White House Author

As Regional Director of Preparedness for the American Red Cross Gateway to the Golden State Region, Emily oversees a team that delivers free disaster preparedness training to diverse Bay Area communities. She places special emphasis on preparing populations that are most adversely affected by disaster and face the hardest road to recovery by partnering with the neighborhood, government, nonprofit, and faith-based agencies that serve them and customizing the message to meet their unique needs. Emily’s team completed the Prepare Bay Area initiative through which local residents learned how to make an emergency communication plan, build a disaster supply kit, and safely respond to emergencies. In collaboration with her colleagues and partners throughout the region, Emily recently launched Ready Neighborhoods, an innovative four-year initiative designed to transform 50 targeted neighborhoods into models of disaster readiness. Before joining the Red Cross, she served as Program Director with the Network for Teaching Entrepreneurship, a nonprofit organization providing business skills to youth from low-income communities.