February 15, 2012

The latest edition of the Year in Homeland Security magazine covers a range of homeland issues, offering expert voices that include Catalyst Partner principals Randy Beardsworth, Vance Taylor and Rich Cooper.

In “The Homeland Security Professional,” Beardsworth and Taylor lent their perspective on the development of homeland as a profession.

In the early days of the department, there was no such thing as a homeland security professional, said Beardsworth.

“The closest you got to it were people who had expertise in more than one area,” such as Beardsworth himself, who helped stand up DHS and served as Acting Under Secretary for the Border and Transportation Security Directorate. “The people who were managing the departments had a very strong operational background and generally used the same language in terms of missions and operations.”

From Taylor’s perspective, homeland security education is helping make homeland security a true profession. Taylor earned his Master’s in Homeland Security Leadership from the University of Connecticut online while also working as a director for security policy at the Association of Metropolitan Water Agencies.

“I was able to take what I was learning, apply it to my job, and craft the discussion about what homeland security meant for infrastructure protection and waste water,” he said.

For his part, Cooper wrote several articles, offering interviews with FEMA Administrator W. Craig Fugate and William J. “Bill” Bratton, one of the United States’ smartest cops, as well as an analysis of the natural disasters that made 2011 a “year from hell.”

Check out these and other stories in the 2011’s Year in Homeland Security.