NCEM-ECU Annual Hurricane Workshop

Hurricane Workshop- 2012 Theme Communication

Presenter Biographical Information

Keynote Speaker: Bill Read, Director of the National Hurricane Center

Bill served in the U.S. Navy, where he served as an on-board meteorologist with the Hurricane Hunters. He began his weather service career in 1977 with the National Weather Service test and evaluation division in Sterling, Virginia. He served as a forecaster in the Fort Worth and San Antonio, Texas offices before becoming the severe thunderstorm and flash flood program leader at the National Weather Service headquarters in Silver Spring, Maryland. Read was appointed to direct the Houston/Galveston weather forecast office in 1992 and led it through the National Weather Service modernization and restructuring program of the mid 1990s. He was also part of the Hurricane Liaison Team at the National Hurricane Center in Miami when Hurricane Isabel came ashore on the Outer Banks of North Carolina in September 2003. Bill Read is now the director of its Tropical Prediction Center, which includes the National Hurricane Center and two other divisions, in Miami, Florida. Read previously served as the center’s acting deputy director between August 2007 and January 2008.

Bill received the National Hurricane Conference Public Education Award in Spring 2004 for hurricane preparedness efforts. Under his leadership, the Houston/Galveston forecast office conducted an annual Houston/Galveston Hurricane Workshop, which was considered the largest meeting of its kind in the United States.

Panelists- Social Media and Emergency Communication
Donna Kain, Associate Chair, Department of English; Research Faculty, RENCI at ECU

Donna Kain joined the ECU faculty in the fall of 2004 after two years as an Assistant Professor in the Technical Communications Department at Clarkson University in Potsdam, New York. She has taught courses in rhetoric, technical communication, writing for business and industry, digital video production, and Web design. Her recent research includes the rhetoric and instrumental discourse of the Americans with Disabilities Act and related public policies, information technology applications for the classroom, and the uses of genres in professional settings. Her professional positions have included senior staff analyst for Compuware Corporation, Milwaukee, Wisconsin; technical writer/editor for Engineering Animation Inc., Ames, Iowa; and Web site manager for the Center for Agricultural and Rural Development at Iowa State University

Warren Lee, Director of Emergency Management, New Hanover County

Warren Lee is Director of New Hanover County’s Department of Emergency Management and 911 Communications. He has responsibility for directing, coordinating and preparing all emergency management and emergency communications programs and managing the community’s recovery from disasters and emergency events.  

Warren has 21 years of leadership experience in Emergency Management.  He has considerable background in all aspects of emergency management, including 18 years of fixed nuclear facility planning and exercising experience.  He served as Emergency Operations Center Director for nine Presidential declared disasters, including hurricanes and winter storms.   

Warren holds a bachelor’s degree in science education from North Carolina State University.  He is certified through the NC Division of Emergency Management and NC Emergency Management Association as Emergency Management Coordinator Type I.  Warren is a graduate of the UNC School of Government’s Municipal and County Administration Program. 

Roberta Thuman, Public Information Officer, Town of Nags Head

Roberta Thuman has worked in the public relations and public information fields for over 15 years, first for a Baltimore-based Internet security firm, and currently for the Town of Nags Head, where she has worked for 11 years. As Nags Head’s public information officer, Roberta has provided information to the media and public through many storms and crises, most notably Hurricane Isabel in 2003 and Irene in 2011. She is a member of Dare County’s Joint Information Section, which typically activates during county-wide emergencies, serving as a one stop shop for crisis -related information.

During Irene, Roberta used Twitter extensively to reach Nags Head’s stakeholders. Since the hurricane, the Town has added a Facebook page to its information distribution toolbox but, thankfully, the Town has not yet had to use their page during a crisis. 

Roberta received a BA in English from the University of Maryland and graduated Phi Beta Kappa with an MA in English from ECU.

Daren Brabham, Assistant Professor, UNC- Chapel Hill

Daren C. Brabham joined the faculty in 2010 as an assistant professor. He teaches public relations courses and conducts research into online communities and the role of new media in society.

As a doctoral student, he was among the first to publish research on crowdsourcing, an online, distributed problem solving and production model that utilizes the collective intelligence of online communities. A critical, qualitative researcher, his work focuses on the potential of crowdsourcing and social media to improve public participation in governance, in transportation planning, and, recently, for public health applications. His work in crowdsourcing and transportation planning has been supported by funding from the U.S. Federal Transit Administration.

His work has appeared in such publications as Convergence; Planning Theory; Information, Communication & Society; First Monday; and The Routledge Handbook of Participatory Cultures. Brabham is also a past columnist for the journal Flow, where he published short pieces of media criticism on a variety of topics relating to television, new media, and culture. He is the founding editor of Case Studies in Strategic Communication.

Brabham's professional experience includes user experience design, a broad range of public relations functions, and crowdsourcing consulting.

Panelists- Emergency Management Community Interaction during an Event

Julia Jarema, Communications Officer, NC Department of Public Safety

Julia Jarema has more than 20 years of public relations and marketing experience in North Carolina. She has served as Communications Director for the state’s Rail Division, Turnpike Authority and Department of Crime Control and Public Safety. For the past three years, Mrs. Jarema has been the Public Information Officer for North Carolina Emergency Management.

Julia has provided information to the public and media on numerous emergencies and disasters including the drought of 2008, tropical storms Fay and Hanna in 2008, Nicole in 2010, the Christmas 2010 snowstorm, the April 2011 tornado outbreak and Hurricane Irene.  North Carolina Emergency Management established Facebook and Twitter accounts following the April 2011 tornadoes and was able to use the tools extensively during Hurricane Irene last fall.

Julia received her BS in communications from Appalachian State University and is active in the North Carolina Association of Government Information Officers.

Skip Waters, Chief Meteorologist, WCTI-TV ABC NewsChannel12 and WFXI-WYDO FOX EASTERN CAROLINA

Skip Waters started at WCTI in April, 1982 and has just completed 30 years of service. Prior to WCTI, he was Chief of Weather Services at WEVU-TV ABC26 in Naples/Ft. Myers, FL., from October, 1976 to April, 1982. In that position he was the main on-air meteorologist and primary forecaster for an agricultural forecast office operated by the television company.

Skip is a native North Carolinian, born in Greensboro and raised in Morganton (Burke county) and Maxton (Robeson county). Skip attended the University of South Florida in Tampa in a 5 year hybrid degree program that took him to Florida State University for synoptic and severe weather and the University of Miami for satellite and radar courses. While in Miami, he had the opportunity to study and complete course work with John Hope and Dr. Neil Frank at the National Hurricane Center (which was then located at Coral Gables).
Highlights of his career include correctly forecasting the March 28, 1984, tornado outbreak in eastern NC….correctly forecasting the Christmas 1989 snowstorm…..correctly forecasting and then on air for 10 hours straight during the April 16, 2011, tornado outbreak…..and correctly forecasting the track of Hurricane Irene followed by 60+ hours of continuous coverage prior to, during and after landfall.

Skip recently received the North Carolina Associated Press “Best Weathercast” award (small market category) for his on-air work during the April 16, 2012, tornado outbreak.

Nate Johnson, Meteorologist, WRAL

Nate has been a weather producer/meteorologist at WRAL-TV since November 2007.  He has also worked as a data services meteorologist for Baron Services, Huntsville, Ala and a meteorologist/chief meteorologist for KTXS-TV in Abilene, Texas.

Awards & Recognition: 2006: Certified Broadcast Meteorologist (American Meteorological Society); Best Local TV Weather Person (Abilene Reporter-News Readers’ Choice); 2005: Best Local TV Weather Person (Abilene Reporter-News Readers’ Choice), Seal of Approval for TV Weathercasting (National Weather Association); 2003: Best Team Coverage – 2002 Floods (Texas AP Broadcasters Division III)

Education: Bachelor of Science in Meteorology, 1999, North Carolina State University, Raleigh, N.C.; Bachelor of Science in Computer Science, 2000, North Carolina State University.

John Cole, Warning Coordinator Meteorologist, National Weather Service Weather Forecast Office in Newport

John Cole has over 25 years of experience as a meteorologist starting in Texas in 1985, where he served as an air quality meteorologist for AMI Systems in Houston Texas. He has worked for the National Weather Service since 1987, serving as a forecaster in Texas, Florida and Charleston, SC before becoming the Warning Coordination Meteorologist at the Newport office in 2003.

John has a B. S. degree in Meteorology from Florida State University and did graduate work in Atmospheric Science at Texas Tech University.

Panelists-Communication with Maps and Graphics
Tom Allen, Associate Professor of Geography; Director, RENCI Regional Engagement Center at ECU

Dr. Allen is the director of RENCI at ECU and the co-director of ECU's Center for Geographic Information Science. He is interested in understanding spatial and temporal change in the natural environment, particularly vegetation and related environmental processes in order to inform human actions. His research therefore emphasizes the development of geospatial technologies such as satellite remote sensing, geographic information systems (GIS), and global positioning systems (GPS). His primary areas of study are coastal and mountain environments of North America, Central America, and Fennoscandia. His current research projects include spatial analysis of coastal barrier morphodynamics; mapping mangroves and coastal change in Costa Rica; developing new algorithms for satellite remote-sensing monitoring and change detection; remote sensing and GIS data fusion for characterizing estuarine processes; and investigating biophysical patterns and processes in subarctic, alpine, and mountain environments.

Rich Bandy, Lead Meteorologist, National Weather Service Weather Forecast Office in Newport
Brian Blanton, Senior Research Scientist, Renaissance Computing Institute

Brian Blanton is a senior scientist at the Renaissance Computing Institute (RENCI), University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.  His research interests and expertise focus on the application of numerical models and high-performance computation to problems in coastal physical oceanography including tidal dynamics, storm surge, and forecasting of coastal water levels and waves.  He is also interested in risk assessment communication, and has been involved in several recent FEMA coastal flood insurance studies, including North Carolina and Region 3.  He received his PhD in Marine Sciences from UNC-Chapel hill on 2003.

Tom Crawford, Associate Professor of Geography, East Carolina University

Panelists- Hurricane Irene
Don Aschbrenner, Disaster Recovery Manager for the North Carolina Department of Transportation

 Don Aschbrenner is the Disaster Recovery Manager for the North Carolina Department of Transportation.  He began working with disaster response and recovery activities in 1999 with Hurricane Floyd.   Aschbrenner is responsible for the coordination of the preparation, response and recovery activities of the Department for both non-federally declared and federally declared events.  He is a liaison between NCDOT and NCEM, FEMA and FHWA and the NCDOT Division of Highways SERT rep.  He also manages the Debris Memorandum of Agreement program.  Aschbrenner is an  instructor for classes in Debris Management Planning, Recovery from a Disaster, and COOP and a  member of the State Hazard Mitigation Advisory Group. 

LTC Robert Lee Ezzell, North Carolina National Guard

LTC Ezzell enlisted in the North Carolina Nation Guard in 1983 as an Infantry soldier with the 1-120th Infantry.  In 1986, he graduated from East Carolina and was commissioned as a Second Lieutenant in the Infantry.  His assignments include: Infantry Platoon E/120th, Scout Platoon Leader 196 CAV, Company Commander C/119th, Battalion S4 119th, Logistical Planner 30th HBCT, assistant S3 30th HBCT,  Battalion Executive Officer 120th, Executive officer 189th Infantry Brigade and is working at JFHQ in the J7 and taking over command of the 1st Battalion 120th Infantry Regiment.

In 2003, LTC Ezzell mobilized and deployed with the 30th HBCT for Iraqi Freedom as the 1-120th Executive Officer. His military education includes the Infantry Officer Basic Course, Infantry Officer Advance Course, Combined Arms and Service Staff School, and Commander General Staff College.

His military decorations include:  Bronze Star, Meritorious Service Medal with 1st Oak Leaf Cluster, Army Achievement Medal, Army Achievement Medal with 1st Oak Leaf Cluster, Army Reserve Component Achievement Medal 4th award, National Defense Service Medal with 1st Oak Leaf Cluster, Global War on Terrorism Expeditionary Medal, Global War on Terrorism Service Medal, Humanitarian Service Medal with Oak Leaf Cluster, Combat Infantry Badge, Parachutist Badge and Air Assault Badge.

Ann Keyes, Washington County EM Coordinator

Ann Keyes is a native of Washington County and prides herself on being an employee of Washington County Government for more than 35 years.  In her current position as Director of Planning and Safety, she is responsible for managing and coordinating the efforts of local government that maximizes comprehensive community planning efforts that is land use Planning, Zoning, Floodplain Management and Public Safety and non-law enforcement activities such as: Emergency Management, and Zoning.  Mrs. Keyes coordinated all emergency management response efforts for hurricane Bertha, Fran, Bonnie, Dennis, Floyd, Isabel and Irene. She also supervises the Inspections Department and supports the Mapping/GIS department.  She is licensed as a Public Pesticide Operator for Washington County.

A few of her professional accolades include:  Type 1 certification in Emergency Management, Hazard Materials Technician level, 2003 Emergency Management Responder of the Year Award from the Emergency Response Community of Washington County, recipient of the Washington County Human Relation Council’s 2000 Humanitarian of the Year Award, recipient of the 1999 North Carolina State Coordinator Award for Floodplain Management, Community Rating System Coordinator, class 8 for Washington County and towns of Plymouth, Roper and Creswell, Storm Ready Weather Community Designation from the National Weather Services in 2004, Secretary for the RAP-LEPC, State Certified Floodplain Manager and 2006 recipient of the Colonel Phillip Nichlos Waters Award for outstanding achievement in Emergency Management and in 2011, received an outstanding leadership award from the Town of Roper for emergency response/recovery efforts during and after Hurricane Irene.

Justin Gibbs, Hyde County EM Coordinator

Justin Gibbs is a native of Hyde County and has served in Emergency Management since 2007 when he was hired by to fill the position of Deputy Emergency Manager/E911 Database Administrator.  He has served as Emergency Services Director since April 2011.  Justin has a B. S. degree in Geology from East Carolina University.

Joe Stanton, NCEM Recovery Section Chief

Joe Stanton is employed by North Carolina Department of Public Safety in the Division of Emergency Management as the Public Assistance’s Section Manager. In the last three years he has also served in the role as the Deputy Recovery Chief for the Division.

Joe has a background in corporate project management and community development. Joe has a Bachelor of Science in Business Administration from Western Carolina University and Disaster Management Certificate from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Lee Stocks, State Relations Disaster Liaison, American Red Cross

Lee Stocks has been a volunteer with the American Red Cross since 1998. He has served on the Board of Directors of the Greensboro, NC Chapter in addition to his duties as the Chairman of Emergency Services. Lee serves in a leadership role for hurricane readiness response at the state level and regionally for hurricane states from Texas to North Carolina. Since 2008 Lee has served as the North Carolina State Relations Disaster Liaison. He works directly with North Carolina Emergency Management in Raleigh and throughout North Carolina in disaster readiness and response.  Lee has supported American Red Cross hurricane responses in North Carolina dating from Floyd to Irene.