April 26, 2024
Colloquium Topic: Hurricanes to Pandemics: Crisis Communication Lessons to Learn
From Hurricane Katrina in 2005 to the Maui wildfires in 2023, the U.S. has endured a growing number of major disasters with deaths and billion-dollar property losses. Adding to the challenges are the effects of climate change, the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic, the impact of new technology such as AI, and major changes in public sources of information and their perception of government. Public and private sector communicators must learn new ways to address the challenges, especially in an environment filled with disinformation and "fake news." Bob Jensen will present a set of key lessons that communicators should learn from based on his experiences while serving as a senior U.S. government communicator and from ongoing discussions he has with current emergency management and other government leaders. He'll wrap up his talk by providing a set of recommendations for future research and the types of tools needed by national as well as state and local government communicators to help improve their crisis communication effectiveness.
Colloquium Speaker: Bob Jensen
Bob Jensen is Senior Managing Director of Strat3. He advises and consults with nations and corporations on crisis, emergency and disaster risk management. He brings more than four decades of experience inside and outside of government and has clients in the U.S. and across the globe. Clients include national governments, the World Bank, the U.S. State Department, the U.S. Department of Defense, Emergency Management Victoria, energy and water sector organizations.
He served as DHS Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary for Public Affairs and was a spokesman for the White House’s National Security Council as well as for the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad. Bob led the U.S. government’s on the ground crisis communications efforts after the massive earthquake in Haiti, for the Deepwater Horizon oil spill response and 30+ major U.S. disasters including Hurricane Sandy.
He led the Combined Forces Air Component Command’s media operations at the start of Operation Iraqi Freedom and directed on the ground efforts to assess and improve coalition strategic communication effectiveness in Iraq and Afghanistan during four combat zone deployments. He directed global news production operations for the U.S. Air Force with a team of 155 military journalists, photographers and broadcast journalists.
Bob speaks at conferences, events and universities globally and in the U.S. He is Vice Chair of the Board of Directors for Minority Veterans of America, is a non-resident scholar at George Washington University, is a member of the International Advisory Committee for the University of Melbourne’s Centre for Disaster Management and Public Safety, and is President of the Emergency Management External Affairs Association.