For somebody who’s watching and doesn’t know what mitigation is, what exactly is it and who would be able to actually tap in?
Mitigation funding is how we invest in our communities to reduce the impacts of the threats that we’re seeing. The majority of our mitigation money goes to the state government and the local government to help them put projects in place and protect their communities. But in the event of a disaster declaration, where they have individual assistance, a program FEMA has help[s] those individuals that had damage to their homes rebuild. We are now also offering mitigation funding to individual homeowners to help them be better prepared to withstand the impacts of future disasters.
What would you say to young people considering a job at FEMA regarding what they can expect?
The work that we do, here at FEMA, we help people. It requires critical thinking and problem-solving. Being able to be agile and adapt and be able to do things with limited information, you have to have a lot of confidence in your own knowledge, and abilities to be able to move quickly, then if you see that the information has changed, you need to be able to pivot. There [are] a lot of programs out there now across higher education, but even in some high schools across the country, they are really helping young individuals to become emergency managers right out of high school.
