Episode 4 - Advocating for EM

Show Notes:

Guests this month:

Christian Cunnie, IAEM Advocacy & Awareness Caucus Chair: https://www.linkedin.com/in/christian-cunnie/ 

Ashley Morris, IAEM Advocacy & Awareness Caucus Vice Chair: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ashley-morris-505806/ 

Other items referenced:

Certification Education Equivalency RFP: https://www.iaem.org/Portals/25/documents/2024/RFP%20Education%20Equivalency_Final.pdf 

Please fill out the survey to provide feedback on mentorship in emergency management: https://forms.office.com/r/BsPRmsBaXJ 

IAEM Happy Hour Save the Date: April 4th at 6pm ET: https://www.iaem.org/Events/IAEM-USA-Happy-Hours 

Complete the annual EMPG Survey by 2/23: https://www.iaem.org/2024-EMPG-Survey 

Check out the new event calendar on IAEM Connect: https://connect.iaem.org/events/calendar 

If you are interested in joining the new IAEM Energy Caucus, reach out to Cassie Massano: cassandra.massano@eversource.com 

Article referenced in the show about Christian Cunnie: https://www.wickedlocal.com/story/cohasset-mariner/2015/01/30/cohasset-s-emergency-group-shows/35318725007/ 

Advocacy examples in other disciplines:

https://iampublichealthva.org/

https://www.apwa.org/resources/apwa-initiatives/public-works-first-responders/

https://www.naco.org/resources/featured/untold-stories

https://icma.org/what-professional-city-town-and-county-managers-do

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vklcSrW4wX8 

Example of a hiring guide: https://drii.org/resources/hiringguide 

Transcript:

Taylor Frizzell: All right. Welcome. Welcome to the Just In Case podcast. I am your host, Taylor Frizzell. As always, joining me with this bright and smiling face is Mr. Justin Cates, our IAM USA president. We somehow made it to February mentally, physically, maybe emotionally. I haven't decided if I've decided it's actually February, but we're somehow here. And this month we're going to be talking about all things advocacy and emergency management. So hello, Justin. Happy February.

Justin Kates: Happy February. I was hoping that we would have canceled this show by now, because I'm already starting to recognize that it's filling up too much of my schedule with all the prep sessions and the recordings and everything like that. So now we're committed and we'll just have to do with this.

Taylor Frizzell: You know, Justin, you act like I'm not holding this team together here. All right. You'll be fine. I promise you'll survive. You always do. All right. So at this point, I want to take a quick minute or so just to introduce our guests this month. We have Mr. Christian Cunney and Ms. Ashley Morris. Welcome. Thank you both so much for being here with us. They are the chair and vice chair of the Advocacy and Awareness Caucus. And we'll dive a little bit deeper into what that is later on in our show. But welcome. Thank you guys for being here. Excited to get to chat with you this month. Before we do that, as always, I do want to kick it over to Justin for a little bit here just to give us an update on what's going on at IAEM USA.

Justin Kates: All right. So this month has been very busy. Really, really busy. And there's a ton of things that the organization has been working on. And I'll give you sort of a quick rundown of everything. So first, our last podcast. We had a certification commission represented there, John Fessler. And one of the things we had talked about was the future of that program and where we can make improvements. After that podcast episode aired, and then the article that went into the bulletin that was the transcript, We get all kinds of really interesting feedback about areas for improvement for the certification program. So that's what this is all about, is to sort of offer an opportunity for you to provide feedback and input. And that month was really good because we did get a lot of good feedback on the certification program. You know, along with that, one of the things we mentioned on that last episode is the RFP that we have out to look at the education equivalency requirements for the CEM. and whether that's something that the association should explore. And we've been working to select a vendor to actually do that assessment. And we've come down to the final line. So we should have an announcement here very soon with the vendor name and sort of the insight on what are the next steps for that. All the prospective vendors that submitted bids for that RFP had really good approaches and methodologies to figure out whether this makes sense for the association or not. So I think we're going to have a really good program here. We also, last month, had our virtual happy hour. It was a huge success. We had a ton of people that participated in it. And similarly, again, this is another new approach that we're doing to try and get feedback and input from the members. There was a question that came up during that happy hour about how we might be able to elevate internships and volunteer opportunities more on the IEM job board. And so sure enough, we were able to work on a solution with the staff and the vendor that manages that program to actually create a button at the top that allows you to have one click to jobs that are volunteer opportunities and internships. And so that takes you right to that location. And again, this is the kind of feedback that we're looking for to make improvements. And if somebody has a volunteer opportunity or an internship, they can easily get a free posting on the job board just by reaching out to the IEM staff, and they'll give you the information about how to do that. So another big success. Our next happy hour that we'll be doing, virtual happy hour, is going to be April 4th at 6 p.m. Eastern time. So that'll be available, we'll put that in the show notes, and it'll also be on the website. There's a EMPG, Emergency Management Performance Grant survey that's going on right now. We do this in partnership with the National Emergency Management Association, NEMA. really to do sort of a full assessment of how EMPG dollars are being spent and how they're being utilized by emergency managers at the local level, at the state level, tribal, territorial. And we want as much participation in that survey as possible. So again, we'll put the link to that in the show notes. We use the data from that and the report that comes out of that. as part of our effort to go to Capitol Hill and try and advocate for more EMPG dollars. We also, speaking of government affairs related activities, we did just recently have a meeting with FEMA, the FEMA administrator and her senior leadership, as well as with NEMA and big cities emergency managers, talked about a number of initiatives that we can partner on. And that's something we do quarterly with the leadership. And one thing that was announced at that meeting that you'll probably be hearing more about as we partner with FEMA on this is a national study of emergency management. And so this is going to really look at staffing. It's going to look at the funding programs that are used. It's going to look at the different types of activities and functions that are going to be involved in emergency management across the country. So we're still in the very early stages of this, but it's really great that FEMA came to us and said, hey, this is something that we want to partner on and work on. So this is very exciting. We also had our Government Affairs Committee meeting recently. And if you have not joined Government Affairs, I think that's a highly, highly important group for you to get involved with if you're involved in IAM. The reason for this is this is where you learn about all the upcoming legislation and activities that impact emergency managers. And, you know, one of the things that we had during this last, this committee meeting was a presentation from the Association of State Floodplain Managers, Chad, who's their executive director and, you know, he really provides some great insight as to how we might be able to partner with them on mitigation activities and adaptation programs. And so we'll try to do more things like that where we can get some of these other associations to provide us some insight on what things they're looking at from a government affairs perspective. Carrie Speranza, our first vice president, has continued to take the lead on our safe events initiative. This has been something that we've been continuing to look at is how do we work with the other associations across emergency management to ensure that our events are safe and welcoming. And they've had a number of meetings over the last few months. to try and brainstorm strategies and recommendations on how we can continue to improve our events and make them events where people feel safe to come to and participate in. And these are these are, you know, meetings where there's ideas that come from members across the spectrum, new members, veteran members, and this is something that over the next few months you'll see more about as we start to release some of these recommendations. We also have another enhancement that's coming very soon to the IEM Connect tool, which is a calendar functionality. This is a big deal because one of the challenges we encounter all the time is we have all these committees, caucuses, regions, and other types of events that are taking place, and we love to schedule over top of each other. And so it's really a challenge to try and de-conflict everything that goes on. But the IEM membership should easily be able to go to this new IEM Connect calendar and be able to see all the things that are going on today, next week, next month, and figure out ways that they can get more involved in the association. So more information will be coming out on that, but you can actually explore that right now if you go to IEM Connect. Our efforts around the priorities that I issued in the beginning of this administration still continue. You'll hear more today on this episode about some of the work we're doing on the advocacy priority area. But we're also still continuing to make good progress on our mentorship program. The membership committee has taken that on as their initiative and we've continued to come up with resources and best practices from other industries that we might be able to adapt to a program for mentorship at IEM. We also have a couple of new initiatives within IEM, including the Energy Caucus, which recently was approved and created. So if you're involved in the energy sector of emergency management, I highly recommend that you get involved in that new group. And we also will be announcing a really, really cool initiative around critical infrastructure here probably next month and some of the activities that they'll be involved in as well. So again, this was a busy month and unfortunately it seems like next month is going to be even busier. I don't think we'll have any time to sleep, but I really appreciate all the work that the membership, the leadership, the staff have been doing to kind of take all these activities and move them forward. So back to you, Taylor.

Taylor Frizzell: I think that it just means that the Wawa Coffee is going to be a massive help for you over the next month is what I'm hearing.

Justin Kates: I hope so. It's good that it's free for me.

Taylor Frizzell: So as promised, I do want to bring back our guests for the month. This month with us, we have the chair of the Advocacy and Awareness Caucus, Christian Cunney, and vice chair of the Advocacy and Awareness Caucus, Ashley Morris. Welcome both of you. How are you guys doing?

Christian Cunnie: Thanks for having us, Taylor. I appreciate it.

Ashley Morris: Of course. Yeah, super excited to be here. Thank you.

Taylor Frizzell: Thank you both. I'm excited you're here. I think that this is going to be obviously something Justin is super jazzed about. I think the work that you guys are doing is incredible. So I'm really glad that we get to have an opportunity to really highlight a lot of that. So I do want to start by kind of level setting our conversation, if you will, and just start out by asking what is advocacy in the scope of the Advocacy and Awareness Caucus?

Christian Cunnie: Well, Taylor, so for several years now, this conversation of professionalizing the field of emergency management continues to come up in forums at EMI and Naval Postgrad School and and across the higher education community and even within our own spheres. And we really put our heads together a few years ago to determine what IAM's role is in advocating for the profession of emergency management. So when we talk about what is advocacy in our caucus's role here, is really to advocate for the emergency management profession, emphasizing really the indispensable role that emergency managers play within their communities and organizations.

Taylor Frizzell: So you guys are going to be able to tell me how I can explain to my mom finally what it is that I actually do, because that would be a phenomenal thing if we could make that happen. It's difficult to explain. Thank you for doing the Lord's work. I appreciate you. Why why are you folks invested, I guess, in advocacy for emergency management? And so, Christian, if you want to start, well, then we'll kick it over to Ashley. Why is this something that you guys are so jazzed about?

Christian Cunnie: Well, well, Taylor, I. Funny story, I actually got involved in emergency management at the age of 14 and helped to build an emergency management program of my small town of 7,000 people just south of Boston. So I have, while I'm still a young professional, have spent several years in emergency management and really am one of the individuals that will most likely spend my entire career in emergency management. So I'm invested in really advocating the profession as one. I see myself spending the next, you know, potentially 40 years in the profession. So really trying to make it the best and brightest we can. And additionally, really, you know, I've seen what well-funded and well-resourced emergency management programs can do for their communities and organizations. And on the flip side, what under-resourced emergency management programs really struggle with. So my hope is really throughout this process, and we're starting with baby steps here as there's a lot of work to be done, but is to really rally our association behind trying to show off the amazing things that our members and the general emergency management community do for our constituents and just the general public.

Taylor Frizzell: Yeah, I think that's a good point. A lot of agencies, I think, are under-resourced, understaffed. So I think that that in and of itself is a reason to try and advocate for the field and the professionals. I think that's an excellent point.

Justin Kates: Before we go over to Ashley and ask her input, I'm curious if Christian, when he was 14 and started the emergency management, did he have lights and sirens on his bicycle or what?

Christian Cunnie: I did not, but I was driven around by my parents for a few years before I got my license. So if anyone's interested, you can Google my name and you'll see an article. I think it was when I was maybe 16 or 17 and running the public information program for my town's EM program.

Taylor Frizzell: Okay, so petition to get bike helmets that had the little lights and sirens on it. I think that would be phenomenal. We can also add that to one of your goals. I'm sorry, go ahead, Ashley. What keeps you invested in advocacy for emergency management?

Ashley Morris: Yeah, so I actually trip, stumbled and fell into emergency management as a option for my career. Ever since I was seven or eight years old, I wanted to be a weather forecaster, a meteorologist. And so I actually went to university, studied meteorology and earth sciences in hopes to save lives and pretty much eliminate fatalities due to weather related causes. And I actually learned about emergency management through an American Meteorological Society conference. that opened that door for me. And so really central to my why as an emergency manager and a local level emergency manager for seven years is just saving lives and protecting property. And I would say just seeing over the past few years of my career, just a lapse of professionalization, but also a lack of training standards, education standards, obviously personnel needs, funding, and then just professionalization in general. It really has struck me as a need to be able to do that. So I guess for me, really just making sure that we're trying to define a profession is important to me so we can just save more lives and handle disasters more appropriately.

Taylor Frizzell: I think that's incredibly well said. And I won't digress too much, but I definitely fangirl over all things meteorology. And so the fact that there's such a good relationship with like the folks over at the National Weather Service. And I just think that stuff is so fascinating, mostly because I have no idea anything about it. So actually, I will definitely be picking your brain at some point, because I think that that is so cool. All of the science behind that is fascinating. So just make sure you schedule me in at some other point so I can pick your brain. So if folks aren't aware, there is the caucus that you folks are running. And I kind of want to dive a little bit deeper into how that caucus fits into the broader scope of advocacy and emergency management. I know that's a big question. You're welcome to break it down, however you would like. But how does the caucus fit all the work you guys are doing? How does it fit into that broader scope of advocacy in emergency management as a whole?

Christian Cunnie: Well, Taylor, you teed it up. a little bit earlier when you mentioned your parents not knowing about what emergency managers do. And really the issue that we are aiming to solve, as are many other folks across the board and questions that they have, is really those outside of EM, and I'm generalizing here, but many of those outside of emergency management don't really understand what we do and the role that we play in government, nonprofits, private sector, et cetera. You know, the opportunity that we saw for IEM, which has a lot of amazing committees and caucuses doing work with a whole host of partners, but we really saw an opportunity for us to launch an effort promoting the profession and really highlighting the role that EM has played in so many disasters previously. I mean, we look at COVID-19, an extremely visible time for emergency managers And frankly, very few EM programs took advantage of that when it comes to advocacy work. We see our partners in police and fire and EMS, you know, have a very robust advocacy program, whether it's, you know, lobbyists or staff down in Washington, D.C., or marketing firms that actually, you know, assist them in, you know, showing all of the amazing things that they do for our communities. So we really identify that there's not a one-stop shop for a local elected official, a chief executive. board of directors, wherever you may be in the emergency management world, to learn more about what an emergency manager does and why those folks should invest in programs. So when we look at the broader scope of advocacy and EM, frankly, and this is my opinion is, we are not as a profession doing a lot of work when it comes to advocacy. There's a ton of opportunity and we are just beginning to chip away at least with an IEM on some of these initiatives, but I know that our partners at NEMA and big cities, and whether you're at Harvard NPLI, EMI, Naval Postgrad School, all of these groups are having similar conversations, but we really wanted to take it to the next step and begin to actually work on projects that we can begin sharing with some of the folks that actually hire emergency managers.

Taylor Frizzell: I will dive into some of the more specifics in a second. Ashley, did you want to add anything to that?

Ashley Morris: Yeah, I think most importantly, it's just kind of critical to distinguish the two modes of advocacy, which to me, in my opinion, would be legislative. So obviously passing bills and things like that, and then community and outreach facets. And so what Christian and I kind of see with this is taking the opposite of focusing on legislature, but focusing more on educating people, like you said, what is emergency management? What kind of professional is that? What do they do for my community? How can I know more about my local emergency management office? And by doing that public engagement and that outreach just about what we are, we're hoping to eventually be able to have that turnover into better funded programs, an increase in positions, and then in turn, that really critical element of making sure that our professionals are trained, ready, inspired, and ready to take on just an evolving threat world that we live and work in.

Justin Kates: So, Ashley, you really bring up a great perspective showing that difference between that legislative and regulatory advocacy and then sort of the awareness and public education side of it, because that is really the gap that we have. I mean, IEM has a government affairs committee and does work on the Hill. does try and share this information with folks to help increase funding programs and all that kind of stuff. But the area where we have really had a gap, not just within IEM, but across the industry, has been on, okay, selling the emergency management idea, making sure that people are aware of the importance of our role within a government organization, within a business, within a higher education institution, within a healthcare institution. So I love the way that you guys are taking this on as a really novel approach, novel in our industry, but certainly something that we can take some best practices from other industries that have really sold their purpose within their organization.

Taylor Frizzell: I think that's a good point, Justin. I know emergency management in some facet has been around for a very, very long time, but I think we're kind of I frame it as what I call like the Renaissance period of emergency management. I think we're finally almost like figuring ourselves out as our own group of folks. What actually is emergency management? What are we? What brings us together regardless of whatever sector you're in or what your background is. And so I think it's really cool that, you know, we're putting in this effort to really advocate for ourselves now, you know, we've kind of sorted out who we are and what we do. And now it's time to, to really step up and start letting other people know what it is that we do. even if sometimes we're not sure on a day-to-day basis. Or maybe that's just a me problem, and I'll work through that, and that's totally fine. Going back to some of the more specific goals and objectives that you folks have around this world of advocacy, I really want to take a second to talk about what your goals and objectives are for the caucus this year, and just kind of maybe teeing up some of the work around that HR hiring toolkit, not specifically, but I'd love to make sure we lump that in here as well.

Christian Cunnie: So I'll start and Ashley can definitely talk more detail about the hiring toolkit that we're working on now. So when we convened the group back in late 2022, early 2023, you know, as expected, we received a plethora of ideas. I mean, there are so many great initiatives that need work in this advocacy space, but we really wanted to drill down and focus on where can we get our biggest bang for our buck, especially as, you know, all of our groups are volunteer, and we wanted to make sure that we were funneling our time and energy into a product that could really bring us some you know, positive benefits to this professionalization effort. So we came up with probably about a dozen different ideas to where do we begin with this work. And where we have, you know, we spent the first year really researching and flushing out those ideas and concepts, and really boiled it down to two objectives for this year. And our first one is really about assisting decision makers in new emergency management positions and programs to fill the needs of their organization. So what does that mean? And really, you know, there are professional associations out there, you know, similar to IEM, but for other professions that have created these HR hiring toolkits for, you know, an HR professional in community, a business, nonprofit, whatever it may be. which really is a roadmap for how do I hire a qualified emergency management professional. So that's one and I think you know I'll let Ashley talk a little bit more about this project. The second that we're going to be diving into in a little bit here in a few months is, you know, IEM has a number of relationships with similar or like-minded associations, whether it's climate or resiliency. There are dozens and dozens of partner associations that we would like to continue to maintain relationships with in that open line of communication. So we have a number of liaisons that IEM has identified and What we'd like to do as a caucus is really set those liaisons up for success and providing them a training so that when these liaisons are traveling to conferences or invited to speak at meetings of these other associations that they feel like they have a loaded toolbox ready to go with talking points, And you know what the needs what the needs of emergency managers are for the next two, five, 10 years and really helping to identify strategies to solicit diverse and really equitable participation from. our entire membership to make sure that we have good representation at these conversations. As Justin mentioned during his inaugural address, we need to make sure that emergency managers are at the table when decisions are being made about our profession. And in the past, we've heard out to the fact that a lot of times emergency managers might not even be at the table at all. So, part of our work here as well as to try to make sure that our members are equipped to really represent the association and the profession and feel comfortable doing so.

Taylor Frizzell: It's mind boggling to me that you folks have only really been around for about a year because that just the research in and of itself, I think, is leaps and bounds from where we were. So I commend you for that.

Christian Cunnie: And I'll just add, I really have to applaud Ashley and her amazing research ability. You know, she is in her PhD program right now. And, you know, the talent that she brings to the table when it comes to synthesizing and researching all of the different EM doctrine that's out there, I would never be able to do it. So we are really fortunate to have Ashley, you know, a part of this group. And besides her being a celebrity on Twitter with thousands of followers, and And advocating for the profession there, we're really lucky to have her spearheading this HR toolkit project, which I'm sure she'll be happy to talk about.

Taylor Frizzell: I just wish that I knew that she was a celebrity. I would have totally adjusted the introduction. I'm so sorry, Ashley. And also, holy cow, PhD. That is phenomenal. And working full time. I'll stop fangirling. HR, the HR hiring toolkit. I think that's an incredible initiative, Ashley, if you want to dive into that a little bit deeper, maybe some of the resources that might come from that.

Ashley Morris: Sure, absolutely. And thanks, Christian, for the votes of support there, especially with the social media followers. But getting into the project, so as Christian was talking about, we're really working to focus and advocate for professionals. Many of us have been in this field for years now, and we've heard and seen different stories go on with hiring practices. I have several different connections and people I've heard from that, you know, maybe they do have their CEM or maybe they have a certain level of knowledge, skills, and abilities that might prepare them for a promotion or might prepare them for the perfect position in emergency management. However, when you go and look at the job postings in the local, state, or federal level, they don't always align with what those knowledge, skills, and abilities should be for them to do their job. And so our goal with this is really to just kind of provide a little bit of research, a little bit of framework, and a little bit of guidance to how to start putting that together. If you want to hire an emergency planner or you want to hire a certain emergency manager to come in and do certain emergency management duties for your community, what kind of skills should you be looking for? Should you be looking for someone who could do threat assessment, maybe have some GIS mapping abilities? Obviously, emergency planners should be able to write well, things like that. So really, over the past few months, Christian and I have been working on compiling a variety of different current standardization documents because we know that our field doesn't have a lot of standards yet, but we can find a handful of different standards like the NFPA 1660 and some of those. And so we're working to kind of compile these and provide a little bit more framework with what professionals could be hired to do. Obviously, once we have that all frameworked out and put together, we're hoping to provide that in a palatable format to where we could take it to conferences for local governments, elected officials, even HR professionals, and they can actually take a look. They can understand the different kind of skills and the ways that we could format these positions. And we're hoping it'll be a great way for them to be able to design an emergency management position from scratch. to get them exactly the right person that they're looking to do the job, rather than feeling kind of frantic like they have to guess what a new emergency manager might need to do for their jurisdiction. But that's kind of the goal with our project.

Justin Kates: Or they go and search online for a job description and they find a job description for a firefighter and say, oh, well, this looks close enough. And they change a couple of words out and they say that's the emergency management director's job position. So I think this approach that you guys are taking is going to be a great step in the right direction. And it's not something that It's not something that exists currently. We know that in many other like-minded professions, they've put something together like this where it helps those organizations that are trying to figure out, okay, we've gotten direction from our leadership to hire an emergency management director. Okay, now where do we go? And I think this whole idea behind synthesizing is also really important here because We've seen the higher education community has done things like put together the next generation core competencies, which helps those higher ed programs that have emergency management degrees put together the right competencies that somebody should graduate with when they go out into the workforce. We also know there are program standards like the EMAP emergency management standard. You mentioned NFPA 1660 for institutions. So that's kind of driving, okay, what are the things that the program needs to be able to do? And then we've got all these other things like the emergency management principles and the guidance that really even crafted the emergency management model back in the late 1970s. And we still rely on a lot of that stuff to sort of design our positions, design our programs, but it's not really crosswalk. It's not synthesized, as you mentioned. I think I think you guys are on the right track.

Taylor Frizzell: You said it far more eloquently than I which comes to as a surprise to nobody, but I was going to comment on the fact that it is very complimentary to a lot of the work that's being done for developing internship programs and all the work at the higher ed level and also some of the work that's being done with the changes to the CEM certification as well. I think that Um, hopefully it'll help us to build a better profession of emergency management. So I think that that's incredible work and I, y'all are far smarter than I am. So I, I highly commend you for all the work that's being done there. Um, I know we had touched very briefly on the fact that you folks are still a pretty new caucus in the grand scheme of things. You've only been around for about a year or so. Um, which you've done incredible things in just that timeframe, but I'm curious to know based off of the list of 12,000 things it sounds like you got feedback on, which again, not shocking. What are you folks looking to accomplish just beyond this year? Because it sounds like all the work you're doing, the toolkit is going to take a long time. A lot of the work in assisting those decision makers might take a long time. What else are you folks thinking about longer term?

Christian Cunnie: So one thing Ashley alluded to very quickly was the fact that we wanted to almost go on this roadshow to sell emergency managers. And that was one of our initial goals was We wanted to, you know, travel to all of these conferences and essentially, you know, put on speaking sessions and tabling opportunities and really to talk with folks that are building these emergency management programs, the private sector executive, the chief municipal official, etc. So what we realized, though, is that we need to, you know, really build that framework before going to sell the program. Because the first thing that an executive is going to ask is, okay, I buy into your idea or your concept of building a professional program. Now I need a roadmap or a guide on how to do that. So we're really trying to do this thoughtfully and put a lot of effort into a solid guide before going to really sell this concept. Additionally, you know, we have a lot of other good ideas that were floated about by that initial think tank when we first formed the caucus. You know, things like a PSA or really a campaign around promoting emergency managers. There's a great example of the state of Virginia public health, you know, entities that launched a marketing campaign right after COVID to attract new members into the workforce to, you know, justify additional investment into the field of public health, and they did this through you know a flashy website and really well done videos with. that received a lot of traction.

Justin Kates: Who was the celebrity that they had do their videos? I forgot who it was. It was some movie star or something.

Christian Cunnie: It was, I can't remember who it was, but.

Justin Kates: He must not have been that notable, but maybe we can have Ashley serve as our celebrity, so.

Taylor Frizzell: Okay, but hear me out. We need to get the bike helmets with the lights and sirens first so that it's extra flashy. So I'm sorry, Ashley, but you might now have to wear a bicycle helmet with lights and sirens as you're going on this PSA tour.

Ashley Morris: That's too bad, I was gonna say Taylor Swift, but.

Justin Kates: Right. That'll cost us too much money, and there's too many distractions right now with the whole football thing, and I mean, this'll be at the bottom of her list, absolutely.

Taylor Frizzell: I wanna make a sassy comment about, oh yeah, the Super Bowl's coming up, I can't wait to see Taylor Swift play, but I'll refrain, I don't need to lose everyone's respect. I'm sorry, please go ahead, Christian.

Christian Cunnie: No, that's more interesting. Anyways, I'll and then, you know, additionally, it's, you know, there are some other other ideas that we floated around as well as, you know, after these incidents like the Maui wildfires or, you know, major hurricanes or East Palestine train derailment, these major events where emergency managers play a crucial role in response and recovery. We want to capitalize on that and, you know, potentially look at publishing op eds or articles after those incidents to highlight the amazing work that emergency managers do. Also, you know, really working with those emergency managers to formulate case studies on, you know, how their program was able to return X amount of dollars back to their community through FEMA reimbursement or other avenues. So the list goes on and on. We have, you know, a lot of conversation going on about the future of emergency management and what does the emergency manager look like in 2034. And so, you know, there's a lot of work being done at the FEMA NAC level and some other entities that, you know, there should be some real great reports coming out about, you know, what's the path forward for our profession. And, you know, we see our advocacy and awareness caucuses, you know, potentially one of those entities that can act on some of those recommendations and begin to really help to drive the future of our profession and not let others really determine what the future looks like.

Taylor Frizzell: I especially love the idea of op-eds. I know it's something we tossed around at Region 1 quite a few years ago now, but I think that it just takes one or two people to really get that moving. And I think once someone steps up and starts doing it, and maybe that is with the caucus, I really think that it would be an incredible opportunity for a lot of folks to get involved. Ashley, is there anything that you wanted to add about maybe some of your kind of pet projects you'd like to see moving through over the next couple of years?

Ashley Morris: So, I kind of just wanted to add an echo that all of these things are connected and that's kind of the point that I want to make sure that we bring with this whole advocacy thing. Because even if we're thinking about who we're hiring or how we're writing job descriptions, I mean, that's connected to the perception of what emergency management is the definition of what emergency management is. and what a emergency management professional looks like. And so I think it's just really critical that we keep in mind that we really do need to continue to work on that communication and that community aspect, because as I've said on a variety of different platforms, we really need the public to advocate as well. If they want us to take on as a government with climate change, cybersecurity, and a variety of issues and concerns that we have moving forward, we really need them to know what emergency management is, know what their local government is investing in it, and advocate and push for additional investment and accountability for their local government. So any projects that we can get moving forward on that would make me very happy. Go ahead, Christian.

Christian Cunnie: And I do want to mention too, you know, Ashley and I are somewhat biased in the fact that we've spent, you know, most of our careers in government. But we do, you know, we have a pretty diverse array of folks on our caucus that bring other perspectives to the table. I'm new to higher ed myself, but there are folks that have, you know, some substantial time in the private sector. And, you know, whether it's energy, higher ed, healthcare, We really want to make sure that, you know, while government is our, you know, a large chunk of our membership, there is a lot of folks that work in, you know, other, other sectors and allied professions that we also want to make sure we're capturing as well. And really, you know, Ashley and I are taking the approach of keeping things somewhat general to make sure that we're not only advocating for one specific sector. So, you know, I think that'll really, we can be aligned in our efforts there across sectors, our advocacy work will be even more effective in the long run.

Taylor Frizzell: Well, and so you both teed up this question very beautifully for me. So thank you. I appreciate that. Ashley kind of touched on what general population can do. I think, Christian, you alluded to a little bit of kind of what some of the other folks in IAEM can do. But if you could give one piece of one ask to either general emergency managers or other members in IAEM, what would be that one ask for folks to advocate for the field of emergency management? What can other people do to help advocate, to lift those initiatives even higher?

Christian Cunnie: I'm going to keep it nice and short so that you remember it. Educate, educate, educate. I think the number one recommendation that I would have is schedule a 30 minute, a one hour meeting with your leadership team to educate them on your program and the value that you bring to the table. As part of an EMI Advanced Academy project, I looked at the you know, engagement that emergency managers had with their local elected officials and their state elected officials. And the numbers were somewhat concerning that some of these emergency managers, a majority of these emergency managers had never even met their state elected officials. So I think, you know, we've we've taken groups from region one down to Washington, D.C., and we've had meetings with legislators and and executives in the New England region. And they are hungry to meet their emergency managers. I mean, we've seen some pretty impactful events across the country over the past few years, let alone COVID. And having their emergency manager cell phone number is extremely valuable to them because they're going to get quick information and vice versa. You can work with them on, you know, support and resources as well. So I would recommend, you know, advocate and educate as much as you can.

Taylor Frizzell: Thank you for keeping it simple. I appreciate you knowing your audience, Ashley.

Ashley Morris: So for me, I would just say, I think as a field, we need to all come together and accept and be willing to push for professionalism. And I know that this is typically a topic that has come up in many different forums, like Christian mentioned, EMI discussions, maybe training discussions, especially on social media. But I think a variety of us know that it's really important for us to have professionalization standards or just some kind of framework or just baseline on what we're expecting the emergency management field to look like. You know, who are we hiring? What are they doing? What knowledge they have, their education, all of that. And I say willing to come together and accept and push for it because sometimes when we're having these discussions, I think some of us want to kind of ride a fence because we know how challenging it is, you know, with a variety of different backgrounds and the different skill sets and everybody comes from a different walk of life when they come into emergency management. And I think as a field, we don't want to gatekeep. And that's definitely not what this is about either. It's about just defining how we can all come together and get people on the correct pathway to do what they need to do professionally to save lives, protect property. So hopefully one day we can work together, define what that is together, do it through research, do it through practice, and then also work to bridge the gaps. You know, how can we build some deficiencies in some areas that we've really been struggling in as a field? We know funding is one. We know knowledge is one. We know training is one. So just working on that. And then I also would just ask too, and this is probably like three asks, so sorry. just making sure that we reflect it, right? So if we believe that we should be hiring a certain skillset or knowledge base, then we really need to be doing that in our own organizations. We should be speaking on it at associations, at conferences, to anybody who will listen. And then we should also be fostering that growth from the bottom, right? If we believe in bringing in college educated or new emergency managers with certain backgrounds, we should be building internships in our own programs. it's not enough anymore to come on a podcast or just make a tweet about it. We really need to be reflecting it in the field. And so I hope that someday through this caucus or through another route, we can all come together and really work on that because I think that's probably the biggest challenge we have as a field is the lack of formal professionalization.

Taylor Frizzell: I think that was incredibly well said. And I think it was it needed to be said. So thank you for for both of you. I think that hopefully folks can walk away from this and feel empowered to make some change to your point, Ashley, to start stepping up and doing their part as well. We are going to start to wrap up this month's session here. And as always, we're going to take a couple minutes for ask the president segment. And because I've never claimed to be an unbiased podcast host. This month's question actually comes from some special guests, very near and dear to my heart. I was recently at the IAEM Region 1 Leadership Retreat that they do to discuss all their goals and plans for the year. And so they actually have a question here for our president this year, or this month. So their question is, as you look at consistent strategic planning for the regions, Justin, how can regions help align their strategic planning to your national initiatives?

Justin Kates: Well, great question. I would guess I probably know who the people are that are asking it. You know, I think one of the things that we've talked about a couple of times on the podcast, and you've probably heard me talk about it in other places as well, is a few years ago, we started going down this track of objectives and key results. Objectives and key results, you can think of them as the opposite of strategic planning. They're planning around 90-day chunks about what is the most important thing that we need to do right now And when do we know that we've accomplished it? And we've been really pushing for that at the caucus and committee level. Then we've gotten the regions involved in it by having them craft OKRs. And then this recent year, what I did was I took those three priorities that I mentioned during my inaugural speech, advocacy, representation, and mentorship, and crafted OKRs for them at the national level. I think the best thing that we can do is when a region or a caucus or a committee sees those national level OKRs, they can say, all right, well, how do we play into that? How do we have something that we can contribute to that? And they can either use the same objective or something that's modified more in alignment with what they can do and then come up with their own key results for it. So, for example, if mentorship at the national level is an OKR, Um, maybe what the region decides is they say, okay, you know what? We're going to identify, um, you know, 10 mentors for contribution to this program, or we're going to try and identify a partnership between one of the local universities in our region. to bring in new mentees into the program. So that's how this is supposed to work together, is they see those top level objectives, and then those regions, caucuses, committees are able to take those and say, you know what, here's something that we can contribute to that overall mission. That's the way that companies use that approach, and it's the way that nonprofits use that approach when they're using OKRs as well. The other thing I would mention, I mentioned OKRs as sort of the opposite of strategic planning, they're very short term. Strategic planning is also a way that I think we can connect the work between the national level, the regions, the caucuses, committees. So, long-term, we should be looking at those priorities within the strategic plan and saying, okay, where are we headed as an organization, and how is it furthering the work that we're supposed to be doing, whether it's trying to, as we talked about today, advocate for more resources in emergency management, trying to further professionalize emergency management. The things that are in our strategic plan are longer-term things. as an organization we should be working together on between the regions and the national level. So those are some of the things I would say would be connected between a way for the regions to certainly try and align with the national level. My guess, though, of course, if I know who sent those questions in, they probably came with their own priorities that are completely out of alignment for mine. So I don't even know why they bothered asking the question.

Taylor Frizzell: You know, I think they did a great job, but again, not an unbiased podcast host. So do that as you will. But I do think it gives folks some takeaways as they look at, you know, if it is where do folks fit into the greater emergency management pie, if you will. And I think that hopefully folks have at least a couple of takeaways, if not from this episode, from, you know, other episodes or other work that's going on.

Justin Kates: Well, I think, you know, that kind of ties back to some of the things that we had talked about, you know, related to advocacy. I mean, this is part of a greater system. And so within the organization, we have different sort of levels and different groups that are working on things. And we should try and be, you know, we should have some synergy in how we're working together on some of these things. But we also, as an association, really need to consider the part that we play in the broader emergency management enterprise. How do we work with NEMA or big cities or some of our allied associations? We talked during my update about Association of State Floodplain Managers. I mean, they're doing some work in mitigation and how do we try and work together on policy that supports both emergency managers and floodplain managers? So, and that's, You know, that's the way sort of I think of this is the system that we need to really think about how we all play into this. So the regions have a role in this. Uh, the caucuses, the committees all have a role in this. And then as an association, we have a role in a, in a bigger system.

Taylor Frizzell: I think Ashley said it best and I'm going to butcher it. So I'm so sorry, Ashley, but we all need to be coming together. I think just to, to do better for the, for the field of emergency management, you know, take it one step further just from advocacy and broaden it. to the whole field, so I'm so sorry, Ashley, I'm sure I butchered that, but hopefully folks still get the point. As we start to wrap up this month's episode, I do want to remind folks to send in your questions for Justin using the link in the description, or you can go to the website, or apparently you can just send me questions and I'll forward them to Justin. Whatever works best for you is great for me.

Justin Kates: We also have a website, as we've discussed a couple of times now, justincasepodcast.org. And you can go there and see the full transcript of our conversation today, as well as all the other previous episodes. This episode will go live on the 9th, and next month will be March 9th. So you'll be able to see our next topic, which I have no idea what it's on. Taylor has an idea of whatever that topic is going to be.

Taylor Frizzell: It's charming that you think that I have any idea what's going on any time we do these, but thank you. I'm flattered. Thank you again, Justin and Christian and Ashley for joining this month. To our listeners, of course, don't forget to check out the website, rate the podcast wherever you listen, My preference would be for five stars, but I'm sure if you could see Justin's beard, it would be at least a four. So if you could reach out with what you want to hear, we'd love to hear about it. Of course, check out The Happy Hour on April 4th, as Justin mentioned. And as always, we will see you virtually via whatever internet sound waves exist. We'll see you then.

Justin Kates: All right, sounds good. See you later.