John B. Copenhaver, CBCP

John Copenhaver is a licensed Georgia attorney since 1979 and holds both the Member of the Business Continuity Institute (MBCI) and Certified Business Continuity Professional (CBCP) professional certifications. He was President Clinton’s appointee to the Directorship of FEMA Region IV, its largest regional office, from 1997 to 2001, and has since served in a number of senior executive management roles, including President and CEO of the DRI International. He was elected to the Disaster Recovery Institute International Board of Directors in 2001, and then served as their Chair from 2003-2005. As well as serving on the Editorial Board of “The Journal of Emergency Management” and formerly “The Journal of Business Continuity and Emergency Management,”.

John has held many distinguished appointed positions, including one to the Advisory Board of the Journal of Emergency Management, which he now holds; to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce National Security Task Force from 2007 – 2010, and to the FEMA National Advisory Council Private Sector Subcommittee from 2008 – 2010. John’s disaster operations experience ranges in scale from small (less than $20 million in assistance and fewer than 100 people involved in recovery operations) to massive (over $1 billion in assistance and over 1,000 people involved in response and recovery operations).

He directed implementation of the United States’ largest disaster recovery / housing buyout and relocation program after Hurricane Floyd in eastern North Carolina, involving purchase of over 1,100 homes in flood prone areas and relocation of occupants to safer homes outside known floodplains; Federal dollars spent in this program exceeded $400 million. John directed the hazardous materials programs for the Southeastern U.S., including oversight of the Chemical Stockpile Emergency Preparedness Program (CSEPP) and the Radiological Emergency Program (REP), both involving multimillion-dollar budgets and considerable Congressional oversight.