the Leadership Forum, and the robust scholarship program, makes a difference in ensuring the development of more leaders in these key areas. I look forward to serving AFCEA as it continues to grow and evolve.”

“I am extremely honored to accept this new position as Vice Chair of the Board of AFCEA International,” said Mr. Grasso. “For many years I have applauded the outstanding AFCEA programs that support current national defense professionals, as well as those programs that are helping to form the next generation of scientists and engineers. From conferences and workshops to publications and scholarships, AFCEA is making a difference to the nation. I look forward to leveraging my previous experiences on various AFCEA committees to help shape a strong future for this organization that will ensure its continued contributions.”

AFCEA International, established in 1946, is a non-profit membership association serving the military, government, industry, and academia as an ethical forum for advancing professional knowledge and relationships in the fields of communications, IT, intelligence, and global security. For more information visit www.afcea.org.

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