Dan Stoneking is the Vice President and Founder of the Emergency Management External Affairs Association with more than 35 years of private and public external affairs and crisis communications experience. He held the position of Regional External Affairs Director at FEMA and preceding that role, he served as Director of Private Sector and Deputy and Acting Director within FEMA’s Office of Public Affairs.

Dan’s experience includes his pivotal roles during crises including the 9/11 attack at the Pentagon; serving as lead spokesperson for the National Guard in Louisiana during Hurricane Katrina; establishing the first-ever international joint information center in response to the catastrophic 2010 earthquake in Haiti, as spokesperson during response and recovery efforts after Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico, and creating a coalition with the private sector to implement the first national business emergency operations center.

Dan is the owner and principal of Dan Stoneking Strategic Communications LLC, author of Cultivate Your Garden: Crisis Communications From 30,000 Feet to Three Feet, a Columnist for Homeland Security Today, and an Adjunct Professor at West Chester University, PA.

Dan recently joined the Disaster Discourse book club where we engage emergency management authors with their readers. Click here to join the conversation with over 190 international emergency managers.

Enhanced show notes, references, and links will be sent directly to State of Disaster premium subscribers.

State of Disaster is created and produced by Matt Green and Green Emergency Management Services

Check out Our Partners:

Aspiring Emergency Managers Online (AEMO)

Emergency Management External Affairs Association

Welcome to the second Emergency Management Roundtable hosted through a partnership with Aspiring Emergency Managers Online, the Emergency Management External Affairs Association, me, your Friendly Neighborhood Emergency Manager and State of Disaster show host, and Pierce College.

The Emergency Management Roundtable series is an awesome way for us to bring your questions and comments to leaders and innovators in the field about the current and future state of emergency and disaster management.

When you register, you can submit your questions, and you can also participate in the live Q&A. These are all opportunities for you to claim your seat at the roundtable. Claim your seat at the next event here.

Kate Starbird is a Professor at the Department of Human Centered Design & Engineering (HCDE) at the University of Washington (UW). Kate’s research sits within the fields of human-computer interaction (HCI) and computer supported cooperative work (CSCW). Extending from early work in crisis informatics, her research program has followed the phenomenon of online rumoring down the rabbit hole and into some of the toxic online spaces that are increasingly (re)shaping discourse, values, and politics around the world. In particular, Kate’s team has developed and deployed methods for conducting rapid research to help resolve rumors as they unfold. Another major contribution of her work has been to demonstrate that online disinformation — i.e. the intentional manipulation of discourse for political gain — is inherently participatory, taking shape through collaborations between witting agents and unwitting (though willing) crowds. Most recently, her research has converged on a conceptualization of right-wing media as effectively leveraging partisan, participatory dynamics through improvisational performances.

Dr. Starbird received her BS in Computer Science from Stanford (1997) and her PhD in Technology, Media and Society from the University of Colorado (2012). She has received several awards for her research, including the ACM SIGCHI Societal Impact Award and a Presidential Early Career Awards for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE) award. She is a co-founder and formerly served as director of the UW Center for an Informed Public, which works through research, education, and policy recommendations to strengthen democratic discourse by building resilience to online misinformation, propaganda, and manipulation. 

I love calling this "The Definitive* Episode" because any conversation about AI is outdated nearly the moment it wraps recording, let alone the time it takes to edit and publish. I'm looking forward to releasing the next "definitive" AI episode, but in the meantime this interview is NOT what you may be expecting.

This was recorded a few weeks ago with my friends, the good doctors, Sarah Miller and Ryan Rockabrand, who are both emergency management practitioners with PhDs in artificial intelligence. And wow this was not a conversation that I thought we were going to have. This is not the AI episode that you’re expecting. I promise. We blasted right past generative AI and landed on humanoids, nuclear reactors being built in your backyard, and the liability of not using AI for our work in the near future.

The premium version episode is the length of a feature film, and it’s been live, ad-free, with video on stateofdisaster.com for about a week for premium subscribers. If you head over there, you’ll hear the bonus content about Ethics and laws about using AI to emulate someone or create a bot using their likeness. Like Sarah may or may not have done with Ryan. We also talk about the criminal use of AI and how malicious human engineering is evolving and escalating rapidly. Premium subscribers also get to ask my guests questions before and after their episodes air, and that’s how you can get your questions asked on the show, maybe even with a recording of your voice. Head over to stateofdisaster.com and enjoy all the cool stuff I’ve published along with extras from some of the awesome people you’ve heard on the show.

This is a very special episode, because this is the recording of the first Emergency Management Roundtable hosted through a partnership with Aspiring Emergency Managers Online, the Emergency Management External Affairs Association, and me, your Friendly Neighborhood Emergency Manager and show host.

The Emergency Management Roundtable series is a fun way for us to bring your questions and comments to leaders and innovators in the field about the current and future state of emergency and disaster management.

When you register, you can submit your questions and you can also participate in the live Q&A. These are all opportunities for you to claim your seat at the roundtable. Get it? Great. Because I love this concept and I love this episode because it’s with the incredible MaryAnn Tierney.

On October 15th, we’re going to be interviewing Dr. Kate Starbird on her work with disaster disinformation, misinformation, and of course, the questions you ask from your seat at the table. Register here.

Alysha Kaplan is the current president of the Washington State Emergency Management Association. She's been an emergency manager for almost 20 years, and she's also the Deputy Director of King County Emergency Management. In this episode, we start with her incredible journey through the field, her experience coordinating with FEMA to manage disasters locally, and of course, the (potential) power of your local emergency management association.

When we recorded this interview, the Washington State Emergency Management Association was striving for 300 members. I am so thrilled to announce that they have since surpassed that goal and continue to grow.

Stephanie DeLorenzo is a seasoned emergency management professional with over 12 years of experience navigating the complexities of crisis response and resilience building. Passionate about guiding others in the field, she authored Navigating the Chaos: The Ultimate Emergency Management Career Guide, a comprehensive resource for aspiring and current EM professionals. Stephanie is also the founder of Grey Sky Ready, a consulting firm dedicated to bridging the preparedness gap left by FEMA’s evolving role, helping communities and organizations build stronger, more adaptive disaster strategies.

I wanted to create a season that addresses and challenges the current “paradigm” of emergency management. The big EM study was just published, and it confirmed what most of us already knew - most of our colleagues are doing this alone, and the cavalry is not coming. So, we change the paradigm of federal resource dependence. We fortify our capabilities from the ground up. We interrogate our own models, ask uncomfortable questions, and learn important truths that may empower us and our communities to support each other.

Enjoy the show, and join the Disaster Discourse book club, where Stephanie joined us for a live discussion about her book.

Today's episode is incredible and as usual, has nothing to do with anything that I did. It just happens that my guest, Brenden Winder, is a fantastic emergency manager and human. 

Brenden Winder is the head of emergency management at Christchurch City Council in New Zealand with two decades of experience in the sector. He's played a pivotal role in the response and recovery efforts following the 2010-11 Canterbury earthquakes, particularly in managing the Christchurch Red Zone. He's heavily involved in enhancing New Zealand's emergency management frameworks, focusing on tsunami risk, evacuation planning, and the use of AI in emergency management. He's deployed domestically and internationally and has co-authored emergency management documents as well. I know you'll enjoy this episode and I look forward to talking to Brenden again.

I'm going to call this Universal Lessons in Disaster Management because I think if Brenden wrote a book about everything we discussed, it would be one of those mandatory reads for the field, because it's so applicable.

Join Aspiring Emergency Managers Online for a free year of State of Disaster premium access.

Join over 130 international members of the Disaster Discourse Book Club

On this episode that we recorded on my favorite day of the year, Star Wars Day, I'm joined by the incredible Ginny Katz. Ginny is the founder and CEO of HazAdapt, a safety app and platform transforming how communities prepare for and adapt to hazards. 

Ginny is a Spitfire of research, innovation, and ethics on a mission to build a new era of emergency and safety technology that responsibly supports bottom-up resilience and top-down engagement throughout a disaster. At the front of community resilience innovation, Ginny and the HazAdapt team are redefining how people and communities engage with safety information and discovering online and offline insights critical for local emergency managers and preparedness authorities.

Paid subscribers on stateofdisaster.com get to see the extended version of this interview with a demo of the NEW ResiliencePoint feature that shows emergency managers how their community is interacting with hazard guidance, revealing trends, gaps, and opportunities to strengthen resilience. You also get to see me have an allergy attack mid-recording! FUN!

You can access the HazAdapt app directly for free by clicking here!

A conversation with Brandy Mai, a practitioner of emergency management, public information, and law.

Brandy Mai is a U.S. Army veteran who was born and raised in deep south Louisiana. She is also an attorney and an emergency management consultant who's worked extensively in communications and public information, helping multiple organizations and agencies navigate their crisis and disaster strategies.

Her professional experience includes work in military and government, corporate, nonprofit, emergency management, homeland security, and public safety sectors, including a position as lead public information officer for a state emergency management agency. In her spare time, Brandy is an advocate for veterans, children, disabled persons, marginalized populations, and persons with mental health diagnoses. She and her four kids reside in Savannah, Georgia.

This is a long episode because there's so much that we could talk about, but Brandy will be back to chat again. am sure if you're listening or watching on stateofdisaster.com, you're experiencing the whole episode with video and without ads. Your subscription is also directly supporting disaster relief. If you'd like to join me on the show, advertise or submit a disaster story for me to tell on your behalf, you can reach me at [email protected]

On April 4th, 2025, FEMA issued a press release stating that they were ending the Building Resilient Infrastructure and Communities Program, BRIC for short, and canceling all applications from fiscal years 2020 to 2023. If grant funds had not been distributed, they were immediately returned to either the Disaster Relief Fund or the U.S. Treasury. The press release also referred to BRIC as wasteful and politicized. In this episode, Bear Afkhami joins the show to discuss the immediate and long-term repercussions of losing this funding, what could possibly be so political about flood and fire prevention, the importance of pre-disaster mitigation, and what the future may look like without grants like BRIC.

Bear Afkhami is an emergency manager at MPACT Strategic Consulting with 13+ years of experience in prevention, protection, mitigation, response, and recovery. He is also a professor of uncrewed and autonomous technology. He has an MS in Analytics, a BA in Intelligence, and is a graduate of the FEMA National Emergency Management Academy. Bear has numerous credentials, including the FEMA Professional Continuity Practitioner, FEMA Infrastructure Protection, EMT and ACCO Climate Change Professional. He has written articles for public safety publications and regularly presents at emergency management conferences on the topics of mitigation, resiliency, and technology. In 2022, 23 and 24, he presented on drones, artificial intelligence, mitigation, climate change, water and the BRIC program at major conferences such as the National Hurricane Conference, National Resilience Summit, the CyberMaryland Conference, the Texas Emergency Management Conference, as well as the Virginia and Maryland Emergency Management Symposiums. Today, we say goodbye to BRIC (for now) and look to the future of disaster mitigation.

If you're a paid subscriber through stateofdisaster.com, you're listening without ads, either on the site with video and enhanced show notes or on your own private podcast subscription. A percentage of the revenue is going directly to disaster relief. And you get about 10 extra minutes of content this time around, where I asked Bear to put his private sector hat on and approach disaster mitigation as a startup founder. Because in addition to all of his emergency management experience, he's actually written a book called The Startup King. Take 50% off a year-long membership by clicking this link: https://stateofdisaster.substack.com/6fbac94a