We are excited to welcome RJ Bent to the ISTG family as the Affiliate Director of ISTG – Buffalo. A longtime ISTG supporter, she’s very excited to join us and has already secured some incredible organization partnerships and forged strong relationships with other Affiliates!
RJ lived overseas extensively and is now a proud Buffalonian. Her decision to serve her country as a Diplomatic Security (DS) Supervisory Special Agent was rooted in the events of September 11th and her family’s multi-generational military service. Throughout her 21-year US Government career, she worked and lived overseas (in Paris, Madagascar, Honduras, Frankfurt, and Toronto), where she solidified her security and crisis management acumen in various threat-level environments and with a diversity of audiences. Domestically, her assignments enhanced her personal protection, criminal investigations, counterterrorism, physical security, public relations, host government liaison and diversity and inclusion expertise.
RJ is an accomplished international communicator, writer, and public speaker. As a certified trainer, RJ spoke on Crisis Management the Overseas Security Advisory Council, African Regional Conference, Cape Town, South Africa as well as for a Foreign Service Institute training video on Crisis Management. She also served as an International Law Enforcement Academy Instructor for the Physical Security module in Gaborone, San Salvador and Guatemala. She published articles for the State Department internally and externally, including in the Foreign Service Journal, as well as multiple articles in local publications. While serving as the Diversity and Inclusion Officer for the Diplomatic Security Bureau, she drafted and created a video series highlighting the Bureau’s unexpected accomplishments.
To further her goal of lifelong learning, RJ is a certified docent tour guide for Explore Buffalo. She’s also pursuing her Wine and Spirit Education Trust (WSET) certification, is SCUBA certified and is an urban beekeeper. To date, RJ experienced 59 countries and plans to visit at least 75!
RJ has already put together an incredible team of volunteers for ISTG – Buffalo. To learn more and get involved in the area, check out their Facebook page.
