Who We Are
MISSION: The Safe Travel Institute: world class expertise empowering people to travel and live safely in today?s uncertain global environment.
Who we are:
The Safe Travel Institute is an educational institution dedicated to researching and disseminating Best Practices in the area of Safe Travel. The Safe Travel Institute is led by former executives from the US Government (Department of Defense, FBI and the US Intelligence Community) with over 200 years of experience in the fields of Safe Travel, Risk Management and Crisis Support. The Safe Travel Institute is a proud member of the following trade associations: Risk and Insurance Management Society (www.rims.org); University Risk Management and Insurance Association (www.urmia.org); Association of Corporate Travel Executives (www.acte.org); and ASIS (www.asisinternational.org).
Randy Spivey, Executive Director of the Safe Travel Institute, Safe Travel Institute is internationally recognized as a leading expert in the field of travel risk reduction and abduction prevention/survival. As the Chief of the Joint Personnel Recovery Agency (JPRA) Policy and Oversight Division, Mr. Spivey managed and provided oversight to all Hostage Survival training programs in the Department of Defense from 1997 to 2002 and authored multiple hostage-related policy and doctrine documents.
Mr. Spivey worked to identify and quantify the total Hostage Survival training requirement for the Department of Defense and subsequently developed a comprehensive plan to train over 1.4 million military personnel for this requirement. Mr. Spivey served on several multi-national panels related to survival training and represented the U.S. at a high-level workshop on how to modify current policies and associated training programs to ensure compatibility among our allies.
Since forming the Safe Travel Institute and National Hostage Survival Training Center, Randy has personally trained over 8000 individuals Best Practices related to Safe Travel and has worked directly with many national-level media organizations to include: ABC World News Tonight, CNN, Fox News Live, MSNBC, Associated Press, History Channel, USA Today, and NPR.
Mr. Spivey has a Bachelor of Science Degree in International Relations from the United States Air Force Academy, Colorado and a Master of Science Degree in Counseling and Human Resource Development from South Dakota State University.
James Sporleder, Director of the Safe Travel Institute Having extensive experience in travel security and survival training, James Sporleder has lead repatriation and debriefing projects for military and non-military personnel in crisis situations. He has also been a key analyst on assessment projects for the U.S. government to identify threats and risks while traveling and made recommendations for safer environments and better individual travel choices.
Jim is responsible for directly training more than 5,000 high-risk-of-capture personnel from some of the most elite units in the military. Mr. Sporleder is a leading subject matter expert in crisis support and repatriation of U.S. Servicemen and women. During his government career, he was responsible for planning, preparation, support, and execution of numerous repatriation operations reaching back to 1993. He served as team chief in repatriation preparations for three U.S. Army soldiers held in Kosovo in 1999 and also led the debriefing team for that effort. He was additionally assigned as the Repatriation Team Chief, Forward, for the return and debrief of 24 United States Navy EP-3 Crewmembers detained for 13 days in the People?s Republic of China.
Jerry E. McConnell, Director of Ministry Outreach & Non-Profits Division
Rev McConnell brings over 30 years of experience in pastoral ministry as a Youth Pastor, Associate Pastor, and Senior Pastor from 1975 to 2007. His background and experience includes the US Military from 1971-1974 where he was trained as a Pershing Missile Crewman & Azimuth Layer (nuclear warhead) and Battalion Legal Clerk. He also worked for the Pacific School District in Ilwaco, WA as a school teacher and coach, from 1974 - 1975.
Rev McConnell served as a Youth Pastor and Executive Pastor in Kirkland, WA from 1975-1986, and as a Senior Pastor in Gooding, ID from 1986 to 1988; in Baker City, OR from 1988 to 1999 and in Spokane, WA from 1999 to 2007.
Having lived and traveled abroad, Rev McConnell understands the challenges and
dangers of traveling overseas. He lived in central Europe for two years while in the military. During this time period he traveled extensively behind the Berlin Wall in East Germany in locations not seen by many Americans in the early 1970s. Rev McConnell has traveled to Mexico, Israel, Samoa, Australia, Papua New Guinea, Scotland, Ireland, England, France, Norway and Holland for ministry and mission related purposes.
Rev McConnell is a graduate of Northwest Nazarene University in Nampa, ID. He
completed his post-graduate work at Seattle Pacific University in Seattle, WA and is a graduate of the School of Large Church Management in Kansas City, MO. Rev McConnell was ordained in 1989.
Roger Aldrich, Director of Training, Safe Travel Institute. As the Director of Training for the Safe Travel Institute, Roger Aldrich is a well-known expert in travel safety and crisis survival. Roger served for 33 years with the Department of Defense, as an instructor, trainer and manager, specializing in detention survival. During his career as an instructor, instructor trainer, curriculum developer and manager of the only program in the U.S. government which addressed peacetime detention and hostage survival, Mr. Aldrich has been responsible for the successful training of over 60,000 high-risk-of-capture personnel. He has created, developed, and managed specialized, tailored captivity survival programs for the highest risk operational personnel in DoD, as well as the State Department, Defense Intelligence Agency, and the National Security Agency.
Steve Romano, Senior Advisor: Safe Travel Institute. Mr. Romano spent the last 20 years of his law enforcement career at the FBI, where he was most recently Chief of the Crisis Negotiation Unit in the Critical Incident Response Group. In this role he led more than 400 trained crisis negotiators in 56 field offices and was responsible for the overall operational, instructional, research, budget and personnel oversight.
During his career with the FBI, Mr. Romano was an active negotiator operationally involved in either a key leadership or advisory role in numerous hostage, barricade and kidnap incidents. He also managed numerous international kidnap negotiations and was deployed to India and Ecuador.
While at the FBI, Mr. Romano sharpened his training skills by planning, evaluating and participating in a wide range of national and international crisis management field training exercises. In addition, he revised the FBI National Crisis Negotiation Course and published a number of crisis negotiation articles. He has been featured in several productions on negotiations for Discovery, TLC and the History Channel.
Eugene A. Rugala, Senior Advisor: Critical Incidents Response
Eugene Rugala formerly of the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s (FBI) Critical Incident Response Group (CIRG), was assigned to the National Center for the Analysis of Violent Crime (NCAVC), FBI Academy, Quantico, Virginia. Mr. Rugala was a Supervisory Special Agent assigned to the NCAVC from February of 1995 until his retirement in September of 2005. Prior to retiring from the FBI, Mr. Rugala was Acting Unit Chief of Behavioral Analysis Unit – 1, Threat Assessment and Counter Terrorism.
Mr. Rugala, one of the FBI’s “Profilers”, in the unit made famous by the book and movie “The Silence of the Lambs”, specializes in the detailed analysis of violent crimes including murder, sexual assault, child sexual abuse, child abduction, extortion, kidnapping, domestic violence, stalking, arson, bombings, school violence and workplace violence. These analyses are provided to requesting law enforcement agencies in the form of offender profiles, crime scene analysis, investigative and interview strategies, media and crisis communication strategies and threat assessments.
Mr. Rugala has participated in ongoing research regarding stalking behavior, serial rape, domestic, workplace, and school violence. Mr. Rugala has contributed to a number of publications dealing with workplace violence, school violence and stalking behaviors. Mr. Rugala has testified before the Committee on Education and the Workforce, U.S. House of Representatives regarding workplace violence as a problem in America's workplaces; has testified before the judiciary committees of the Maryland State House and Senate regarding stalking behaviors on behalf of the Maryland Family Violence Council sponsoring revised stalking legislation; provided expert testimony in several trials dealing with assessing dangerousness in stalking and intimate partner violence; has been a guest lecturer at numerous police schools throughout the United States, including the FBI National Academy, as well as police schools in England, France, Germany, Australia, Japan and the former Soviet Union.
Mr. Rugala has consulted with the Protection Detail of the British Royal Family regarding Public Figure and Celebrity Stalkers. Mr. Rugala has also consulted with members of New Scotland Yard regarding mass murder, specifically as it applies to workplace and school violence. Mr. Rugala has been interviewed by various media organizations regarding domestic violence, stalking, workplace violence, sexual assault, as well as other violent crime issues handled by the NCAVC.
Mr. Rugala holds a Bachelor’s degree in Biology from Penn State University and has attended graduate school at the University of New Mexico. He is past President of the Washington, DC chapter of the Association of Threat Assessment Professionals, a member of the American Society of Industrial Security, and on the advisory board of the Corporate Alliance to End Partner Violence.
Margi Strub, Director of Training Development, Safe Travel Institute. As the Director of Training Development for the Safe Travel Institute, Margi is responsible for formalizing programs offered through the Safe Travel Institute and creating tailored programs to meet specialized client needs. Margi was the lead Hostage Survival curriculum developer for the Department of Defense when she retired from government service in 2006. Margi spent 30 years working for the Department of Defense, managing the production of hostage survival training programs and products used by over 700,000 high-risk armed forces personnel and multinational individuals.
Mark Bracich, Senior Personnel Recovery Advisor, Safe Travel Institute. Recognized as the leading expert in the world in the field of Personnel. Mark created the Department of Defense Personnel Recovery (PR) System model used throughout DoD and interagency/multinational partners to develop PR policy, doctrine, training, & lessons learned. Additionally, he drafted the key language used in the current National Security Presidential Directive for Personnel Recovery.
