Dear Alumni members,
Welcome to our first edition of our FBI San Diego Citizens Academy Alumni Association’s quarterly newsletter! Let us know what you think after reviewing it. I’d like to take a minute and recap some accomplishments in 2017 and plans for your involvement in 2018. Thanks to all of you who have renewed your membership for 2018 already. I hope you all renew this year!
First off, we’d like to welcome San Diego’s new Special Agent in Charge, John A. Brown. SAC Brown will be at our first Quarterly Briefing for the year, which will be held at Bridgepoint Education on the evening of March 12, starting at 6:15 pm. We’ll have a meet and greet first, then a brief membership meeting (very brief!), and then a presentation by the FBI Cyber Security Squad on Business Email Compromise.
Other big news for 2017 is that we supported our community in many ways with volunteering and support of a school, students, and several community organizations. These were not only community service opportunities, but opportunities to promote the FBI, the United States’ premier law enforcement organization (in my opinion!). One last thing, but by no means a small accomplishment, our Chapter won a Chapter of Distinction award for our work in 2017. We also added 46 members in 2017. Thanks for your support and welcome to all new Alumni.
Next, we have a lot of plans for 2018! We will continue to support the Monarch school in several ways, as well as other community organizations. Please review the section on this year’s volunteer opportunities. We need your help! Watch for messages about upcoming volunteer opportunities and then respond back to the designated leader for that event. From personal experience, I can tell you that these are fun and a great way to serve at the same time. In addition, we are planning quarterly meetings this year and are aiming for one to be a lunch meeting. We may need membership to contribute to the cost of the meal; we’ll let you know well in advance. There are a lot of interesting law enforcement and counter-intelligence topics and these are always well done by San Diego HQ’s hard-working Special Agents.
We hope to achieve a Chapter of Excellence award this year, which is a notch up from the Chapter of Distinction. As our efforts unfold, we’ll let you know if there are Alumni opportunities to support these. One of the best ways to support these is to attend and participate in quarterly meetings and other events.
We realized we had some communications and outreach issues, so board member Mike Struttmann helped us engage useful communications tools and services which should upgrade our notifications, publications like this, as well as our website, Facebook and LinkedIn sites. Stay tuned for more on this!
Finally, I’d like to mention a new “partnership” we’re pursuing thanks to the great work of board member Sheri Sachs. Sheri considered how we might partner with the Red Cross to provide the Red Cross with background/security vetted volunteers in disaster situations. Sheri found out that the FBI Citizens Academy’s National Chapter already had facilitated one partnership with a chapter in Connecticut. This led to a couple of phone conversations which should be an opportunity we can unveil to all Alumni by late spring or early summer. What this means is that you’ll have an opportunity to take Red Cross training in disaster relief services and then be on the call list to assist with disasters both here in Southern California as well as throughout the US if you’re interested! Sheri is also working on a Speakers’ Bureau for those of you interested in this type of community outreach. Stay tuned…
Thanks for all you do to support and promote the mission of the FBI as members of the FBI SD CAAA.
Kind regards,
Mark Johnson
President, FBI San Diego Citizens Academy Alumni Association