SIA Chair's Award
Recognizing Leadership in the Association
The SIA Chair's Award is an award presented annually to a SIA member selected by the current chair. The Chair's Award recognizes the member's diligent efforts in furthering the SIA mission and the member's overall commitment to the association's future.
2026 SIA Chair's Award Recipients: Dakota Mackie and John Nemerofsky
SIA has named Dakota Mackie and John Nemerofsky as the 2026 recipients of the SIA Chair’s Award.
Dakota Mackie is the business development and marketing manager at Northland Controls, where she plays a strategic role in driving growth across sales and marketing initiatives, with a focus on relationship-driven strategy and managed services. From 2024 to 2025, Mackie served as chair of SIA RISE, a community that fosters the careers of young professionals and emerging leaders in the security industry, leading the delivery of educational content and networking opportunities to young professional employees and rising stars at SIA member companies, college students and recent graduates interested in the global security industry. During her time as chair, Mackie established the RISE Resources initiative, which shares expert insights on a wide range of career and technical topics; led three terms of new RISE Steering Committee members; overseen the growth of the SIA RISE Scholarship program from 17 to 23 scholarships annually (a $18,000 growth), brought organization and content to the forefront in the quarterly RISE Together newsletter, bolstered the efforts of RISE’s Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Subcommittee through her dedication to making RISE an inclusive place for all; participated in and oversaw the growth of the Talent Inclusion Mentorship Education (TIME) program; and taken an active role in the creation of the 25 on the RISE awards program recognizing outstanding contributions by rising stars in the security industry. Outside of her work with RISE, Mackie has been honored as a two-time SIA Women in Security Forum Power 100 honoree.
John Nemerofsky, chief operating officer at SAGE Integration, has dedicated his 30-year career in the security industry to advancing the innovation and integration of security technology, protecting the people, facilities and reputation of enterprise clients nationwide. Nemerofsky serves as treasurer on the SIA Board of Directors; is co-chair of SIA’s Member Engagement and Experience Committee; serves on the SIA Endowment Committee, Executive Committee and Women in Security Forum Charitable Giving Subcommittee; and is chair of the Foundation for Advancing Security Talent (FAST). Nemerofsky’s volunteer leadership extends to his championing of SIA’s training, certification and standards programs, including SIA Open Supervised Device Protocol), the Security Project Management training and the Certified Security Project Management (CSPM) certification program. He has served as a TIME mentor; ensured that all SAGE’s project managers are CSPM certified, been a strong advocate for the SICC program at SAGE and across the industry; supported SIA events, scholarships and other offerings; and encouraged his team’s active involvement in programs like Securing New Ground (SNG) and the SIA Human Resources Working Group.
Previous Chair's Award Winners
- 2025: Holly Borgmann
- 2024: John Mack
- 2023: Kim Loy and Brendan McFall
- 2022: Antoinette King
- 2021: Craig Sharman
- 2020: SIA RISE Committee
- 2019: SIA Women in Security Forum
- 2018: Richard Brent
- 2017: Ken Mills
- 2016: Lynn de Séve
- 2015: Scott Schafer
- 2013: Laurie Aaron and Rob Zivney
- 2012: Jim Gingo and Bill Taylor
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