At the recent ESA Leadership Summit, Sam Fiske (center) and Dom D’Ascoli (right), both from Smoky Mountain Systems, were honored with ESA’s two most prestigious honors: Fiske with the Sara E. Jackson Award and D’Ascoli with the Morris F. Weinstock Person of the Year Award.

The seventh annual ESA Leadership Summit wrapped up a few weeks ago, sending the more than 250 security industry professionals who attended back to their companies will their minds full of information, strategies, new contacts and more — all of which ESA carefully crafted to help security businesses not just survive, but thrive.

With an emphasis on content that was outside the mainstream of typical security events, the summit featured a roster of speakers from both in and outside of the industry. Keynote speakers included Mary Byers, co-author of “Race for Relevance: Five Radical Changes for Associations”; Ted Powell, a business consultant and facilitator; Bjorn Jensen and Peter Shipp, experts from the custom electronics industry; Steve Bookbinder, CEO of Digital Media Training; and Doug Anson, retired major general of the U.S. Army reserves. The topics on which they spoke ranged from cybersecurity to managing successful sales teams to national security in the post-9/11 world.

During the summit, ESA honored several industry leaders with its Leadership Awards, presented during the first luncheon general session of the week featuring speaker Byers. The awards were sponsored by Security America Risk Retention Group and recognized ESA Chartered Chapters and members who have made significant contribution to the industry in the last year.

The Chapter of the Year Award went to the Louisiana Life Safety and Security Association for expanding its membership in 2013 while maintaining a high member-retention rate, working closely with the Louisiana State Fire Marshal to promote ESA’s National Training School (NTS) and providing support to its members on state regulations.

Joe Parisi, president of the New Jersey Electronic Security Association (NJESA), was given the Chapter President of the Year Award for his extensive work on behalf of NJESA. This includes spearheading the chapter’s recent name change to further align itself with ESA.

ESA’s Executive Director of the Year for 2013 is Jerry Lenander of the California Alarm Association (CAA). Using his professional experience and knowledge, and clear plan of action for the chapter, Lenander has implemented a variety of initiatives to further enhance the CAA.

Dan Cantrell, director of training and technical development for ADT, received the ESA/NTS Instructor of the Year Award, which is given in honor of Paul F. Baran. Cantrell is a senior instructor who has influenced the direction of NTS by assisting in creating, instructing and evaluating courses.

You can read about ESA’s Sara E. Jackson Award winner here, and its Morris F. Weinstock Person of the Year Award winner here.