1952-2017
Rebecca Behrens started her working career at Ohio’s Lakewood Community College in the library. She then moved on to the library at Diamond Shamrock. In 1988 she earned her BA from Cleveland State University and after graduation formed the library at the Cleveland Advanced Manufacturing Program. Here she was fascinated by the opportunity to write company newsletters where she wrote about competition’s activities. The intrigued her to join SCIP and she co-founded the Northeast Ohio SCIP Chapter. This led her to being asked to join Ernst & Young (E&Y) as the leader and builder of their CI initiative.
Rebecca loved the chapter level work at SCIP because organizing and running events enabled face to face interaction with others involved in CI initiatives and developed strong relationships in her local community. It helped to build her vision to create a function at E&Y focused on knowledge sharing throughout the organization both vertically and horizontally that supported both strategic and tactical decision making. The department was appropriately named “The Center for Business Knowledge.” which drew attention from many other organizations as a model structure with prudent branding.
Rebecca went to expand her leadership role at SCIP when she joined the Board of Directors and took on the responsibility to co-chair chapter relations and activities. Her lessons learned in Ohio and at E&Y could be shared with others starting or growing chapters all over the country and the world. This vastly expanded her network and her influence and acted as a catalyst for the rapid national and international growth of SCIP at the time.
Rebecca loved her work and cherished the people she worked with each day, whether at E&Y or as a volunteer leader. Unfortunately, Rebecca got ill and suffered from a long-term chronic disease which took her from us far too early in life. Her positive attitude and broad impact on CI at both the local level and around the world serves as an inspiring legacy for the profession.