Security Leaders Rockin’ And Rollin’ 26.2 Miles to Raise Money for FAST
PSA's Matt Barnette and SIA's Don Erickson will run the Rock 'n' Roll Marathon in San Diego May 31 for security industry talent enrichment
The press release below was originally posted by Security Sales & Integration. View the full release here.
Forget about the Avengers, the Superfriends or the Masters of the Universe. In the security industry, the biggest superheroes are PSA Security president and chief executive officer Matt Barnette and Security Industry Association Don Erickson, who are teaming up May 31 to raise money to boost the entire sector.
Barnette and Erickson will run the Rock ‘n’ Roll Marathon in San Diego in an effort to raise funds for the Foundation for Advancing Security Talent (FAST), an effort led by SIA, PSA and the Electronic Security Association (ESA) to enhance workforce development and talent outreach in the security industry.
Erickson, who ran 14 half- and full marathons last year to raise money for FAST, says Barnette, who has about 20 marathons under his belt but last ran one in 2020, was the only person he asked to team up with him on this year’s fundraising effort.
“Having (Barnette) get behind something like this on behalf of FAST, he was an obvious person,” says Erickson, who’s run 11 marathons in his life. “He was the obvious person to do it because of the PSA community as well as his relationship with the technology providers.”
“And I was okay with following him at the finish line. I have no shame in that,” he says with a laugh.
Erickson jokes that he “publicly shamed” Barnette into joining him for this year’s marathon in front of some of his PSA staff members during an industry awards night. Barnette admits he thought his days of running marathons were over but he’s happy to do it for such a worthy cause.
“I’m going to have a little stroller that I’m going to tie tethered to Don and he’s going to pull me around,” says Barnette with a laugh. “I imagine the last 13 miles are going to be a struggle. The good news is San Diego is fairly flat once you get through the first couple sections.”
“So it’s going to be a challenge but a worthy challenge, as Don said. It’s worth the effort to try to raise awareness and hopefully funding for FAST, so I’m excited,” he says, noting he’ll be contributing money for every mile out of his own pocket too.