NIST Community Resilience Fellows 

The Community Resilience Fellows are nationally recognized leaders in their field of expertise and bring 

a breadth and depth of knowledge and experience that advanced the Community Resilience Planning 

Guide for Buildings and Infrastructure Systems (Guide) and Community Resilience Panel (Panel). 

From 2014 to 2018, they provided support to development activities for the Guide and Panel, and 

implementation of the Guide in communities. Their expertise in areas critical to community resilience led

to substantial contributions. 

Community ResiliencePlanning

Chris Poland, Chris D. Poland Consulting Engineer, is a world renowned authority on earthquake 

engineering and a leader of community disaster resilience planning. His passion for 

vibrant, sustainable, and healthy communities drives his focus on community 

resilience based on his 40 years of experience in consulting on engineering, 

standards development, and the development of resilience plans. He is a member of 

the Board of Directors for SPUR, co-chairs their Resilient City Initiative and led the 

publication of “The Disaster Resilient City”. He is a member of theNational 

Academy of Engineering, the past Chair of the Advisory Committee to the National 

Earthquake Hazards Reduction Program, and served as chair of the American

Society of Civil Engineers Seismic Rehabilitation of Existing Buildings Standards 

Committee completing both ASCE 31 and ASCE 41, standards for the evaluation and rehabilitation of 

existing buildings that are used worldwide.

Donna Boyce, Solix Inc, serves as the Director of Recovery and Resilience Programs where she develops

and manages programs related to disaster recovery and resiliency. Her 

responsibilities also include providing subject matter expertise regarding Solix 

government funded programs and representing Solix in the practice areas of disaster 

recovery and resilience. She has participated in several resilience initiatives such as 

the NJ/NY FEMA Elevation Summit as a panelist member and the NYSERDA 

Low-Income Forum on Energy (LIFE) Steering Committee. Donna previously 

served as the Director of the Sandy Housing Recovery Program with the Community 

Development Corporation of Long Island where she developed and managed 

programs related to Superstorm Sandy housing recovery. Donna’s community 

service includes membership on the board of Community Advocates, Inc. 

Electrical Power Infrastructure

Stuart McCafferty, Hitachi Consulting, provides an innovative technological vision for a variety of 

industries based on 30 years of experience. He developed the first Smart Grid Maturity 

Model and scoring tool for the first DOE Smart Grid project; the 7 Principle 

Characteristics remain the primary tool to evaluate a grid’s “smartness”. He was 

Program Manager on NIST’s Smart Grid Interoperability Panel (SGIP) for 4 years, 

managing a diverse team of standards development, testing and certification, 

architecture, and cyber security experts. The project received the Project Management 

Institute’s 2013 International Distinguished Project Award. He was the lead Subject 

Matter Expert for the City of Huntington Beach’s California Local Energy Assurance 

Planning (CaLEAP) project, providing resiliency planning support. He also co-Chairs 

the Open Field Message Bus (OpenFMB) committee, which is an industry standard 

community of practice promoting interoperability using internet of things (IoT) technologies and distributed 

intelligence in the field.
Transportation Infrastructure

Joseph Englot, HNTB, is the National Director of Infrastructure Security. He has more than 40 years of 

experience in the design and management of transportation infrastructure 

projects. Mr. Englot oversees projects to retrofit bridges, tunnels, and transit 

facilities against the effects of natural hazards and structural deterioration. As 

Chief Structural Engineer and Assistant Chief Engineer for Design at the Port 

Authority of New York & New Jersey, Mr. Englot led all multi-disciplinary 

engineering and architectural design, including facilities and infrastructure 

systems for subways, monorails, airports, ports, tunnels,roads, and bridges. He 

also directed damage assessment and disaster recovery projects for the 2001 

destruction of the World Trade Center and the 1993 bombing of the WorldTrade 

Center.

Water Infrastructure

Donald Ballantyne, Ballantyne Consulting LLC, has become a national leader over the last three decades

on seismic performance of water and wastewater systems. He has extensive 

experience in applied research and assessment of the resilience of waterand 

wastewater systems. He has provided significant expertise and leadership to the 

ANSI/AWWA J100 standard on Risk and Resilience of Water andWastewater 

Systems, water supply systems for fire suppression and drinking, the Water and 

WastewaterCommittee for the Oregon Resilience Plan, conducted seismic 

resilience assessments, and developed mitigation plans for 75 utilities. He is a 

past chair of the ASCE Technical Council on Lifeline EarthquakeEngineering 

Executive Committee, and a past director of the Earthquake Engineering 

Institute. He has conductedpost- earthquake studies for 13 earthquakes in the

US and abroad, focusing on water and wastewatersystems.

Societal Dimensions of Disasters

Liesel Ritchie, University of Colorado Natural Hazards Center, is Associate Director at the 

University of Colorado’s (CU) Natural Hazards Center and a research professor 

with joint appointments in CU Boulder’s Institute of Behavioral Science and 

Environmental Studies Program. During her career, Dr. Ritchie has studied a range 

of disaster events, including the Exxon Valdez and BP Deepwater Horizon oil 

spills; the Tennessee Valley Authority coal ash release; Hurricane Katrina; and 

earthquakes in Haiti and New Zealand. Since 2000, her focus has been on the 

social impacts of disasters and community resilience, with an emphasis on 

technological disasters, social capital, and renewable resource communities, and 

she has published widely on these topics. Dr. Ritchie currently serves as a 

member of the National Academy of Sciences Gulf Research Program Advisory 

Board.

CommunicationsInfrastructure

Steve Poupos, AT&T’s Director of Global Network Operations, is a recognized leader inthe 

telecommunications field with over three decades of experience in network 

operations. He has led business continuity program developmentand 

implementation, directed the development of network emergency

management, national security emergency preparedness, and network disaster

recovery preparedness and response plans, and managed network disaster 

recovery teams across numerous recovery deployments. His expertise 

includesNetwork Emergency Management (NEM), Network Disaster 

Recovery (NDR), Riskand Vulnerability Assessments, National Security 

Emergency Preparedness and Network Business Continuity, including 

contingency planning. Steve hasled AT&T’s Network Disaster Recovery 

Organization during recovery from Hurricane Sandy, Hurricane Katrina,and

many other hazard events.
Previous Community Resilience Fellows

Electrical Power Infrastructure

Erich Gunther, EnerNex, and his team developed energy system resiliency strategies through multiple 

projects for utilities, Fortune 500 companies,municipalities, and non-profit 

institutions. In 2013 he was retained by the New York/New Jersey Super Bowl 

Host Committee and PSE&G to provide independent engineering consulting 

support to ensure that the power systems performed under arrange of 

contingencies, including storms and emergency scenarios. Mr. Gunther and his 

team completed a study for the California Local Energy Assurance Program 

(CaLEAP) where a variety of scenarios, architectures and potential 

implementation technologies were evaluated to ensure energy system resilience 

of cities during a large scale catastrophic event such as a flood, wildfire, or 

earthquake. His team also developed methods to ensure that a Fortune 10 

technology company campus maintained business continuity through a layered system of energy 

resiliency methodologies.

Water Infrastructure

Kevin M. Morley, AWWA, is the Security & Preparedness Program Manager for the American Water Works 

Association (AWWA). He works closely with a variety of organizations to advance

the security and preparedness of national critical infrastructure. Dr. Morley 

conducted research assessing the resilience of the water sector through the 

development of the Utility Resilience Index (URI). He has facilitated the expansion 

of mutual aid and assistance via the Water/Wastewater Agency Response Network 

(WARN) initiative and the development of water sector standards: ANSI/AWWA 

G430: Security Practices for Operations and Management, ANSI/AWWA G440: 

Emergency Preparedness, and ANSI/AWWA J100 Risk and Resilience of Water 

and Wastewater Systems. 

Emergency Planning and Response

Jay Wilson, Hazard Mitigation Program Coordinator for Clackamas County, is the Chair of the Oregon 

Seismic Safety Policy Advisory Commission (OSSPAC) and participates in the 

Oregon Governor’s Resilience Plan Implementation Task Force. Heleads 

development and implementation of risk management, hazard mitigation and 

recovery plans for flood, earthquake, wildfire, volcano, and tsunami hazards,and 

climate change impacts. Mr. Wilson participated as a local emergencymanagement 

practitioner on an EERI reconnaissance team for the Tohoku, JapanTsunami 

disaster. He has provided invited testimony to the US House Science Committee on 

the Tsunami Warning and Education Act. As a FEMA Disaster Reservist Branch 

Chief, he supported Hazard Mitigation Programs and was an earthquakepolicy 

analyst for Berkeley and Oakland, CA.

Business Continuity Planning

George B. Huff Jr., The Continuity Project, is the founder and director of The Continuity Project in 

Alexandria, Virginia. He advises businesses and other organizations on 

emergency preparedness and response, business continuity management, and 

information technology security. Previously, he servedas attorney-advisor to

the Office of Security and Facilities/Judiciary Emergency Preparedness Office

ofthe Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts. Mr. Huff is a member in good

standing of the bar ofthe Supreme Court of Indiana, Supreme Court of the

United States, and other federal courts. He also participates in the development 

of business continuity standards in the International Organization of Standards

(ISO). George has served on project teams that developed ISO 22313 Business 

Continuity Management Systems Guidance, ISO 22316 Organizational 

Resilience, and ISO 22317 Business ImpactAnalysis.
Transportation Infrastructure

Theodore Zoli, HNTB, is the Technical Director of HNTB’s nationwide bridge practice. Mr. Zoli hasled 

the design of many award-winning bridges throughout the US and abroad.

Mr. Zoli’s work has been informed by his research into bridge safetyand 

reliability with a focus on the design of structural systems against member 

loss and structural behavior under unforeseen extreme events. He leads 

HNTB’s infrastructure security practice and has developed innovative 

protective measures for some of ournation’s largest and most important 

bridges. Mr. Zoli has received national recognition for his work inbridges 

including the Engineering News Record Award of Excellence in 2012, the 

industry’s most prestigious honor. In September 2009, Mr. Zoli was made a 

MacArthur Fellow by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthurFoundation. 

This prestigious award was granted for major technological advances to protect transportation 

infrastructure and for his innovative designs.