Robin F. Finegan is regional administrator for the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s Denver location. She oversees operations in Colorado, North Dakota, Montana, South Dakota, Utah and Wyoming. Finegan is highly experienced in crisis management and community preparedness.

John A. Powell is executive director of the Kirwan Institute for the Study of Race and Ethnicity at Ohio State University in Columbus. He also holds the Williams Chair in Civil Rights and Civil Liberties at the university’s Moritz College of Law. Contact powell through Tara McCoy.

Mark R. Rank is a professor of social welfare at the George Warren Brown School of Social Work at Washington University in St. Louis. He is the author of One Nation, Underprivileged: Why American Poverty Affects Us All (Oxford University Press, 2004). His focus is on poverty, social welfare and economic inequalities.

Gilbert Reyes is associate dean of the school of psychology at Fielding Graduate University in Santa Barbara. His focus is on crisis intervention and psychological health after disasters.

Salvatore R. Maddi is a professor of psychology and social behavior at the University of California, Irvine. He is the co-author of Resilience at Work: How to Succeed No Matter What Life Throws at You (Amacom, 2004) and has studied the quality of “personality hardiness” that allows some people to thrive even in stressful circumstances, such as natural […]

The Twenty-First Century Foundation (21CF), based in New York, works to support African-American philanthropy for groups involved with community organizing, advocacy and leadership development.

The Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now is an advocacy group of low- and moderate-income families, with national offices in Brooklyn, N.Y. Contact Charles Jackson, press coordinator.

Henry P. “Hank” Sims is a professor of leadership and management at the University of Maryland’s Robert H. Smith School of Business. He has done research on leadership and teamwork and can speak about how relief organizations, including faith-based groups, respond to disasters.

Michael Eric Dyson is Avalon Foundation Professor of Humanities at the University of Pennsylvania. He is the author of Come Hell or High Water: Hurricane Katrina and the Color of Disaster (Basic Civitas Books, 2006).