This chapter’s membership includes representatives from a variety of businesses, large and small, in central and western NY as well as parts of Pennsylvania and Ohio. It is open to any professional in who is engaged in business continuity, disaster recovery, cyber resiliency or emergency managment.

The 2023 Chapter Board

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President – Kathee Tyo

Kathee is currently the Enterprise Risk Management Leader at MVP Health Care where she oversees Business Continuity Management.  While her career started in Nursing, she has been in the business continuity field for 15 years focusing on planning and preparedness for healthcare, academics and research before changing scope to enterprise risk management and business continuity for a health insurance provider.  As President, Kathee would like to assist in diversifying the membership of the Eastern Great Lakes ACP to include other industries for sharing of best practices and benchmarking.

 

Vice President - Scot Peluso

Scot is a Business Continuity professional who works for Empower Federal Credit Union. He has over a decade of experience in developing Business Continuity programs in a multi-national utility and a 24-branch federal credit union. Scot has led the test phase of a new Disaster Recovery data center roll out for nationalgrid, and then coordinated all DR Testing and Business Continuity activities for their US IT department while also directing an actual recovery in place of the production data center after a failure of critical equipment caused a data center power outage. He has also significantly updated and upgraded the Business Continuity (including a major overhaul of the pandemic plan both before and during the COVID-19 pandemic) and Safety programs at his Credit Union. Scot holds a Certified Business Continuity Professional certification.

Scot is devoted to his family. He is an avid swimmer and skier, having exceeded the NY State speed limit on skis. He is an experienced gardener and a budding home chef/baker. Scot is also a certified Rescue Diver. His current passions are the guitar and learning how to make a proper vegetable beef soup for his wife.

 

Secretary – Shari Vail

I have been with BCBSWNY for 10 ½ years in varied capacities such as IT project management, business relationship scoping for new programs and currently as IT Service Continuity Manager. Being in numerous roles has offered me the chance to learn in depth knowledge about the business areas.  Services I currently perform across the organization cover business continuity, disaster recovery and other support efforts.  I handle training for plan building within the system and perform DR exercise tracking of issues/lessons learned. Additionally, I provide administration for the BC DR software system.

I have served on the EGLACP Board in a few different roles over the years since 2003. EGLACP has offered me a wealth of knowledge. I also have served on the Blues Association Business Continuity Board in various roles including coordination for their annual BC DR conference in Chicago IL.

My prior work efforts included providing BC & DR Services in the Automotive Industry involving annual mass notification call tree exercises, tracking plan activity globally and a few other areas of expertise.

 

Treasurer – Greig Holman

 

Greig is the Business Continuity Program Manager at Canandaigua National Bank & Trust. He is a Bank Officer and a Certified Business Continuity Professional.

He has worked at the bank since 2012 in the Corporate Risk Department and has been a member of ACP and the EGLACP Chapter since 2015. He was the Information Director for the chapter from 2016-2017. In 2015 he was hired at CNB as the Vendor Management & Business Continuity Coordinator. Both programs have had great growth, so earlier in 2021, the bank separated the 2 jobs so now he is just the Program Manager for Business Continuity Management. He has spent many years working with the executives at the bank and enjoys working in a thriving environment with great buy-in for the Business Continuity Program from Executive Leadership.

Greig lives with his wife, Cheryl on a hill overlooking the Naples valley and hills surrounding Canandaigua Lake in Naples, NY. He has enjoyed being a Worship Leader and Small Group Leader at his local church for many years.

 

Membership Director - Mariola Niewiadomski

My current position at M&T Bank is Business Continuity Analyst.  EGLACP chapter member for 13 years. Previous chapter board member with Secretary position for two terms. 

 

Education and Seminars Director - Greg Hofferbert

I joined the Paychex BCP team via an acquisition in 2013. My first three years at Paychex was focused on Disaster Recovery of applications and data center recoveries. In 2016 I moved over to Business Continuity and primarily have done BC since. I also participated in the selection, acquisition and onboarding of two different BCP tools and one mass notification tool.

Greg CBCP certified by DRII and have been an ACP member for 8 years, either in the EGLACP chapter or the Ohio Chapter.

 

Public Relations – Jay Williams

 

Jay is a Vice President at M&T Bank 

He is an Army veteran with a largely technical background. He earned his CBCP in 2011 and brings 11 years of business continuity management experience to the chapter. Jay has benefited greatly as an EGLACP member since 2007 and is grateful for the opportunity to give back and serve in this position. He is currently completing a business degree at SUNY ESC, while managing the planning team for M&T Bank and patiently enduring the teenage years of his three children. His focus while serving is to maximize the collaborative value provided to ACP members individually, the companies they represent and the communities in which they live.

 

Director of Information – Jay Reece

 

Jay currently works at Paychex as a Senior Business Continuity Analyst Team Lead

Jay is a lifelong resident of Rochester, NY.  He currently works for Paychex as a Business Continuity Analyst.  At Paychex his responsibilities focus primarily on Disaster Recovery and include the development, implementation, exercising and maintenance of the business continuity and disaster recovery plans.

Program Director – Cory Tylenda

Cory is the Business Continuity Manager for Algonquin Power and Utilities Corporation (Liberty), a growing renewable energy and utility company with assets across North America and internationally, based in Toronto, Canada. In this role, Cory serves as a member of the corporate crisis management team assisting with response and recovery. Additionally, he actively supports emergency management, incident response, disaster recovery planning, cyber response, risk management, and business resiliency.

He has held positions at the University of Rochester, ESL Federal Credit Union, Rochester General Hospital and Paychex! He credits his early introduction into emergency response while serving as a volunteer EMT for seven years with four ambulance agencies.

At ESL Federal Credit Union, he served as Business Continuity Manager with responsibility for management of BCDR workspaces and strategy. Cory notes one of his accomplishments was reinforcing the business continuity and physical security partnership to increase emergency response capabilities. He also served as a member of the medical emergency response team and COVID-19 response task force.

At the University of Rochester, he served as a Senior Analyst in the Business Continuity and IT Risk Management team and was responsible for business continuity management for all areas of the University of Rochester including academic, research and healthcare, and disaster recovery planning.

Prior to joining the University of Rochester, he was employed at Paychex, Inc. as a Business Continuity analyst. His responsibilities included availability management, disaster recovery planning, and serving as administrator of Continuity Software’s AvailabilityGuard™ tool.

Cory is an avid student and believes in life-long learning and self-development, where he has recently completed his master’s degree from Nazareth College in Leadership and Organizational Change in 2021. He holds an MBCP, MBCI, and ISO 22301 Lead Implementer certifications. In his free time, Cory likes to golf, relax by the beach, collect rocks, and work on home construction and gardening projects.

Cory proudly serves as Secretary for the Eastern Great Lakes Association of Contingency Professionals and has been an active member since 2011!

  

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