2007 National Sailing Programs Symposium
Keynote Speakers
This agenda is still under development and is subject to change  

We are working on getting another keynote and will keep you informed.

In addition to his work with The Latimer Group, Dean is currently serving a four-year term as the Chairman of the United States Olympic Sailing Program. In this role, Dean leads an organization of coaches, staff and volunteers that supports over 100 world-class athletes as they train for the 2008 Olympic Games and Paralympic Games in Beijing, China. Since he took on this challenge, he has led a turnaround of US Olympic Sailing that includes a 100 percent increase in its funded budget over the last four years.

Dean was born in New York but grew up in Rhode Island. He now resides in Wallingford, CT with his wife, Emily, and their dog, Ridley.
 

Trish McGonnell is the Executive Director of National Center for Safety Initiatives (NCSI) and a founding member of the organization.  Ms. McGonnell is passionate about the prevention and eradication of child abuse and molestation in organizations, communities, homes, and our nation and has made a life commitment to this important work.  The mission of NCSI, formed in partnership with National Council of Youth Sports, is “creating safety through integrity, vision, and technology”.  Ms. McGonnell carries this mission out in her leadership of National Center for Safety Initiatives.  Ms. McGonnell has direct involvement, responsibility, and accountability for the day-to-day and strategic activities of NCSI and to forming powerful alliances in support of a safer America for our youth.   

Along with Director of Operations Matt Monroe, Trish will explain some effective solutions to some of the most complicated issues facing youth serving organizations today... how to better protect our youth while navigating through an increasingly complex maze of ethical, legal and financial challenges. The NCSI helps organizations interpret and comply with the Fair Credit Reporting Act, a Federal law that governs organizations who use background checks and/or other "consumer reports." Trish and Matt have combined years of expertise in focusing youth sports organizations’ efforts, systems, and expertise on seven identified risk factors to help the organizations meet and exceed due diligence: Organizational Policies Selecting Background Check Providers Procedures and the Application/Screening Process Subject Verification Interpretation of the Results Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA) Compliance Confidentiality/Record Storage Issues

  Prior to her service with NCSI, Ms. McGonnell worked as a business executive within the corporate, for-profit sector for more than fifteen years with heavy overall leadership involvement and responsibilities in human resources, organization & leadership development, and general management.  Ms. McGonnell earned a Bachelor of Arts in Business Management degree from Ursuline College in Pepper Pike, Ohio and is active in local and national charitable endeavors.  Ms. McGonnell resides in Kirtland, Ohio with her two children and her German foreign exchange daughter who are a daily reminder and inspiration to her in the work of making our country’s youth safer.

NCSI is a partner of the National Council of Youth Sports, one of the largest associations in America representing youth serving organizations.
 

An Annapolis native, Harry is the owner of Annapolis Sailing Fitness LLC, the first sailing sport specific studio in the US.  He  has successfully coached sailors around the world. His training has been utilized by high school teams, casual cruisers, Olympic hopefuls, Americas Cup contenders and college sailing programs.   He has 19 years experience as a personal trainer/coach.  He is on the US Naval Academy sailing team, coaching team and is their head strength and conditioning coach.  He is also actively involved with St. Mary’s college sailing team, Annapolis Yacht Club’s junior program and Special Olympics.

Some of Harry's clients are Terry Hutchinson, America's Cup Team New Zealand
Farr 40 World Champion; Molly O'Bryan, 2008 Olympic 470 Campaign, Severn
Sailing Association Jr. Program.

 

Captain William Pinkney

The first African American to solo-circumnavigate by going around the tip of Cape Horn, William Pinkney was born on September 15, 1935, in Chicago. Attending public schools in Chicago, Pinkney joined the U.S. Navy after graduating from high school in 1954. After having served for eight years in the Navy, Pinkney became involved in the cosmetics industry, first as a freelance make-up artist, and in 1973 as a marketing manager for Revlon. In 1977, he became the director of marketing at John Prod, another cosmetics company. Going to work for the city of Chicago in 1980, Pinkney took a post as a public information officer with the Department of Human Services, where he retired in 1983. Throughout this time, however, Pinkney's real passion was sailing. Having been active for more than thirty years sailing the Great Lakes and oceans, Pinkney decided to embark on a solo trip around the globe in 1990. His route took him around the dangerous tip of South America, considered to be some of the most treacherous waters in the world. Upon successfully realizing his dream, Pinkney was honored as the Chicago Yacht Club's Yachtsman of the Year in 1992, and later Chicago Magazine named him Chicagoan of the Year in 1999. Combining his interest in sailing with his interest for history, particularly naval voyages of the seventeenth, eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, Pinkney's next adventure was aboard the Freedom Schooner Amistad. In January 1999, Pinkney and his crew set out to retrace the Middle Passage slave trade routes. The purpose of the project is to educate people about the original Amistad, as well as about the slave trade and human rights. Pinkney teamed with PBS and several corporations to create a television special and bring teachers from across the country on board en route so that they could experience the trip firsthand. Pinkney has also written a first-grade textbook, Captain Bill Pinkney's Journey, which appears in more than 5,000 schools across the country. He has been honored by senators, former President George H.W. Bush and foreign dignitaries for his dedication to education and his accomplishments. Pinkney is a trustee of Mystic Seaport, a museum devoted to America's history with the sea, and a director of the American Sail Training Association. Pinkney and his wife, Migdalia, live in Connecticut.

John Rousmaniere

One of the best known, most prolific writers on sailing and the sea, sailor-writer-historian John Rousmaniere (“room-an-ear”) has written 23 books and hundreds of articles, and has sailed more then 35,000 miles.  He is the author of the popular sailing manual The Annapolis Book of Seamanship (now in its third revised edition) and is the host of The Annapolis Book of Seamanship Video Series.

John often speaks to sailing groups, including at safety-at-sea seminars around the country.  He served on the organizing committee of the 2005 Crew Overboard Rescue Symposium on San Francisco Bay and wrote the final report based on hundreds of crew overboard exercises involving sail and power boats.  For six years he has been running Cruising and Seamanship Seminars put on by North U, the educational arm of North Sails.  He is an advisor to U.S. Sailing’s Safety at Sea Committee.

His book Fastnet, Force 10, about the deadly 1979 Fastnet Race storm (in which he sailed), was hailed by the Los Angeles Times as “a narrative worthy of the best sea literature.”  John’s most recent books are the definitive history of the Bermuda Race, A Berth to Bermuda: 100 Years of the World’s Classic Ocean Race, and In a Class by Herself: The Yawl “Bolero” and the Passion for Craftsmanship, a biography of one of the finest American yachts and the people (including Olin Stephens) who made and restored her.

Also active in sailing TV and video, John was the writer for OLN’s coverage of the 2002-03 Luis Vuitton America’s Cup challenger eliminations, and has worked with Gary Jobson on several videos, most recently his PBS show on the Bermuda Race, Sailing to Bermuda, for which John wrote the script.

The descendant of a French soldier who fought on the American side in the American Revolution, John Rousmaniere lives in New York.
 

Mark J. Spalding, President of The Ocean Foundation, concurrently serves as the Executive Director of Fundación Bahía de Loreto A.C. He is the chair of the Council of the National Whale Conservation Fund. Mark is an active participant in the marine working group, Baja California group, and coral reef group of the funders' organization, the Consultative Group on Biological Diversity. He serves on the International Bering Sea Forum. He has consulted for the Alaska Conservation Foundation, San Diego Foundation, the International Community Foundation, the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, Fundación La Puerta, and a number of family foundations. He designed and managed the Orca Fund. He has served as a member of the Environmental Grants Advisory Committee of FINCOMUN (Tijuana’s Community Foundation). In addition, he has helped design some of the most significant ocean conservation campaigns in recent years. He brings his extensive experience with the legal and policy aspects of ocean conservation to the Foundation’s grantmaking strategy and evaluation process.

From 1995 to 2000, he coordinated a multinational effort to save Laguna San Ignacio in Baja California Sur, the last pristine birthplace of the Pacific Gray Whale. From 2003 to 2006, he headed up the Alaska Oceans Program, which supported ecosystem-based advocacy efforts to reform fisheries management, increased ocean literacy in Alaska, fostered the creation of a Shipping Safety Partnership, and supported national and international work to promote sustainable seafood choices.

Through the end of the Clinton Administration he was a member of a Presidential and Congressional Advisory Committee on U.S.-Mexico environmental border relations, the Good Neighbor Environmental Board. He is chair emeritus of the National Board of Directors of the Surfrider Foundation and former Chair of the Board of Directors of Pro Peninsula and One Earth One Justice. He is the former Executive Director of the San Diego Foundation's Orca Fund. Mark is the Chair of the Council of the National Whale Conservation Fund.

Mark is the former Director of the Environmental Law and Civil Society Program, and Editor of the Journal of Environment and Development, at the Graduate School of International Relations & Pacific Studies (IR/PS), University of California at San Diego. In addition to lecturing at IR/PS, Mark has taught at Scripps Institution of Oceanography, UCSD's Muir College, UC Berkeley's Goldman School of Public Policy, and University of San Diego's School of Law. Mark, who has been practicing law and acting as a policy consultant for 20 years, was the chair of the environmental law section of the California State Bar Association from 1998-1999. He holds a B.A. in history with Honors from Claremont McKenna College, a J.D. from Loyola Law School, and a Master in Pacific International Affairs (MPIA) from IR/PS.

During 2003 and 2004, Mark was a Sustainability Institute, Donella Meadows Leadership Fellow where he worked on applying systems analysis to federal fisheries management problems, and in 2004 he served as the first SeaWeb Senior Fellow, where his project focused on the viability of a large scale corporate markets campaign for four major seafood species. He was a research fellow at UCSD's Center for U.S.-Mexican Studies in 1998 where he studied Mexican protected areas management.

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