Gulfport / Gulf Coast Area Team Members

Ann Olsen

Senior Mediator, Meridian Institute
Ms. Ann Olsen joined Meridian Institute in 2008 as a Senior Mediator, bringing more than twenty years experience facilitating planning, policy development, organizational analysis, and strategy development processes. She has extensive background supporting collaboration among diverse parties and identifying issues, opportunities, and solutions. Ms. Olsen has worked at the community, regional, and state levels in facilitating both informal and formal partnerships among public and private stakeholders. She has worked with and within large and small businesses, higher education, healthcare and government, and in developing policies and plans relating to information management, information security, business continuity, operations improvement, and environmental protection and sustainability. She also brings experience facilitating executive level steering committees and task teams within highly complex organizational environments. Ms. Olsen currently facilitates the Gulfport, Mississippi, community partnership for the Community and Regional Resilience Initiative (CARRI) directed by the National Security Directorate (NSD) at Oak Ridge National Laboratory. She has also facilitated working sessions of the NSD Strategic Advisory Group. For CARRI, Ms. Olsen also contributes to the development of the larger CARRI program, provides day-to-day contract management leadership for Meridian’s engagement, and has assisted in facilitating community workshop sessions for the CARRI Charleston, South Carolina, partner community. Prior to joining Meridian, Ms. Olsen’s experience includes providing on-going facilitation for an executive technology steering committee for a public corporation, serving as facilitator and member of the core planning teams for the Tennessee Pollution Prevention Partnership and the Middle Tennessee Regional Environmental Forum, directing strategic information management planning for a major academic medical center, leading a complex business analysis and process reengineering project within a state government environment, and providing consulting support to the U.S.E.P.A. on economic incentives for regulatory compliance. Ms. Olsen is a Ph.D. Candidate and Bridgestone Fellow in Environmental Management at Vanderbilt University. Her dissertation research examines cross-state diffusion patterns for the U.S. Green Building Council's Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) Rating System. She earned her Masters in Management and M.A. in economics at Vanderbilt and her B.A. in economics and mathematics at Rice University.

Email

aolsen@merid.org

Benjamin (Ben) Thomas, Jr.

Director of Technology Partnerships
National Security Directorate, Oak Ridge National Laboratory
Dr. Benjamin Thomas is the Director of Technology Partnerships within the National Security Directorate (NSD) at Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), where he is responsible for guiding the development of new partnerships and the expansion of existing partnerships with Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) and minority- and woman-owned businesses in support of multiple initiatives within NSD. A primary component of Dr. Thomas’ responsibilities is to interface with the Director of the Southeast Regional Research Initiative (SERRI) toward the development of collaborative research opportunities among educational institutions in the Southeast region, with a particular emphasis on HBCUs. Dr. Thomas is also responsible for developing linkages between SERRI and minority- and woman-owned businesses within the region to support the SERRI mission of successfully transferring research to the private sector. In addition, as he leads the Technology Partnerships activities, Dr. Thomas strives to develop relationships and new programs involving HBCUs and ORNL with Federal sponsors, to include Department of Defense and the Department of Homeland Security. Dr. Thomas is a graduate of the University of Tennessee (PhD, Management Science; MS Mathematics) and the Tuskegee University (BS, Mathematics).

	Address	Southeast Region Research Initiative Oak Ridge National Laboratory PO Box 2008 MS6242 Oak Ridge TN 37831-6242
	Phone	865-574-5438
	Fax	865-574-8162
	Email	thomasbjr@ornl.gov

Tom Lansford

Assistant Dean, College of Arts and Letters
University of Southern Mississippi
Tom Lansford is the Associate Dean of the College of Arts and Letters and a Professor of Political Science at the University of Southern Mississippi. Dr. Lansford is a member of the governing board of the National Social Science Association, an associate editor for the journal White House Studies and an associate editor for Politics and Ethics Review. He has published articles in journals such as Defense Analysis, The Journal of Conflict Studies, European Security, International Studies, Security Dialogue and Strategic Studies. Dr. Lansford is the author, coauthor, editor or coeditor of 27 books. His books include, most recently, All for One: NATO, Terrorism and the United States (2002), A Bitter Harvest: U.S. Foreign Policy and Afghanistan (2003), Strategic Preemption: US Foreign Policy and the Second War in Iraq (2004), To Protect and Defend: US Homeland Security Policy (2006) and the Historical Dictionary of U.S. Diplomacy Since the Cold War (2007). His more recent edited collections include: America’s War on Terror (2003), George W. Bush: A Political and Ethical Assessment at Midterm (2004), Transatlantic Security Dilemmas: Old Europe, New Europe and the US (2005), and Strategic Interests in the Middle East: Opposition or Support for US Foreign Policy (2007). Dr. Lansford is the author of more than one hundred essays, book chapters, and reviews.

	Address	College of Arts and Letters University of Southern Mississippi 730 East Beach Blvd. Long Beach, MS 39560
	Phone	228-214-3291
	Email	Tom.lansford@usm.edu