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AMBER Ready Announces Key Leadership Appointments

Posted on: Tuesday, 14 July 2009, 13:19 CDT

ROCKAWAY, N.J., July 14 /PRNewswire/ -- AMBER Ready, Inc. today announced new key leadership appointments to help support the Company's rapid growth and spur greater national awareness of the AMBER Ready Child Safety Initiative. Effective immediately, law enforcement executive Frank Del Vecchio, who has served as Senior Vice President of the Company for the past year, has been named Chief Operating Officer and is tasked with managing AMBER Ready's day-to-day operations and growing workforce. The Company has also welcomed Gregory Thomas, a nationally recognized school safety expert, who will guide and advise AMBER Ready's executive management team on its strategic business development efforts.

Kai Patterson, founder, Chairman and CEO, states, "AMBER Ready is undergoing swift and substantial growth, fueled by our team's shared passion for protecting our nation's kids from those individuals intent on harming them through education and empowerment of parents, caregivers, law enforcement and all others charged with keeping them safe. To support and help accelerate our growth, while ensuring that our execution strategies remain well defined and in focus, it is essential that AMBER Ready enhance the depth and breadth of our leadership team. To that end, I am very proud and feel very privileged to have such accomplished and respected professionals as Frank and Greg on board to assist our Company in achieving its mission and related growth objectives."

About Deputy Chief Frank Del Vecchio

Del Vecchio has more than 20 years experience in law enforcement and also currently serves as the Deputy Chief of Police of the Fairview Police Department in Bergen County, New Jersey. He has risen through the ranks at the Fairview PD, working in the Patrol Division, Detective Division, Juvenile and DARE Divisions and also served as a Supervisor in the Community Policing Division. He was also appointed as the Director of Public Safety for Bergen County and Director of the Law and Public Safety Institute (Police, Fire and EMS Academies). While in these roles, Del Vecchio oversaw several divisions, including the Bergen County Police Department's Division of Consumer Protection, Bergen County Medical Examiners Office, Office of Emergency Management, Division of Weights and Measures and the Office of Highway Safety.

He currently serves on several committees and boards, such as the Bergen County Community College Criminal Justice Advisory Board. He is the Chairperson for the Fairview Municipal Alliance and is an active community speaker on topics that range from suburban crime and general police practices. In 2005, he returned to his current position as the Deputy Police Chief of the Fairview Police Department, but continues to be involved in all aspects of emergency services throughout the County. He is also the President and CEO of Wireless Management Services, LLC, which is engaged in the management and sales of wireless communications solutions.

About Gregory Thomas

Prior to joining AMBER Ready as a key Business Development Advisor, Thomas served as Deputy Director of Planning and Response for the National Center for Disaster Preparedness at Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health, where he advised vulnerable communities and schools around the nation with assessment and improvement of their emergency preparedness and response platforms. While in this role, he worked with in collaboration with the National Hemophilia Foundation and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in its response to the Hurricane Katrina disaster, ultimately designing an emergency preparedness template available to NHF's national network of 48 chapters for development of a localized safety plan for its treatment centers; and for use at home, work or at school by those families coping with hemophilia.

Preceding his tenure at Columbia University, he was Executive Director of the Office of School Safety and Planning for the New York City Department of Education, the largest public school district in the United States. As the senior law enforcement/security official with the Department, Thomas worked closely with federal, state and local officials to address security and disaster-related issues that arose for many schools in the lower Manhattan area following the 911 terrorist attacks. As a result of his efforts in this capacity, the U.S. Department of Education and U.S. Department of State invited him to serve on a select panel of international school safety officials that discussed and developed strategies to better prepare schools to respond to possible terrorist activity. He continues to serve as a trainer and consultant to the U.S. Departments of Education, Justice and Homeland Security.

Over his 22 year career in public service, Thomas has held numerous executive posts in the fields of criminal justice and public safety, including Assistant Commissioner of the New York City Fire Department; Associate Director of the City University of New York/New York City Police Department Cadet Program at John Jay College of Criminal Justice; Senior Investigator with the Mollen Commission, the mayoral commission created to investigate corruption within the NYPD; and as a first Deputy Inspector General with the New York City Department of Investigation.

Recognized as one of the nation's leading school safety experts, Thomas has been featured in the national media, including U.S. News and World Report, The New York Times and on the FOX News program FOX and Friends. He is the co-author of three books on school safety for the Janes Information Group, including the most comprehensive book published to date on the subject: Janes Safe School Planning Guide for All Hazards. He also wrote Freedom from Fear: A Guide to Safety, Preparedness and the Threat of Terrorism, recently published by Random House.

Thomas' professional affiliations include membership in the National Organization of Black Law Enforcement Executives (NOBLE), the largest organization of minority criminal justice officials in the United States. He has also been affiliated with the Commission on Accreditation for Law Enforcement Agencies (CALEA), where he served as an assessor of police departments and law enforcement agencies across the nation and currently serves on the advisory board of the National Center for School Crisis and Bereavement, on the New York City Police Foundation's Crime Stoppers Committee and is a member of the National Commission on Children and Disasters Subcommittee on Education and Juvenile Justice.

He earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in Sociology from the University of Maryland, Eastern Shore; and a Master of Science degree in Criminal Justice from Long Island University.

About AMBER Ready, Inc.

AMBER Ready, Inc. has pioneered the nation's first wireless program enabling parents to securely store their child's identity information within their wireless phone and providing the technology platform for police to disseminate an alert from a parents' wireless phone immediately upon a child being abducted or found to be missing. Through the wireless transmission of stored photographs and descriptive data by police as a Be-On-the-Look-Out (BOLO) or as an official AMBER Alert, the AMBER Ready Program is expected to dramatically reduce the average time between determining a child is missing and the commencement of a meaningful search by local law enforcement, thus significantly improving the odds for rapid recovery. In anticipation of pursuing a public listing in the future, the Company has engaged the firm of John Thomas Financial as its investment-banking firm. For more information, please visit www.AMBERReady.com.

SOURCE AMBER Ready, Inc.

Source: PR Newswire

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