Dr. Jim Castagnera
Dr. Jim holds an M.A. in Journalism from Kent State University, and a J.D. and Ph.D. (American Studies) from Case Western Reserve University. He worked 10 years as a labor, employment, and intellectual-property attorney with Saul Ewing Arnstein & Lehr and 23 years as associate provost & legal counsel for academic affairs at Rider University, where in 2018 he received the university’s highest annual award for distinguished service. He also did stints as a full-time law professor at UT-Austin and Widener University Law School.
Having retired from Rider in 2019, he is engaged in a portfolio of activities: President of Dr. Jim’s One-Stop HR Shop, a full-service HR law and compliance company; Partner with Portum Group International LLC, a data-privacy & compliance-consulting firm; Of Counsel to the Wilftek law firm; an Adjunct Professor of Law in the Kline School of Law at Drexel University, and an arbitrator for the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania.
Prof. Paul Flanagan
Paul Flanagan teaches on Compliance, Privacy, and Cybersecurity. He brings 25 years of experience, having worked with some of the nation’s leading health care providers and higher education institutions.
Before joining the faculty at Drexel four years ago , Professor Flanagan served as Executive Director of Compliance and Privacy services for the Drexel University Compliance and Privacy Office. There, he helped manage the University’s Compliance and Data Privacy and Security programs.
Previously, he held Compliance and Privacy leadership posts at Abington Memorial Hospital, Hahnemann University Hospital and the University of Florida’s Shands Health System.
Professor Flanagan has also served as Vice president and Chief Compliance and Privacy Officer at Precyse Solutions in Wayne Pennsylvania, Chief Compliance and Privacy Officer at 21st Century Oncology of Orlando, Florida (one of the largest medical oncology practices in the United States), and as Chief Compliance Officer at Curascript/Express Scripts Pharmaceuticals.
He has held compliance and privacy positions at other leading academic medical institutions across the country, including the University of Arizona and Stanford University.
Dual certified in both compliance and health care compliance, Professor Flanagan received his JD from Creighton University School of Law and his MS in Hospital Administration from Widener University. In March, 2018 Professor Flanagan received a prestigious Fulbright award under which he taught Compliance and Privacy at the National University of Singapore.
Rich Connor
I began my career as a police officer in New Jersey in the early 2000s. I was assigned a patrol car, and my day-to-day was performing traffic stops, responding to domestic violence disputes, attending medical emergencies, and investigating crashes. I loved working with people - educating how to prevent break-ins, analyzing patterns of criminal activity, and following up on incidents to build long-term solutions. I wanted to expand beyond the small-town setting, so I went back to school to learn how to impact a larger community.
I decided to take a quantitative approach to expanding my capabilities of helping people - I studied Applied Mathematics learning about how Math is used for cancer treatment, regulating traffic flow, and protecting sensitive data via cryptography. I decided to share how useful these applications are by teaching it to others - from elementary school to graduate school students. During this tenure, I continued performing analyses of data - this time investigating the connection between success in Math courses to success in application to Science courses.
As I continued my research and analyses, I learned about many companies having issues with access loss and data exposure - big companies like Yahoo, Linkedin, and even the NSA. I decided to apply my various experience and abilities to helping companies fight against these growing issues. I went big by working with Comcast’s network security team, finding patterns in their threat intelligence data and advising action to take in response to the discovered trends. I was then called on by a company out in Louisville, KY to help them find value in one of the largest datasets I ever worked with - the federal government needed help uncovering vulnerabilities in their employee data. After a successful set of discoveries and an ongoing contract was secured, I moved on to helping other companies threat and vulnerability patterns, design business continuity plans, tailor system security plans, and build custom cybersecurity products.
Kenneth A. Sprang
The Managing Member of Washington International Business Counsel. Ken counsels and represents both domestic and international clients regarding a wide range of corporate, business and transactional matters, as well as in labor and employment, employee benefits and real estate issues. Over the course of his 35-year career, Ken has practiced with both large and small firms, as well as serving as in-house counsel for Fortune 500 companies and as general counsel to smaller companies.
Ken began his career with Morgan, Lewis & Bockius, a large, multi-national firm. Subsequently, he served as in-house counsel in the legal departments of Calgon Corporation, a former subsidiary of Merck & Co., Inc., and Cyclops Corporation, a Fortune 500 specialty steel manufacturer. Later, Ken founded legal departments and served as in-house general counsel for several start-up and other privately-held companies, including a hospital and a web-based company. Ken has also spent several years as a full-time law professor, and continues teaching property law and a labor seminar as an Adjunct Professor at Catholic University of America, Columbus School of Law in Washington, D.C.