Course
facilitators
David Parsons
David brings to the programme over 40 years’ experience in emergency management. His career spans emergency services, lifeline agencies, national policy and extensive emergency management training experience. David has comprehensive experience working in Incident Management Teams at local government, lead agency and corporate sectors. David has qualifications in emergency management and education. One of the more challenging adventures David has been involved in was deploying a task force of hundreds of Australian water industry staff to support Christchurch in 2009.
Sally McKay
Sally has over 30 years’ experience in community development and over 20 years in emergency management. She has experience in leading disaster preparedness, coordinated operations for response/ relief, as well as managed all aspects of recovery being social, infrastructure, economic and natural environment interventions. She has worked for all levels of governments within Australia, and broadly across the Asia Pacific Zone for the International Federation of Red Cross as well as with a District Government in New Zealand. One of her most recent interesting challenges is being the Recovery Coordinator for the IFRC in the Bahamas for Hurricane Dorian.
Maureen Mooney
Maureen, a clinical psychologist trained in New Zealand and France, has 20 years’ experience in humanitarian psychosocial programming and disaster response. Her research and field work focuses on how families and communities, cope effectively with adversity, and how we can promote contexts where people thrive. She facilitates training both in NZ and internationally on self-care of responders, working with communities, and supporting populations living through crises.
Tracy Hatton
Tracy is joint managing director of Resilient Organisations Ltd, a niche research and consulting group based in Christchurch, New Zealand. Resilient Organisations are experts in risk and resilience, helping organisations prepare for and get through times of crisis, which includes building high performing teams able to adapt and innovate. Tracy helps public and private sector organisations build their continuity and crisis management capabilities, and has co-created the content for a free disaster resilience app for small and medium enterprises internationally. Tracy has an MBA and PhD in Disaster Recovery and teaches Organisational Resilience on the UC Executive Development Programme.
Michele Poole
However nimble emergency managers are, we will always struggle to keep pace with the public’s need for information in a crisis. Michele has been part of the evolving practice of public information management for over 25 years, acting as Public Information Manager in floods, fires, earthquakes, storms, and manmade hazards. She has deployed to several of NZ’s most significant emergency responses, including the Christchurch and Kaikoura earthquakes, the wreck of the Rena, Cyclone Fehi, and the Pigeon Valley fires. During the 2020 COVID response, Michele swapped her purple vest for the red of a Response Manager, gaining a new perspective on the relationship between Control and PIM. She is a member of NZEMAT, the NZ Emergency Management Assistance Team, and Maritime NZ’s National Oil Spill Response Team.
Jon Mitchell
Jon has 20 years of experience in emergency management in New Zealand, the United Kingdom, South East Asia, and North America. He specialises in local, regional, state/provincial, and national-level multi-agency emergency management leadership, planning, intelligence recovery management and capability development. Jon was a CDEM Group planner, manager, and alternate CDEM Group Controller, Canterbury CDEM Group 2002 to 2012 and a Programme Manager for CDEM Controller Development Programme 2013 to 2018. Later, Jon was the Programme Manager for Project AF8, South Island Alpine Fault Earthquake Response Planning Project and was an international emergency management consultant from 2012 to 2018.
Jamie Ruwhiu
Jamie joined Te Rūnanga o Ngāi Tahu this year as a Project Lead Advisor in the Emergency Management Team. After studying at the Christchurch College of Education (University of Canterbury) Jamie moved to Wellington, Pretoria and London, working in various roles in education, event management and hospitality for over 20 years, before returning to Christchurch. His role for Te Rūnanga o Ngāi Tahu is to prepare the office of Te Whare o Te Waipounamu to respond to emergencies, then take these learnings and skills out to the 18 Papatipu Rūnanga.
Christine Owen
Christine is an organisational behaviour and learning researcher with over 25 years’ experience in investigating decision-making, teamwork, coordination organisational culture, and change in safety-critical environments. She has worked in the domains of aviation, emergency medicine, public safety, and fire and emergency services. Christine specialises in translating research into evidence-informed practice and improving organisational performance.