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EAD Core Members

 
Elizabeth A. Davis
 
Elizabeth A. DavisElizabeth Davis is an emergency management consultant specializing in Special Needs planning, disaster human services, and related issues through her firm EAD & Associates, LLC in New York.
 
Ms. Davis received her JD from Boston University School of Law and her EdM from Boston University School of Education with a degree in the Socio-Bicultural Study of Deafness and American Sign Language. She holds an undergraduate degree with a major in Sociology and a minor in Political Science from Barnard College at Columbia University.
 
After serving many years as an advocate in the disability community, she entered into public service following law school as Assistant to Counsel and Senior Policy Advisor with the NYC Mayor's Office for People with Disabilities. Due to her role as Incident Commander in the Deaf Mexican Nationals slave-ring case in Queens, she was transferred to the NYC Office of Emergency Management as Special Needs Advisor. There she was responsible for ensuring that all elements of planning, response, and recovery incorporated the unique needs of disability, senior, and medically dependent populations. In this capacity, she oversaw Board of Education Y2K planning; planned for city-wide sheltering operations; coordinated transit strike/disruption responses; and coordinated the public information lines during the West Nile virus outbreaks and throughout the events of September 11th.
 
Ms. Davis later became the first Director of the National Organization on Disability's Emergency Preparedness Initiative, a position she later retired from. Today, she consults for public jurisdictions and agencies, private businesses, home based care agencies, and residential health care organizations.
 
In addition, Ms. Davis is an advisor to the Department of Homeland Security and FEMA, and she sits on several national advisory boards. She is the co-chair of the National Hurricane Conference Health Care/Special Needs Committee; chair of the International Association of Emergency Managers (IAEM) Special Needs Committee; and an appointed member of the FEMA National Advisory Council's Special Needs Subcommittee, to list a few active roles she maintains. She also served a two-year term as appointed chair of the FCC's CAC Homeland Security Committee.
 
As an accomplished public speaker with a reputation for creative solution development, Ms. Davis is considered one of the nation's "go-to" sources for emergency management and special needs issues. Her firm was responsible for getting rapid assessment teams on the ground in four Gulf States after Hurricane Katrina and provided an immediate action report for the federal authorities regarding health and special needs impacts. This team model for communicating special needs information during a disaster is now being replicated across many federal agencies.
 
Ms. Davis has also served as a court appointed subject matter expert, participates in many major conferences and web forums, and has had materials published on the subject of Special Needs emergency preparedness. She has even been a guest instructor at several emergency management graduate programs and received several awards and commendations for her work and advocacy.
 
Ms. Davis grew up in San Francisco but now resides in Brooklyn with her husband and two young daughters, where she remains active in community affairs.

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Rebecca Hansen, MSW
 
As a Senior Project Manager and consultant for EAD & Associates, Ms. Hansen works nationwide with clients including governments, non-profits and private entities. Her professional emphasis is the integration of special needs and human services issues into emergency management standards, planning and practices. In her field she has developed and conducted several training sessions for public health and emergency management professionals. During the response and recovery phases of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita in Louisiana Ms. Hansen worked as a subject matter expert on one of four Rapid Assessment Teams deployed by a national disability organization. She presently serves on a select special needs advisory group to The Road Home, Louisiana's housing recovery program. Ms. Hansen was recently selected as an instructor with the CUNY Graduate Center, a partner with NYC OEM, to carry out coastal storm training to NYC employees to prepare them for leadership roles in evacuation centers and hurricane shelters.
 
From 2000-2003 Ms. Hansen served as the Assistant Director of Government Relations for the Greater New York American Red Cross (ARC) and as their primary disaster planner and liaison to the New York City Office of Emergency Management. In that role, directly working with NYC OEM, she helped lead the initial and long-term human services response to the World Trade Center terrorist attack including assisting with sheltering, food provision, service coordination, outreach, and other aspects of the complex response system. She collaborated with government and non-profit organizations in disaster preparedness and planning activities to address critical human needs issues. At ARC Ms. Hansen managed and trained a team of 20 volunteers to respond to the ARC, OEM, NYPD, or other Emergency Operations Centers activated within the ARC jurisdiction prior to, during, or after disasters. In addition she initiated activities to increase membership, develop infrastructure, and increase response capability of member organizations, as vice chair for the New York City Voluntary Organizations Active in Disaster (NYC VOAD).
 
Prior to the American Red Cross Ms. Hansen worked for the New York City Office of Emergency Management for three years. Her responsibilities included assisting with the development of the NYC Sheltering plan; coordination of human services activities during activation of New York City's Emergency Operations Center; development and facilitation of interagency workshops, classes, table-top and full-scale exercises to test existing disaster plans, agency roles and resource allocation and management (topics included human services disaster response, Y2K planning and response, the Coastal Storm Plan, and the Emergency Operations Center information management tool); management of the NYC Emergency Hotline; planning activities relating to the NYC Water Disruption Plan, the NYC Heat Plan and the NYC Coastal Storm Plan; and, serving as the lead emergency manager for Y2K contingency planning with the Department of Environmental Protection, the Department of Information Telecommunication and Technology and the Administration for Children's Services.
 
Ms. Hansen received a Bachelors of English from the University at Albany and earned a Masters degree in Social Work from the Hunter College School of Social Work. She is affiliated with the International Association of Emergency Managers (IAEM) and the National Association of Social Workers (NASW).

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