LUKE RITTER Principal, Global Trade Security Ridge Global LLC

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Mr. Ritter is responsible for managing the Global Trade Security practice at Ridge Global LLC, which provides strategic management consulting services to clients focused on security and resilience initiatives in global trade.

Mr. Ritter's professional life has focused on global trade and transportation operations, security and resilience, and business process improvement. He is the co-author of: Securing Global Transportation Networks (McGraw Hill, 2006), which has received widespread critical acclaim from industry publications such as Logistics Today, The Maritime Executive, Traffic World, and Supply Chain Management Review, and was selected as the American Society for Industrial Security 'Book of the Month' in December of 2006.

Prior to joining Ridge Global, Mr. Ritter was the founder and CEO of Trident Global Partners, a management consulting firm specializing in global trade security. Trident Global's clients included: Business Roundtable; General Dynamics; Boeing Company; SAIC; Virginia Port Authority; San Diego Unified Port District; Government of Latvia; Northwestern University; U.S. Merchant Marine Academy; and the U.S. Trade & Development Agency. He has spoken at more than twenty-five industry and trade events in the last five years, including keynote addresses at The American Association of Port Authorities Annual Security Conference, and the Logistics Management Magazine Global Supply Chain Conference. He has recently been published and quoted in Journal of Commerce, Security Management, Directors Monthly, Traffic World, and Cargo Security International.

Mr. Ritter has pioneered the concept of Total Security Management (TSM), a business process improvement strategy designed to create value by managing security and resilience requirements as core business functions. TSM has been described as: "the place for corporations to draw the line in the sand where security and resilience is concerned."

Mr. Ritter is a U.S. Naval Academy graduate and holds an M.B.A from Old Dominion University, with a concentration in maritime and logistics management. He is board certified by the American Society of Transportation and Logistics (AST&L), and serves on the Transportation Security Council of the American Society for Industrial Security (ASIS). Mr. Ritter serves on the Board of Directors of National Security Initiative, and is a contributing scholar at the Heritage Foundation.