Over the last two decades, Ariel Benjamin Mannes, of New York, Los Angeles, Washington, DC and Philadelphia, has experience in the public, nonprofit and private sectors. As a consultant, he stands out from competitors because of his vast, diverse experience and unique skill set. He brings a combination of graduate education, specialized training, and two-decades of experience to his clients. Mannes offers objective assessments on risks, vulnerabilities, threats and liabilities faced by a variety of organizations. Because of his extensive background, he also provides tailored planning and training services for his clientele to secure their physical and intellectual assets from security, business continuity and regulatory compliance risks.

BIO

Mannes spent his childhood between both New York City and Los Angeles, during a time period where both cities evolved greatly. When skyrocketing crime levels impacted his community, he was inspired to take action and enter a career in law enforcement. By age seventeen he had earned early acceptance to New York’s John Jay College of Criminal Justice, and at eighteen became both a Special Police Officer with the City of Long Beach, NY while simultaneously joining the New York Police Department as an Auxiliary Police Officer while in college. 

In 1997, Mannes was recruited out of John Jay College to become a Federal Law Enforcement Officer by the US General Services Administration, Federal Protective Service (FPS). In this role, he served on the New York Terrorist Trials Operations Command, a joint operation set up by the US Marshals Service, NYPD, Federal Bureau of Prisons and the FBI during the prosecution of the 1993 World Trade Center bombers. After the 1998 twin embassy bombings, he continued to serve on this special security detail during the trials of the “Blind Sheik” Omar Abdel Rachman and the first indictments of Usama (Osama) bin Laden and al-Qaeda leaders.

In 1999, Mannes relocated to Washington, D.C. to follow his calling in urban policing, where he joined the Metropolitan Police Department. He was initially assigned to the high-crime Sixth District Substation in the Anacostia section of Southeast Washington and was a member of the nationally-recognized Civil Disturbance Unit through Y2K preparedness assignments, large-scale protests and special events like Presidential Inaugurals and film productions.

In 2001, Ariel Benjamin Mannes was again asked to serve in a homeland security capacity after the 9/11 attacks, when he joined the District’s Joint Operations Command Center where the response to the Pentagon and risk assessments of DC’s myrad of targets was staged. It was also on this detail where he served on the DC-area sniper task force in 2002 and other intelligence-led assignments. It was because of his work there that Mannes became the Department’s Community Antiterrorism Training Program Master Instructor and later the National Training Coordinator the CAT Eyes Program. During this time, he trained other police instructors in Boston, DC, New York, New Jersey, Maryland, and Virginia in addition to conducting risk assessments for Coach USA surface transportation operations in New Jersey, New York, and Pennsylvania.

Entering the field of prevention and risk full-time, Mannes became an Intelligence Analyst at the Highway Information Sharing and Analysis Center (ISAC) in a partnership between the US Department of Homeland Security and the American Trucking Associations. During this time, he obtained a national security clearance and served at the Transportation Security Operations Center (TSOC), command center tasked with tracking security incidents across all modes of transportation throughout the US.

The following year, Ariel Benjamin Mannes was promoted to the position of Inspector and assigned to the Transportation Security Administration’s Surface Transportation Security Specialist program within the TSA Office of Compliance. In this role, he was responsible for monitoring homeland security intelligence and conducted inspections for the MARC commuter rail system, Baltimore Subway/Light Rail, Washington-Area METRO, AMTRAK Northeast Corridor, Virginia Railway Express and Norfolk Southern Rail Lines throughout D.C., Virginia, West Virginia and Maryland. During the hurricanes of Katrina and Rita, Mannes volunteered to represent his unit and serve in an Emergency Management capacity, where he received a letter of commendation.

As a result, Mannes consulted for an Israeli-American homeland security technology firm from 2006 to 2007 on large-scale technology contracts for emergency management & homeland security projects for public safety agencies in Columbus, OH, Los Angeles, and the Greater Philadelphia area.

In 2008, Ariel Benjamin Mannes was appointed as the Director of the Office of Investigations with the American Board of Internal Medicine (ABIM), North America’s largest medical board. During his tenure as Director, Mannes led global compliance investigations, fraud prevention, public safety, emergency management, test security (exam integrity) and due diligence initiatives for North America’s largest medical board. While at ABIM, Mannes developed a risk management program from the ground up, creating policies and procedures to address compliance requirements, prevent fraud, address theft, and deter cheating in the board certification process by creating nationally-recognized best practices in intellectual property protection. Furthermore, Mannes developed vendor, staff and stakeholder risk management processes applied to ABIM’s global footprint of 200+ employees and 225,000 physicians certifying in over 5,000 locations worldwide. With his experience in the area of exam integrity investigations, Mannes was recognized as a leading subject matter expert, speaking at several national conferences annually.

Mannes has recently built a compliance and risk management program from the ground up as a Chief Compliance Officer for a diversified financial services firm with a $500M client portfolio, and presently serves as subject matter expert and a consultant in operations and management. Mannes’ consulting firm, Mannes & Associates is one of the first organizations of its kind to outsource risk management, security, safety, business continuity and compliance planning and program implementation to help clients effectively protect their intellectual and physical assets. 

Ariel Benjamin Mannes has worked with the hospitality industry, corporate professionals, healthcare, K-12 and college campuses, state education departments, screenwriters, local and congressional political candidates, test sponsors, faith-based organizations, and other clients to develop risk assessment, plans, and policies tailored to their operations. He is member of InfraGard, a Life Member of the Fraternal Order of Police, the Association of Inspectors General and the Pennsylvania Shield and Square Club where he was an Officer of the Year Award recipient in 2014

Mannes currently serves as an Advisory Board Member for ConsumerAffairs.com and has served on the Peirce College Criminal Justice Studies Advisory Board and St. John’s University Homeland Security Academic Advisory Board. Mannes currently writes the “Public Safety Perspectives” column at Newsmax and has been published in both Security trade journals as well as: The Hill, Arizona Republic, Buffalo News, the Daily Caller, Philadelphia Inquirer, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Washington Times and others.

Mannes stays up-to-date by reading local, national and international journals and monitoring media coverage, and he enjoys furthering his education by taking classes in a variety of subjects. His global personal and business contacts have helped him gain perspective on the ever-changing need for the protection of our physical and intellectual assets.

Ariel Benjamin Mannes holds a Master of Arts Degree in organizational leadership and a Bachelor of Science Degree in criminal justice, both Summa cum Laude. A graduate of both federal and municipal law enforcement academies, he is a Certified Protection Professional (CPP) and Certified Exam Security Professional (CESP) as well as holding certificates in Forensic Epidemiology, Crisis Preparedness Training for School Administrators, Campus Public Safety Response to Weapons of Mass Destruction Incidents, and Hospital Emergency Management during WMD Attacks from West Virginia University. 

Residing in the Philadelphia area with his wife, Mannes is a freemason, trains in Krav Maga and is in a local classic car club.