00;00;01;00 - 00;00;45;23
Lorraine Schneider
Your greatest asset is really leading with curiosity and trying to understand things and trying to understand how others are doing things. But then also when we work in communities or when we work with our stakeholders within our organization, understanding what is a priority for them and what is that? You can always connect the work. Your objective as the emergency manager to what they're doing to bridge that gap and be able to that, to create meaningful change that way and yeah, again, as we were talking, we need that in an actual emergency manager exchange.
00;00;45;25 - 00;01;08;03
Kyle King
Hi everyone, and welcome back to the crisis led podcast. And today's episode, we dive a little bit deeper into the world of emergency management with our guest, Lorraine Schneider. And in doing so, we tackled some real issues that anyone in the field can relate to. So Lorraine shared her insights on why leadership support is absolutely critical and crucial to emergency management, and without it, even the best emergency management strategies can fall flat.
00;01;08;09 - 00;01;33;14
Kyle King
We also addressed a topic that's close to home for many of you, which is a challenge of career growth and emergency management. Lorraine offered some valuable perspectives on navigating this often frustrating aspect of our field, and one of the hot topics that we discussed was FEMA's proposed Emergency Management University, something that was relatively new to me until just a week or so ago, and we explored what this could mean for professional development and ongoing education in our industry.
00;01;33;14 - 00;01;58;00
Kyle King
And trust me, you'll want to hear Lorraine's thoughts on this and the industry writ large. So finally, we gazed into the crystal ball of crisis management was as mean. What does the future hold? And we discussed these emerging global trends, and that may or may not reshape how we approach our work in the coming years. So if you're passionate about emerging management and want to stay ahead of the curve, well, this episode is packed with insights that you won't want to miss.
00;01;58;00 - 00;02;03;07
Kyle King
So let's go ahead and dive right in. Lorraine, welcome to the show. I really appreciate you being here on the Crisis Lab podcast.
00;02;03;10 - 00;02;05;12
Lorraine Schneider
Thank you Carl. Very happy to be here.
00;02;05;14 - 00;02;17;02
Kyle King
So for those that may not know you, maybe we just start with a quick background and introductions of you. Just tell us a little bit about yourself, the stuff that you're working on, and then we can start from there. I think you've got a lot of things going on these days.
00;02;17;04 - 00;02;55;04
Lorraine Schneider
Yeah. So I currently work as the chief operating officer for the resiliency initiatives. We are a crisis management and business continuity consulting firm doing work with public, private and nonprofit sector all over the U.S. and so I've been doing that for a couple of years. Prior to that, I worked for The Walt Disney Company as part of their Global Crisis Management team out of Burbank in California, and prior to that, worked in higher education emergency management at UCLA and had my start with L.A. City's emergency management department and their stellar internship program back in the day.
00;02;55;04 - 00;03;29;24
Lorraine Schneider
So I'm one of the lucky ones that found emergency management straight out of college, which I was very happy about, to find a rewarding career right off the gate, and especially because it's such an exciting field to be in, in my opinion. And I remember my first big project I worked on when I was with Lake City, was on supply chain resilience, and how the big one on the San Andreas fault would affect the pharmaceutical, medical, gas, water and grocery sector.
00;03;29;24 - 00;03;46;10
Lorraine Schneider
And it was so eye opening and some of the results back in the day were a little terrifying. But also to me personally, I was very exciting to know that I'm stepping into this field where there's just so much work to be done and so much good work to help communities.
00;03;46;13 - 00;04;07;27
Kyle King
Yeah, absolutely. That's a really interesting name, the Resiliency Initiative. Where did that sort of come from in terms of that perspective, and why? The name of the resiliency initiative? Because that word, the word resilience means so many things to so many people. And it's often been a topic of discussion because it's not as tangible as people want it to be, and often difficult to communicate.
00;04;07;29 - 00;04;13;27
Kyle King
So I'd love to get your insights. And on why that term and what do you view resilience being?
00;04;13;29 - 00;04;52;27
Lorraine Schneider
Yeah. So I personally see resilience and the ability to bounce back from adverse event, whatever they may be. The name for the resiliency Initiative actually came from our founder, Andrea Davis, who previously also worked at The Walt Disney Company. And she actually was inspired from the Marvel Universe because the team there is something initiative as well. And when she founded the Resiliency Initiative in 2019, she really wanted to serve and give back to communities, smaller communities, whether they were small nonprofits, smaller businesses or smaller jurisdictions.
00;04;52;27 - 00;05;18;19
Lorraine Schneider
So she started that in 2019 when she was still at Disney. And then in 2020, she actually took a job for with the the Walmart Corporation. And obviously that was an intense couple of years. And then she was presented with an opportunity to help plan one of the sessions at the United Nations Global Disaster Risk Reduction Platform in Bali, Indonesia, in 2022.
00;05;18;22 - 00;05;43;18
Lorraine Schneider
And that's when she decided to leave corporate America behind and really go on all in on the resilience initiative. And that's the time that I joined her as well. Dangling that carrot of going to Bali to a U.N. conference certainly sold it even more. So then I was already sold on the vision and idea. And yeah, so we both really looked at our past experiences.
00;05;43;18 - 00;06;20;24
Lorraine Schneider
So she had top positions and some of the largest companies in the world. But previously also worked for FEMA in Durham, Louisiana, and then also on that city and county level in San Francisco. And so really combining all of those experiences to be able to work with the smaller businesses, the smaller communities that we have. And to me, that was very exciting because I found working in the private sector to be a little isolating, especially coming from higher education emergency management, where which is a very collaborative space, you are constantly engaging with other Ed emergency managers.
00;06;20;24 - 00;06;59;18
Lorraine Schneider
There's a very popular listserv that you can get on, and you send any question and you have 15 emails coming back with resources or templates or what have you, and lots of conference in that are open to you. And that was lacking in the private sector. And for example, one of our initiatives right now is we have a Resiliency Academy, which is a workshop created by the private sector for the private sector to really hone in on what might be those unique traits that you need as a crisis manager working for not just global, but for any type of corporation compared to perhaps a city or county or a state.
00;06;59;21 - 00;07;25;08
Kyle King
Wow, that's really fascinating. You've got a lot of experience across these different domains, especially in academia, the public and private sector. And so I that was really interesting to hear. And when you mentioned that it's a different perspective with private sector versus academia and others, what do you think are some of the key challenges? We've also done some work, not necessarily with private sector, let's say some more public sector and then policy and national level stuff.
00;07;25;08 - 00;07;45;09
Kyle King
But I could obviously understand that there's going to be different perspectives within each of these categories. How do you define or what is your view on the challenges or the maybe a few challenges that are within each of these sectors? That's very public and then academia. And then even in the private sector, we get you. So I I'm sorry going on in the question here, but you also mentioned the smaller companies as well.
00;07;45;09 - 00;07;50;27
Kyle King
So what are some of the challenges that they're facing, especially as we're looking at more sort of complex issues coming up?
00;07;50;29 - 00;08;20;26
Lorraine Schneider
So one of the common myths I like to dispel is that large corporations have it better than anybody else, whether that's government or even small organizations. And that to me is because we all face the same challenges, the same roadblocks. And one of the things that all of us in the emergency management space have faced is lack of buy in from leadership, where you might have a job as an emergency manager for an organization or for a jurisdiction.
00;08;20;29 - 00;08;43;15
Lorraine Schneider
But the people at the top don't fully understand emergency management, don't fully understand the capabilities that we bring to the table, and how we can help the organization move forward in a positive way. And when you lock that buy in from the top, that means you have lack of resources in terms of staffing, in terms of funding for your projects.
00;08;43;18 - 00;09;16;10
Lorraine Schneider
And so you constantly find yourself in the state of advocating for your own position or your own absence of emergency management within the organization, which can be really draining and I've seen that fortune 500 companies just the same way I've seen it across the public sector or higher education, it's all the same. And I think that's why when you end up working for an organization where the top leadership of it really values emergency management, what we do then I think you've really lucked out as an emergency manager.
00;09;16;10 - 00;09;43;26
Lorraine Schneider
And in terms of the gap between or the academia and emergency management, for more of an academic perspective, too, it's an area that I've become increasingly interested in, in how do we bridge the gap between academics and practitioners, and how can we work better together and implement the fantastic research that's suggested findings that are out there and integrate them into our daily practices?
00;09;43;26 - 00;10;10;20
Lorraine Schneider
When we conduct planning and when we work with vulnerable populations, and to really make ourselves better. And yeah, so that's one of the things that led me to a few years ago to have found the Emergency Management Growth Initiative, which is our profit, dedicated to making emergency management more visible and accessible. And where we engaged with a lot of folks from across sectors to really bring them together and had conversation going.
00;10;10;20 - 00;10;39;02
Lorraine Schneider
And I think things have changed a lot in just the last four years alone, where we see a lot more collaboration. And I think Covid accelerated that because people found themselves more on LinkedIn and more on trying to connect with others, perhaps virtually. And so we're able to have more conversations with master group of people who may share a similar challenges or may have incredible solutions that we can bring together.
00;10;39;02 - 00;10;43;06
Lorraine Schneider
And yeah, so forgetting where I wanted to go with that, but.
00;10;43;09 - 00;11;02;16
Kyle King
No, that's that's good. I'm how can I say this? I believe you when you say that there is a lack of leadership buy in. I have seen that myself in many different institutions, and I also still can't believe that that's the case. So that's something that I say. Yes, that's right. But also I can't believe that's still happening.
00;11;02;18 - 00;11;26;24
Lorraine Schneider
Yeah, especially with Covid. We could one could think that the typical curveball that you see it over, oh, there's an incident happening and all of a sudden you have a ton of interest and but then it starts forgetting that with Covid it would be longer lasting. But I think people just got so burnt out by it, experiencing it, talking about it, reflecting on it, that things got lost.
00;11;26;24 - 00;11;54;21
Lorraine Schneider
And I think that's also where psychology plays a really important role in my mind and in the resilience space, not just personal resilience, but also how we drive our work. And that's an area that I'd love to spend more time in and think about. It was always very it was most obvious, for example, when I worked at UCLA, I came on in 2016 right after a murder suicide had happened on campus, which at first was presumed to be an active shooter incident with a lot of fatalities.
00;11;54;23 - 00;12;22;06
Lorraine Schneider
And the buy in from the leadership of the organization was instant. And for the next couple of years, our all of our projects, our staffing requests, everything got approved. And then a couple of years in and memory fades and suddenly you go back to having to be more on the begging side of, hey, can we have less money to update our fire engine that's over 20 years old?
00;12;22;09 - 00;12;46;28
Lorraine Schneider
Meanwhile, the facilities department has a brand new fleet of 20 new vehicles drive around campus. So that was very apparent. And yeah, and also, I'd say one of the other challenges is just getting into the profession. So there's that lack of visibility ahead of time. But then also once you get into the profession, there seems to be that constant battle of what do you need education versus practice.
00;12;47;01 - 00;13;09;17
Lorraine Schneider
And ideally, yeah, I mean, so you have a combination of both, but it's hard when you go to college, you get a two, four or even six year degree in emergency management and you have a hard time entering that field. And yeah, I think we do a professional disservice when we don't encourage more participation and allow for more chances in that space.
00;13;09;20 - 00;13;30;07
Kyle King
So you said something really interesting. I'd like to come back to that. And then we can talk about the, for lack of a better terminology, the future of emergency management. In that way. You said something about how we actually do our work. And I think that's really interesting observation. So I've had my own sort of internal debates and ideas about emergency management as a field, as a career and all these things like that.
00;13;30;07 - 00;13;54;18
Kyle King
But you raised a really interesting point about how we execute our work, how do we do the things that we do, and what is the methodology that we use, and what is our approach to stakeholders. And I know there's been a ton of literature and a ton of discussion about collaboration and community engagement and all that stuff, but at the same time, we still struggle with the same issues, and it's all that community engagement and stakeholder participation was accurate.
00;13;54;18 - 00;14;20;05
Kyle King
And I'm just speculating here. I just would welcome your opinion if that was actually really true. And that was actually really accurate. And we've studied it for decades and we know that's the way ahead. Why has it gotten significantly better? I'm sure there's case studies where things have improved, obviously. Right. However, at the same time, I'm also very curious about the way we execute our work because from our sort of international portfolio, we see some very interesting things.
00;14;20;05 - 00;14;44;05
Kyle King
So we see things like nations agreeing on things like what you mentioned, the UN platforms, disaster risk reduction platforms, agreeing to Sendai Framework, making broad political statements, and then it's a decade before any of that translates down to a community level. So one of the biggest conversations we've been having in our space lately is, okay, we can do all this policy work, we can do legislative work, but who is going to communicate that to the cities?
00;14;44;07 - 00;15;10;01
Kyle King
Like how does it actually filter down and how do we implement what we're talking about. And these broad, beautiful policies that we're developing instead, all these great initiatives and it's all great until you have to actually put it in practice. And these meet this barrier and this wall of previous legislation and bureaucracy and policy and people and systems and structures that then are serving as massive friction points to, to be able to get any sort of changes done.
00;15;10;04 - 00;15;29;19
Kyle King
So it leads me to this discussion. I really did pick my interest when you said this about how are we actually executing our work, how are we actually delivering on our work when we faced many of the same challenges and over the last, say, 20 or 30 years? And I'll close on this last point, because I do want to hear what your perspective is.
00;15;29;22 - 00;15;49;25
Kyle King
But I came out of emergency services for 17 years, and it's always been the discussion of you had the white paper brought a seat belts, we've been advancing in technology and safety and everything else, but we still face the same issues as what you're talking about. We need money for air conditioners and fire trucks, and still internationally, nobody builds fire stations.
00;15;49;28 - 00;16;15;11
Kyle King
This is not a thing. This doesn't happen. You might find 1 or 2 programs out there where somebody has done a community engagement, but nobody has this broad program of building emergency services like they do police and military. Right. So it's just we just haven't fully adopted this idea. And so I just curious, I know you've done some international work as well from just say, let's say looking inside the U.S., is there something we have to address or talk about?
00;16;15;11 - 00;16;28;25
Kyle King
Because at the same time, I know that we're very institutionalized in our thinking, these sort of silos of excellence that we all have. And then how can we break those barriers down and move things forward? Is there a better model or a better way?
00;16;28;27 - 00;16;52;20
Lorraine Schneider
What a tough question. And if I had the answer to it, then I felt like I could solve everything. So I don't have the answer, the full answer to it. But I'd say two things I think. First, sometimes we can be an impediment to ourselves, and we do a lot of we do a lot of talking and a lot of the question of how do we define emergency management?
00;16;52;22 - 00;17;23;28
Lorraine Schneider
It pops up time and time again. And I personally, I've spent a lot of time being a part of those conversations. At the Emergency Management Growth Initiative. We led an innovation hub that was just about redefining emergency management. And so I and, and, and have been one of those people. But earlier this year, when I was at the Emergency Management Institute for the Men's Executive Academy, that's how we kicked off the program is discussing how do we define emergency management.
00;17;23;28 - 00;17;47;03
Lorraine Schneider
And I feel like the light bulb came on for me during that conversation, because those in a room with 34 other emergency managers across sectors from all over the country, and we couldn't find unity and and none of the conversations I've ever had, we found unity and then I thought to myself, and ended up writing it all down in one of my futuristic newsletter issues.
00;17;47;05 - 00;18;17;21
Lorraine Schneider
And I think we need to move past that. I think we all have a general understanding of what we do, how much bigger preparedness has gotten over the last few years. Preparedness and mitigation still has a long way to go, but the focus shifting from purely response to these other parts of the disaster life cycle, including recovery, and that project management is a huge piece in that most of our work is spent in those blue sky days and about just preparing for those disasters and incidents, but constantly like questioning everything.
00;18;17;21 - 00;18;35;28
Lorraine Schneider
I think there is certainly some value to it, but I think also we need to move past it and be like, okay, so what? Like where do we go from here? How do we actually drive solutions? Because like, we've been having a lot of these conversations for years, if not decades, and things are only changing very slowly. So that's one piece.
00;18;35;28 - 00;19;04;16
Lorraine Schneider
And then the second thing that your question made me think of was the myopic view that I think a lot of us emergency managers have, where we're very focused on our organization, whether it's I work for a specific city or a hospital or a company, I know a lot about this organization or this jurisdiction, and I'm entirely focused on it.
00;19;04;18 - 00;19;33;25
Lorraine Schneider
But we tend to forget everything that's around us that's happening. And that will have an impact on the work that we're doing. So whether that is policy level implications and laws coming into place that have an impact on our work, but also in terms of climate change or geopolitics and how events happening across the world are going to impact me at my hospital on a Tuesday morning.
00;19;34;00 - 00;20;12;02
Lorraine Schneider
And that's what awakens my interest in writing my futurist newsletter, was to bring all of those concepts together and think beyond our current worldview and bring all of those things together, because I think that's the only effective way that we as emergency managers are going to be able to effectively do our work, is that we keep in mind some of those larger trends that are happening elsewhere and bring them in, and that also means lessons learned from other countries and how others are doing disaster risk reduction or doing emergency management and having more of these cultural exchanges and something that I think would be incredibly exciting.
00;20;12;05 - 00;20;26;13
Kyle King
Hey there. Just a quick pause in our show for a second. Did you know that most of our guest on the crisis led podcast have courses inside of crisis led? And so if you're finding value in these conversations or they pique your interest and want to dive deeper into the topic, just head over to Crisis Lab for more information.
00;20;26;15 - 00;20;55;23
Kyle King
Our courses, webinars, and resources are all designed to equip professionals just like you with the knowledge needed to navigate complex and changing environments, and we recognize that your time matters, so everything we do is accredited. So don't forget to subscribe and join our community of over 70,000 professionals who follow crisis led and are committed to enhancing preparedness and strategic thinking because of Crisis Lab, we believe in empowering you with cross-domain knowledge and learning blended with international perspectives, which is going to ultimately make you better every single day.
00;20;55;25 - 00;20;59;29
Kyle King
Now let's get back to the show.
00;21;00;03 - 00;21;25;03
Kyle King
Yeah, I think that there's I think what you said is entirely true and accurate. I think that we need to really start looking at, hey, this isn't the right way to say, but maybe less navel gazing in terms of what emergency management is, and then really just trying to figure out how to move things forward. What we have encountered recently is for us, there's been a convergence between the issue of, quote, emergency management.
00;21;25;09 - 00;21;47;12
Kyle King
We use a broader term of just crisis management because in the international space, like everything's just a crisis, right? There's not necessarily an international emergency. It's an international crisis. Humanitarian crisis. NATO has crisis response operations. Is that's the terminology that sort of is in place. But I look at all bring it all together and correctly or not, and it's worth one, one broad term just to make it easier to, to communicate.
00;21;47;12 - 00;22;09;27
Kyle King
But so for me, but the idea is that we've seen this convergence between the idea of emergency management in managing a crisis and then governance. And so this is where it starts to get really interesting. Maybe some PhD postdoc, somebody wants to work on it, but it's really coming into what is governance then in terms of because where are the decisions made during a disaster?
00;22;09;29 - 00;22;31;25
Kyle King
What is the power emergency management convene and spend money okay then what is it then? Who makes those decisions and who where does that authority lie? And then if we don't have sort of leadership buy in as we were talking about previously, then there's that an issue of governance overall. So that's where we've actually started spending a bit of time looking at maybe it's really just the issue of governance in our cities.
00;22;31;27 - 00;22;53;11
Kyle King
Maybe it's really just the issue of governance overall in a state or national level. In some of the countries we worked in where you're saying, okay, and in order to improve a national response plan or framework, we have to fix the national security strategy. Maybe fix is not the right word, but it needs to be evolved, or it needs to be adapted or modified to have a response framework.
00;22;53;11 - 00;23;12;21
Kyle King
And then you need to have a something policy that looks something like eight on a presidential declaration. And so there's this governance framework that exists in order to enable people to do a job of emergency management. And where we start to see the break down a little bit is outside that role and responsibility of emergency management and into authorities and responsibilities of governance.
00;23;12;21 - 00;23;29;14
Kyle King
And then we start to see it fracture a bit. But I see your point coming back as going off on a tangent there. But coming back to your point, I think moving past like the definitional piece and focusing on that is what is the future hold is going to be incredibly important, especially with the speed and complexity of crises that are happening today.
00;23;29;17 - 00;23;49;10
Kyle King
So I'm glad you raised the international perspective, because I learned a lot, and I know that you lived internationally for a while also, and I learned a lot living internationally still, and it's just amazing. The perspectives on a different topic is absolutely astonishing that I it's really been a humbling experience to talk to people and have them explain things to me from their perspective, and it makes you just question everything.
00;23;49;15 - 00;24;08;28
Kyle King
So that and a good way. It's just I don't know why we do that. And then having to explain why the US does, why does and maybe that's not the best way to do things. And how do you do it then. And sitting in and Bali and one of these sort of international conferences and speaking with counterparts and other colleagues from different organizations, it's extremely helpful.
00;24;09;00 - 00;24;45;20
Lorraine Schneider
Yeah. I think our greatest asset and really leading with curiosity in trying to understand things and trying to understand how others are doing things. But then also when we work in communities or when we work with our stakeholders within our organization, understanding what is a priority for them and what is that? You can always connect the work, your objective as the emergency manager to what they're doing to bridge that gap and be able to to create meaningful change that way and yeah, again, as we were talking, we need that in an actual emergency manager exchange.
00;24;45;22 - 00;25;02;12
Kyle King
Yeah, that would be quite interesting and a little bit difficult to put into place. That is quite an interesting experience, I'm sure. I want to talk about a couple of things before we wrap up, which is you mentioned the Emergency Management Growth Initiative. So let's talk a little bit about that in terms of where things are with that, and what are the perspectives that you're seeing for people who were trying to enter the field?
00;25;02;12 - 00;25;18;07
Kyle King
I'm also curious about that. I'm a bit out of touch, I admit. And then at the same time, your futurist newsletter. So what are you seeing in the future? So let's start with the Emergency Management Growth Initiative and how is it going, and what are the perspectives that you're seeing from new people that want to enter the career field?
00;25;18;10 - 00;25;54;19
Lorraine Schneider
Yeah, the organization as a whole has been a little bit dormant the last couple of years since I started working for the Resiliency Initiative, and then to just have had less time on my hands. But the most recent work I've been doing as part of MDA over this past year, when I was doing a research study, a mixed method approach on understanding the landscape of emergency management, Who emergency managers are across sectors, and what Di means to them, and how they're able to do more of the work in their jurisdictions.
00;25;54;21 - 00;26;44;28
Lorraine Schneider
And and so I've been working on that research with two fantastic colleagues out of the University of Southern California, Doctor Rita Park and of Irma. And we just presented our preliminary findings at the Higher Education conference in June, higher education in emergency management. But and the reason I'm so happy to have been able to conduct this research is because when EMI started us, we knew that anecdotally that emergency management is not a very diverse profession and it's predominantly white male more towards retirement age, because that's just how all the profession mainly was built in the last couple of decades, with people being placed in those emergency manager physicians from the fire service or police law
00;26;44;28 - 00;27;15;11
Lorraine Schneider
enforcement and entering those roles. But things are changing quite a bit. We have more people like myself who are finding themselves in the profession now starting off. And so we know anecdotally how emergency management is composed, but we didn't have very good data that we could lean on. And I think any solid initiative or work that you want to perform, you want to just have that data at your disposal to be able to meaningfully pursue work from there.
00;27;15;13 - 00;27;41;18
Lorraine Schneider
And also looking at what might be some of the different experience levels across sector. Right. And if you're working in for a county versus you're working for a company, what do salaries look like? What does your growth trajectory look like? Career wise? Are you able to move to raise to different positions? Or a lot of emergency management offices tend to be on the smaller sides, right.
00;27;41;18 - 00;28;11;13
Lorraine Schneider
You might have up to five people working in an office. And so unless the person at the top retires or finds a job elsewhere, you might be really limited in. And so you have to to hop into different sectors. Yeah. So I'm excited to release the complete findings of that there. Were we wrote a five report that's currently being called until we can release our study in a peer reviewed journal later this year or early next year.
00;28;11;16 - 00;28;26;08
Lorraine Schneider
And then my hope is that all kinds of institutions can leverage the information that's in there to make HR decisions, looking at their HR policies, benchmarking right from different organizations and stuff like that. Yeah.
00;28;26;11 - 00;28;41;23
Kyle King
Well that's interesting. So you found that there's pretty significant limitations in, say, the upward trajectory of emergency managers or like a defined career path. Is that what I'm hearing is that there is some limited mobility in terms of like the overall career.
00;28;41;25 - 00;29;00;28
Lorraine Schneider
Yes. Yeah. So whether it's within your own organization where you have limited positions in your organization and you're then essentially forced to leave your organization to find a different one, which might even be in a completely different sector, or you might reach even that director level early in your career. And then it's like the question of what comes next?
00;29;01;06 - 00;29;02;07
Lorraine Schneider
Pew. Well.
00;29;02;10 - 00;29;17;13
Kyle King
Yeah, definitely. I can definitely see that. I think that's obviously I think that's known in a lot of sort of smaller communities. Like there's not great options. Let me just say that in terms of like the mobility, a career path. And so you have to be highly mobile. This is I used to say, with government service. Right.
00;29;17;13 - 00;29;40;06
Kyle King
If you really want to go up in government service, you got to live everywhere. Let's take the jobs where they come up, whether that's Alaska or Florida or New York or wherever the cases go where the job is. And that's probably largely about the same. But it's also interesting that if you are a rising star in the emerging management field and you get to a director level, you don't have a really a lot of options after that, unless it's just a bigger city or something like that.
00;29;40;08 - 00;29;56;19
Kyle King
Yeah, but that's also interesting. So when we talk about that though, and you're going to publish this, that's great. We'll certainly be on the lookout for it. And I'm sure that will come out in future risk in terms of your newsletter. But let's sort of transition over to that when you're looking at your newsletter. You did mention that here at conference, one of your recent additions.
00;29;56;19 - 00;30;14;21
Kyle King
And so I did want to get a bit of the discussion on that and just terms of I'm not fully informed, but I was just watching on LinkedIn all of the the sort of discussion around university and EMI becoming a university, which is an interesting move. What's been the discussion around that and why is that a controversial decision?
00;30;14;21 - 00;30;29;14
Kyle King
I think we'll just start with that because I can judge that either way, being good or bad. and then what do you see in terms of the future risk in your newsletter? What are you looking at? What are the things that, quote unquote, keep you up at night that you think about in terms of future risk?
00;30;29;16 - 00;31;01;03
Lorraine Schneider
So every year, FEMA hosts a higher education symposium at the Emergency Management Institute, and it was held this past June. And in the opening remarks, FEMA Administrator Criswell and the superintendent for EMI and Emergency Management Institute announced that EMI would change to be called, I think, something like Emergency Management University and I arrived later that day, so I missed that decisive moment in the day.
00;31;01;03 - 00;31;29;16
Lorraine Schneider
But once I arrived on campus and I already it was buzzing on LinkedIn while I was on the train down, and there was a lot of uproar from the academic community and what this change means. Unfortunately, there were not a lot of details given by the administrator or the superintendent on what the exact next steps are, even though they said that the transition would occur July 1st, I believe.
00;31;29;21 - 00;31;58;16
Lorraine Schneider
So I checked the website around mid-July and I hadn't seen any changes. So I'm curious if the backlash that has been ongoing at any wider impact on the decision making. But essentially they tried to reassure the academic community, stating that they wouldn't be competitors to academia and to existing emergency management programs across the university because they would not be offering a university degree.
00;31;58;16 - 00;32;43;15
Lorraine Schneider
However, I got some conflicting different people working there, and I'm not quite sure the messaging was not very good. I will say that as we always say, how important messaging is, and on that piece, the messaging was not very right. I think it has led to lots of theorizing on both sides of what this means. But really, in speaking to the academic community, the big concern that they stated is that if you have a university out there that is offering degrees and offering them, especially if they're offering them for free, it's going to become a threat to your program at your university because you have to justify the existence of your program to university
00;32;43;15 - 00;33;07;04
Lorraine Schneider
leadership, and it's just less likely that you're going to be able to get the funding that you need to maintain a program when they can see that there are other options out there. That is how it was explained to me. And already we have seen emergency management programs across universities get slashed, either being completely taken down or being reduced tremendously.
00;33;07;10 - 00;33;40;26
Lorraine Schneider
So that's one big piece. And then the second piece is EMI has been criticized for years, and the superintendent even admitted to it himself during those remarks that the content, the curriculum they currently offer to emergency managers, the practitioners who go to EMI to take training, but it sometimes is very outdated and it's not particularly compelling. The biggest asset ask anyone who the CMI, the biggest benefit that they see in going is the networking, the ability to meet other emergency managers and exchange.
00;33;40;28 - 00;34;05;18
Lorraine Schneider
And if you're saying you're going to run a university, there needs to be some good curriculum in there. And then I think there's questions too about is funded by I believe is funded by CMA and the government and so what is I going to say about where the funding is going to come from. And are we going to experience different challenging cycles based on what presidential administration we have, things like that.
00;34;05;18 - 00;34;27;04
Lorraine Schneider
And then there's also, I think, a check and balance aspect of it, that academic programs play a large role in being third parties and being able to produce research and do things that perhaps they would not be able to. So there's lots of different pieces and challenges. And Doctor Sam Montana actually wrote a piece in her Disaster Allergy newsletter.
00;34;27;07 - 00;34;35;18
Lorraine Schneider
That is, it goes very in-depth into all of those things. And so anyone who wants to dig it further should read that article to get all the time.
00;34;35;20 - 00;34;53;10
Kyle King
Yeah, that's really interesting. Yeah. Thanks for that over again. I can see how that would be confusing for many and also detrimental to many academic programs, because if you just create the national university, you have no need for anything else. It's the perfect excuse to get rid of a program. Right. And so that can be controversial. Absolutely. And so hopefully they come up with a resolution to this.
00;34;53;13 - 00;35;00;29
Kyle King
I just out of curiosity, in your time in academia, do you know how many students there are in the United States that go through emergency management programs? Just on.
00;35;00;29 - 00;35;21;15
Lorraine Schneider
Average? Yes. So there is that. Our doctor, Bennett Gale, she spoke at the conference. And every year she captures all of that information, all of that data. And so she did present on it. I forget the exact number, but right now it's I think I want to say between 70 and 90,000 people have received degrees in emergency management.
00;35;21;17 - 00;35;44;00
Lorraine Schneider
So like over the last 20 years. But yeah, I would go back to her. And then I think every year we have a few like between two 6000 or so that are currently enrolled. I remember correctly, she mentioned that there was a dip this past year, and so every year fluctuates a little bit. Sure. And and then it goes across associates degrees bachelor's degrees and master level degrees.
00;35;44;00 - 00;35;57;15
Lorraine Schneider
And master level degrees tend to be the most popular ones, which I think would track because I know a lot of practitioners who came into emergency management in the second career and then ended up getting their master's in emergency management later on.
00;35;57;18 - 00;36;06;24
Kyle King
And oh yeah, very interesting. So a few thousand students a year. So that's quite a also that's quite a lift in terms of degree program management stuff.
00;36;06;27 - 00;36;32;14
Lorraine Schneider
And I was very surprised to hear how many programs out there because there are hundreds of them. And I feel like I always tend to hear about that same dozen or so. So there's definitely been a growth in programs out there over the years. I think one thing too, that on the flip side is looking at the quality of the programs and the teaching and and the curriculum being studied.
00;36;32;14 - 00;36;54;02
Lorraine Schneider
And then there's another fantastic presentation at the symposium. A couple of folks looked at job descriptions and then the standards for curriculum and emergency management to see how it overlapped. To help answer the question of, okay, I just graduated with a my emergency management degree, what can I get a job? And so they had some really pertinent findings about that as well.
00;36;54;05 - 00;37;14;05
Kyle King
Wow. Really interesting. That's a really, really interesting time to pay attention and see how that's changing and the developments in that area, because I see that also as being complicated eventually starting with and these are just my sort of perceptions. Right. But so starting in the same idea is like the CGM for my Am. And then that became like the thing.
00;37;14;07 - 00;37;31;09
Kyle King
But then you see states create their own academies and certifications. So then you're like, wow, okay, what are you saying? And I do this because it's recognized. But then at the same time, I still have to do something else and I'm duplicating effort. And it just becomes is correlating that over to what's happening at EMI. Okay, there's a degree, but I have a degree already.
00;37;31;09 - 00;37;36;17
Kyle King
Do I need to get a second degree? What is the standard that we're all following. So I can easily see how that's going to be complicated?
00;37;36;20 - 00;38;10;06
Lorraine Schneider
Yes. The standardization of emergency management is also one of the big roadblocks, I think, that we have as a profession, and there's a group out there trying to do work to create that standardization, but I think it'll take a few more years for it to really crystallize. And now where we're working with so many entities and like you said, so many different states that are creating their own programs, it's it's the efforts and makes it even more challenging to then define ourselves and do all these things.
00;38;10;09 - 00;38;28;10
Kyle King
Yeah. So let's shift gears a bit and talk about future risk. I'd love to wrap up with that conversation, because that seems like that's something. And correct me if I'm wrong or relatively new that you started publishing. And so tell me more about that. What prompted you to start publishing futurist the newsletter, and how can people get involved to get in touch with you?
00;38;28;10 - 00;38;31;16
Kyle King
And what are the topics that you're discussing?
00;38;31;18 - 00;38;59;26
Lorraine Schneider
Yeah, so I started the futurist newsletter, a little bit over a year ago. And I do two things. Essentially, some months I will look at what has happened over the last 30 days, and especially as it pertains to crisis management or emergency management and climate change and geopolitics. And hopefully some of these converge at some points and then we'll just share what's been going on.
00;38;59;26 - 00;39;23;11
Lorraine Schneider
For example, last year when we had the Maui wildfires, China was spreading misinformation about the wildfires. And so talking about the impacts that we then suffered, going back to our earlier discussion about the impacts that we suffer because of the third party elsewhere or Morocco, following its earthquake, last September, and how they were limiting aid from certain countries.
00;39;23;14 - 00;39;56;14
Lorraine Schneider
And just a few months ago, I was talking about the news industry, which has been in sharp decline and with a lot and a lot of newspapers slashing their staff. And so what implications does that have on responding to disasters? Yeah, helping people stay safe and disasters. And so the profession looking at what's been going on. And then sometimes I also instead of releasing that will release interviews that I conduct with certain professionals in our fields and beyond.
00;39;56;21 - 00;40;28;17
Lorraine Schneider
So this in July, I just released an interview that I held with Alan Roberts, who is a UK based geopolitical, oil and risk professional working in the financial services sector. And he and Ben, very passionate about climate and security specifically. He has a brilliant newsletter as well and securing our clients. And so that came about really thinking through climate change being the biggest drivers of the emerging threats and everything that's landing in our inboxes, in our work inboxes.
00;40;28;17 - 00;40;59;12
Lorraine Schneider
And so wanting to get ahead of that. And he does deep form analysis on these things. And so it's a little bit more on the security side versus the crisis management side, but had a very fascinating conversation with him about that and how he deals with compounding risk at work and what he does. And a few months ago, I also had a conversation with Chris Godley, who is out of Stanford Emergency Management, and he had a presentation on black swans, gray rhinos and dragon kings.
00;40;59;16 - 00;41;21;05
Lorraine Schneider
That's amazing. And saw him speak last year, and it was one of the best keynote addresses of I'd ever seen in my life. And so anyways, had a follow up. So wanted to take the time to have a conversation with him and we talked about psychology and predictions for future disasters. So looking at he always starts off his presentations with a pull, like pulling people in the audience.
00;41;21;13 - 00;41;46;24
Lorraine Schneider
What do you predict the disasters to be in 2045? And he's been capturing that information and in some great work around that. And so really looking ahead, that's the obviously the title of the newsletter, futurist and having a holistic lens of that. And yeah, one of the things we ended up talking about, I don't think it ended up making it into the interview, but about also existential risk.
00;41;46;26 - 00;42;10;22
Lorraine Schneider
And there's a university of Cambridge and and I'd be in Stanford as well. Now they have some centers around that. So really looking at things that could lead to the extinction of the human population. And I this was the first time I'd engage in a conversation like this with an emergency manager. And that really piqued my curiosity. And it's also an area that I'd love to explore and work.
00;42;10;25 - 00;42;24;12
Lorraine Schneider
But so really looking at what's happening, breaking that myopic lens, bringing it all together and then discussing trends of what's happening down the line and what should we be concerned about moving ahead.
00;42;24;15 - 00;42;45;27
Kyle King
Okay. Yeah, great. Thanks for that overview. And I think you're going in the right direction. A lot of the work that we do tends to take an international perspective, and we just see things that honestly make me feel like our communities are not prepared in the United States. We are just isolated. And it's nice. That's been comfortable, but we are just simply not ready for the complex crises that are coming.
00;42;45;29 - 00;42;53;10
Kyle King
And so all the work you're doing really appreciate it. And if anybody wants to get in touch with you, what's the best way to find do.
00;42;53;12 - 00;43;11;18
Lorraine Schneider
Please find me on LinkedIn. Lorraine Schneider free to send media connection requests and or. Yeah, and just message me and I'd love to get in touch. Oh, and obviously futurists and a newsletter that's available on Substack. I also link to it on my LinkedIn so you can subscribe to it for free.
00;43;11;21 - 00;43;31;12
Kyle King
Perfect. And we'll include the links in the show notes. So anybody who's interested, go ahead and connect with Lorraine, sign up for Future Risk and go check out the Resiliency Initiative and get on board with their programs. Lauren, thank you so much for joining us today. Really appreciate you having a conversation with us and spending some time with us and explaining how you see things in the world of emergency management these days.
00;43;31;20 - 00;43;34;23
Lorraine Schneider
Thank you. I appreciate the opportunity and all the work that you do.
00;43;34;25 - 00;43;54;18
Kyle King
All right. Thank you for tuning in to the Crisis Lab podcast. We hope that today's episode will provide you with new insights and perspectives to better navigate the challenges in your own field. Remember, each episode is a step towards mastering the complexities of crisis management, and we're here to share the knowledge and support you along the way. If you're not subscribed already headed over to your preferred platform?
00;43;54;18 - 00;44;15;13
Kyle King
Hit subscribe and keep up to date with our latest episodes. And for more resources and to become part of this 17,000 professionals following Crisis Lab, head over to Crisis Lab IO and make sure you follow us on social media, LinkedIn and YouTube. And lastly, if you haven't heard about already, we have an all access pass and it's the opportunity to lock in your pricing for 2024.
00;44;15;21 - 00;44;34;29
Kyle King
And you'll get 20 accredited courses released during the year, along with ten CEUs and even access to a NATO certificate if you attend the NATO Crisis Management and Disaster Response course. So lock in your cost. Now lock in those prices as it will go up every single year. And until next time, stay prepared, stay resilient and let's continue to make a difference together.
00;44;35;04 - 00;44;35;28
Kyle King
Thanks for listening.
