This week we are talking to Desiree Matel-Anderson. Desi has created a team that implements intelligence products in the disaster zone. The Field Innovation Team (FIT) an organization that focuses on bringing smart technology and design into resilience initiatives and disaster response

Guest Bio
Desiree (Desi) Matel-Anderson the first and former Chief Innovation Advisor at FEMA, she led the first innovation team down to Hurricane Sandy to provide real-time problem solving in disaster response and recovery. During her tenure she ran think tanks nation-wide to cultivate innovation in communities, the event trended globally on social media during the broadcasts. She has deployed teams into several disasters including, the Boston Marathon Bombings assisting at the scene with social media analysis and Moore, Oklahoma tornadoes for continued mobile registration and coding solutions. She has also deployed teams into the Oso, Washington Mudslides to fly drones and 3D print topography maps for Incident Command and the Nepal earthquakes to collaborate with Nepali women leaders in relief efforts, including the rebuilding of schools and empowerment trainings. In 2015, she led a team to Lebanon to support the Syrian Refugee Crisis launching an artificial intelligent robot for psychosocial services and built a survivor-to-survivor guide for the McMurray Wildfires in Canada. In 2016, her team provided public health gaming to the Miami-Dade Public School System to educate on the outbreak of the Zika virus. Last year, she deployed a team to Rockport, Texas during Hurricane Harvey to design a system for efficient donations management serving over a thousand survivors daily along with kick starting a mobile medical unit and a smart sheltering system. Recently, the team responded to the wildfires in Paradise, California problem-solving challenges with responders, citizens and survivors for safe, responsible and resourced re-entry into the town. Desi and the team continue to work with communities’ worldwide.
Desi began her emergency management experience by volunteering in Northern Illinois University’s Office of Emergency Planning followed by working with the Southeast Wisconsin Urban Area Security Initiative, and the City of Milwaukee Homeland Security and Emergency Management Office. In addition to her regional emergency management duties, she worked as an Emergency Management Accreditation Program Assessor, which included assessing the City of Boston’s emergency management services prior to the tragic Boston Marathon bombings. Desi lectures on innovation at Harvard, Yale, Berkeley and various universities. She serves as a consultant on innovation for agencies and governments, nationally and internationally, including her advisor role to the European emergency management consortium in UNESCO’s I-REACT team.
Desi attended the National Preparedness Leadership Institute at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government and School of Public Health in 2011, advised on Harvard’s Executive Education on National Preparedness Leadership Institute Advisory Board in 2013 and obtained a Juris Doctorate from Northern Illinois University in 2009. When Desi is not deployed in a disaster, she enjoys the fresh mountain air in Utah with her dogs and family.



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Links
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/desiree-matel-anderson-4141617a/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/FITreadytogo
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/fitreadytogo/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/FITreadytogo/
Website: http://www.fieldinnovationteam.org
Email: [email protected]



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