Jacobs: If/When

David Brin is a scientist, speaker, technical consultant and world-known author. His novels have been New York Times Bestsellers, winning multiple Hugo, Nebula and other awards. At least a dozen have been translated into more than twenty languages.His 1989 ecological thriller, Earth, foreshadowed global warming, cyberwarfare and near-future trends such as the World Wide Web. His 2012 novel Existence extends this type of daring, near future extrapolation by exploring bio-engineering, intelligence and how to maintain an open-creative civilization. A 1998 movie, directed by Kevin Costner, was loosely based on The Postman.Brin serves on advisory committees dealing with subjects as diverse as national defense and homeland security, astronomy and space exploration, SETI and nanotechnology, future/prediction and philanthropy. He has served since 2010 on the council of external advisers for NASA's Innovative and Advanced Concepts group (NIAC), which supports the most inventive and potentially ground-breaking new endeavors.His non-fiction book — The Transparent Society: Will Technology Force Us to Choose Between Freedom and Privacy? — deals with secrecy in the modern world. It won the Freedom of Speech Prize from the American Library Association.

Leighton Cardwell is Jacobs' Sector Growth Director for Cites and Places in Europe. He is responsible for the strategic evolution and growth of the Cities and Places offer at Jacobs, with a focus on evidence-led, place-based approaches to the built environment, integrated city and regional development, and future trends in the industry. With a passion for outcome-focused delivery and for bringing together global best practice for the benefit of all, Leighton is at the forefront of Jacobs’ approach to inspiring, enabling and creating the great places and lasting legacies that our communities, clients and people are proud of.Liza-Jane Sapsford is a Project Manager with 10+ years and a Designated Project Executive with 2+ years experience working predominantly in the Facilities Management field for clients across numerous sectors to include Healthcare, Banking & Investment, Local Authority and Government. Her areas of expertise are mainly in project management, operational sales and strategy, product sales, customer service management and delivering best practice to customers. Her career has developed from working in delivery to leading the Track Record Facilities team in the UK.  She states that her passion is to continue to drive customer excellence and innovation within the facilities and building management sector to enable Jacobs' clients to be leaner, have better access to their data and put the control back into their hands.

Simon Gaskell, Jacobs Senior Associate Director - Strategic Consulting,  is a passionate change manager and has spent much of his career enabling operational transformation across multiple industries. He has a passion for implementing new ways of working that are enabled through client adoption of new technologies and digital solutions. Simon is currently Delivery Lead for Jacobs' Aqua DNA platform based solution. Sitting at the crossroads of client requirements for more mature, digital-based management of their water networks; emerging IoT technologies; and Jacobs domain expertise, Simon has been able to build a strong understanding of digitally enabled transformation within water client businesses. Simon began his career as a leader in the British Army with the majority of his time spent within the UK's Commando forces, undertaking expeditionary engineering operations. Since joining Jacobs, Simon has undertaken consultancy work within lean and agile ways of working, design led thinking, innovation and digital transformation. Samantha Sloan is a Network Business Manager at United Utilities, a water and wastewater services provider to around seven million people in the North West of England supplying 3 million households and 200,000 business premises. Samantha has held a variety of roles at United Utilities since 2015. She received her Bachelor degree in Mathematics from the University of Manchester, and her Master of Science degree in Aerospace Engineering from Swansea University. 

Roger Falconer is Emeritus Professor of Water and Environmental Engineering in the School of Engineering, at Cardiff University, UK, and an Independent Water Consultant. His research and consultancy interests are in hydro-environmental modelling and his models have been used in over 100 Environmental Impact Assessment studies world-wide and provide one of the engines to the model Flood Modeller (marketed internationally by Jacobs). He has published over 450 papers in journals and conference proceedings and given over 600 keynote conference presentations and lectures to learned societies and universities world-wide. He is a Fellow of the UK Royal Academy of Engineering, a Foreign Member of the Chinese Academy of Engineering, and Fellow of the European Academy of Sciences. He was President of the International Association for Hydro-Environment Engineering and Research (2011-15). He consults regularly on flooding projects world-wide and was a member of the: Government’s National Flood Resilience Scientific Advisory Group, Natural Resources Wales’ Flood Risk Management Committee (2006-16), Yorkshire Regional Flood and Coastal Committee (2019-date), Independent Expert Group (of 3) reviewing the recent London Floods (2021-date). He regularly gives TV and media interviews on flooding. Dr. Richard Crowder, Jacobs Director, Water & Environment, is an internationally recognized flood risk management professional with more than 25 years of experience. His history in the industry is one of innovation and doing things differently. He is a business leader with experience spanning research, innovation, project delivery, client management, sales, and operational management. Richard is known for taking on challenging projects and using innovation and digital delivery to solve problems and deliver projects in new and more efficient ways. This covers the full range of flood risk management disciplines including appraisal, environmental services, engineering design, asset management, and hydrological and hydraulic modelling. He joined Halcrow (now Jacobs) in 2002 and has held senior leadership roles including Regional Business Development Director (Europe) for the water sector, and framework manager delivering engineering and environmental services to the Environment Agency (England). He is currently part of Jacobs’ Water Catchment Management leadership team responsible for Growth, the Director responsible for Jacobs family of flood products, and the Framework Director leading Jacobs contract with the Environment Agency to deliver flood mapping and modelling services.  

Jeff McCoy is the Chief Engineer for the Jacobs Software Engineering Center (JSEC), located in Hudson, New Hampshire. Jeff joined Jacobs as part of the TYBRIN purchase in 2010. Jeff also currently serves as the Program Manager for the Support Aircraft Agile Effort (SAAE), which employs the SAFe agile process to develop a wide range of Department of Defense advanced software solutions for the Mission Planning Enterprise at Hanscom AFB, Massachusetts. Jeff’s background is in engineering, and prior to his time at Jacobs he served as a Systems Engineer at TASC, Lockheed Sanders, BAE Systems and TYBRIN Corporation. Jeff also served as an officer in the U.S. Air Force after studying computer science and graduating with a degree in Mathematics from the University of Illinois in Champaign-Urbana. Jeff also holds a Masters Degree in Meteorology from St. Louis University. Jeff Cusato has been with Jacobs for over 16 years and currently works as a Product Manager for the Jacobs Software Engineering Center (JSEC). His main focus is in support of Airdrop and Mission Planning tools for the USAF and other armed services. He is a proud jack-of-all-trades who is not only used to wearing many hats but sincerely enjoys it. Jeff has worked on the airdrop suite of tools since 2008, growing Jacobs' expertise in this exciting domain. Jeff has a Bachelors degree in Electrical Engineering from Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI) and a Masters degree in Systems Engineering from John Hopkins University.

Shannon Miller is an Executive Vice President and President of Jacobs’ Divergent Solutions operating unit, responsible for delivering creative innovative, next generation cloud, cyber, data and digital solutions across the company to enable our customers and partners globally.  She leads our Cyber & Intelligence, Platforms, Technologies & Software Solutions and Technology & Innovative Solutions business units and partners with our Critical Mission and People & Places lines of business to accelerate growth by creating scale in the related skills and business approaches, driving meaningful value for our clients and partners around the globe. Over her almost 25-year career at Jacobs, Shannon has had a rich and varied journey, starting as a process engineer and evolving into project management, sales, operations and human resources leadership – spanning multiple industries including technology, resources, infrastructure, pharmaceutical and consumer products with assignments in the U.S., Europe, Australia and Canada. Most recently Shannon was Chief Growth Officer and lead for Enterprise Risk Management. She holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Chemical Engineering from the Colorado School of Mines.

Chris Voss, a former FBI lead hostage negotiator and author of "Never Split the Difference," shares his remarkable insights on negotiation. He reveals the critical importance of empathy and listening in high-stakes situations. Voss discusses the transformative role of unexpected information, or 'Black Swans,' in shaping outcomes. He emphasizes the balance between vulnerability and confidence and illustrates how practical techniques can lead to successful collaboration. With real-life stories, he provides valuable tips for maximizing negotiation efficiency.

Adi Karisik is a global leader with over 20 years of highly specialized professional experience, one that covers information technology, enterprise IT cyber security, Operational Technology, management consulting, and intelligence consulting as well as providing specialized services in Defense and Intelligence domains. He managed several classified and open programs/portfolios in both USA and Europe. During his 14-year tenure with Blue Canopy Group, Mr. Karisik served as a partner and one of the key leaders in National Security. His work experience covers a variety of organizations in the intelligence arena. He has authored several types of training in areas of cross-cultural negotiations, predictive behavior analysis, human terrain reading and survivability. Since 2012 Adi has been involved in big data analytics and has partnered with several US and European companies to provide a product capable of combining big data and machine learning with multiple external data sources, in order to facilitate assistance in the area of complex decision-making modeling. 

To learn more about the United Nations Outreach Programme on the Holocaust, click here. Read more about Leslie Rosenthal's story from this article from Canada's National Post (originally published August 25, 2012), as well as this story about Miriam Rosenthal from the February 22, 2018 edition of The Globe and Mail. You may also find additional information from this blog. 

Alex Mahrou is the Director of Incubation for Data and Technology within the People & Places Solutions line of business at Jacobs. His focus areas are on growing organic capability in cloud, data & analytics, Open Source, and platform-level technology. He originally started with the Jacobs family in 2013.David Yardy is a Software Architect/Team Manager with a 20-year history of working in the engineering, design, and construction industry. In his role, he is responsible for overall architecture, design, and development of web, mobile, and cloud-based solutions.  David is highly effective in driving the software development lifecycle, including requirements gathering and analysis, design, programming, testing, and deployment, and he has demonstrated ability in leading Agile/SCRUM-based teams environments aligned with DevOps patterns and practices while collaborating with geographically diverse teams to deliver global solutions.