Rethinking bomb threat response

Author's Biography

Jennifer Hesterman is a retired US Air Force colonel who served three Pentagon tours and commanded in the field. Her last assignment was Vice Commander at Andrews Air Force Base, Maryland, where she led installation security, force support and the 1st Helicopter Squadron, and regularly escorted the President and other heads of state on the ramp. She is Vice President, Business Resiliency and Education Services for Watermark Risk Management International, on the board of directors for the International Foundation for Protection Officers and advises the Homeland Security Training Institute at the College of DuPage. She holds a doctoral degree from Benedictine University, master of science degrees from Johns Hopkins University and Air University, and a bachelor of science from Penn State University. She was a National Defense Fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, DC and is an alumnus of the Harvard Senior Executive Fellows programme. Her book, Soft Target Hardening: Protecting People from Attack, was the ASIS Security Book of the Year for 2015. She also authored Soft Target Crisis Management (2016) and The Terrorist-Criminal Nexus (2013). Dr Hesterman is an expert on international and domestic terrorist organisations, transnational threats and organised crime. She is one of the very few analysts specialising in the terror–crime nexus. She is also a consultant on soft target vulnerabilities and hardening tactics, and has a specialist interest in issues including human intuition, concentric rings of security and ‘fifth column’ insider threats.