The 3 questions, looking back to build on opportunities ahead!

March 28, 2022, marked my first official day as the FEMA Region 5 Administrator. Before concluding my swearing-in speech, I asked my new team to reflect on where we’ve been as an agency, what we planned to do and where we hoped to go in the future. Just over 1,000 days later, I ended my tenure at FEMA by asking those same questions again and sharing my answers with each of you.

Where Have We Been over the Past Three Years?

In Region 5 communities. Our team organized roundtables across the region to better understand the people we serve, hosted ground-breaking summits on extreme heat, urban flooding and how we can best support our Region 5 tribal nations, and deployed into impacted areas for 12 regional disaster declarations, expediting individual and community rebuilding efforts and providing more than $4 billion in recovery grant funding.

Strengthening infrastructure across our Great Lakes states. More than $270 million was provided in hazard mitigation grant funds, breaking the Region 5 record for the largest total awarded in 2023 then again 2024. We issued our first ever Building Resilient Infrastructure and Communities grant to Madison, Wisconsin and funded the largest single project obligation in Region 5 history at $38 million to protect and reinforce Ohio’s Mineral Ridge Dam.

Expanding capabilities and cultivating expertise. From successfully planning and safely executing two National Special Security Events this past summer, building the largest Regional Emergency Communications Coordination Working group in the nation, developing and validating biological incident and power outage incident annexes that have put Region 5 at the forefront of preparing for emerging threats, and providing training, education and outreach to tens of thousands of individuals and whole community partners, we continued to foster a more ready FEMA and prepared nation.

What are We Doing Now and Where are We Going in the Future?

While the transition continues, the FEMA team will continue putting people first—cultivating disaster readiness, speeding recovery when the unexpected happens, and reinforcing our communities in the face of ever evolving risks. Disasters once considered historic have now become the standard; if a situation seems unimaginable, we must plan, train and prepare for it.

But those plans are only as good as the reality they reflect—when we devote blue sky days to engaging our communities, meeting people where they are and understanding their unique needs and capabilities, we’re best positioned to effectively respond when the clouds roll in.

We can gain even more ground in the face of increasingly complex threats by taking a whole community approach to operationalizing resilience and leveraging the power of technology. Long-term, sustainable mitigation today will buy down the risks we face tomorrow and generations to come.

Undoubtedly, the future holds a lot of unknowns—no more so than in our line of work—but one thing I know for sure is that FEMA Region 5 has some of the best emergency managers in the field today, and they’ll be ready to help, whenever and wherever it may be needed next!

People helping people what matters most!