Author Bio & Resume Stuff
About The Author
LINKED IN — RESUME
Here’s my LinkedIn profile, with a mostly-updated resume.
Email me for the latest resume if needed, to fiercecommunityteam@gmail.com.
SHORT BIO
Vanessa Burnett is the director at Fierce Community. This nonprofit work promotes civic engagement through connection, community, creativity, leadership, empowerment, alliances, and resilience in an era of rising instability and societal disruption. Email fiercecommunityteam@gmail.com to set up a conversation.
Vanessa is a social entrepreneur, advisor, and empower-er for doing fierce community in a time of disruption and disaster. Ms. Burnett has a rare systems-level understanding of the pieces and parts that modern society needs in order to survive that can help people and groups navigate this era of fast change and unprecedented challenges. She has over 25 years experience in resilience-building, civic engagement, coalition-building, critical infrastructure, systems thinking, big disasters, catastrophes, wildland fire, emergency management, incident management, land management, park rangering, homeland security, continuity of operations (COOP), continuity of government (COG), technology innovation, public communication, and disaster information sharing.
UNIQUE NATIONAL & REGIONAL U.S. RESILIENCE IMPACTS
Here are a few highlights of my career, up until now. All of this is being changed by the current administration which is dismantling, unstaffing, unfunding, weakening, or deleting some of these programs, initiatives, and processes in various federal departments and agencies.
Highlights —
Increased US economic, disaster, and community resilience by jointly initiating major national policy/program changes in the US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to transform how critical infrastructure restoration and incident management efforts are coordinated so communities and stakeholders can better prepare for, respond to, and recover from disasters; this work has evolved into the community lifelines approach.
Expanded US disaster preparedness and response through development of key components of the National Incident Management System (NIMS) used by first responders, nonprofit organizations active in disasters, and critical infrastructure operators for every incident in the US; from day-to-day emergencies to major catastrophes.
Initiated and co-developed a national incident report platform and an updated reporting form for all major US wildfires that is the authoritative data source for large US wildfire reports, fire maps, and emergency fire grants.
Co-managed a transition of the emergency notification system (ENS) in the Washington, DC metro area from a locally hosted legacy system to a cloud-based Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) platform for 5.5 million citizens and thousands of first responders on 75+ portals in 18 jurisdictions in two states and DC in less than 6 months.
LONGER BIOGRAPHY (Emergency Management Focused)
Vanessa Burnett is a change agent and disaster management consultant specializing in facing risk, making change, building resilience, and countering fear. She is an experienced project manager and analyst with over 25 years of professional experience in emergency management and homeland security. Much of this work has included coaching, collaboration, and project facilitation with leaders, working groups, contractors, and colleagues to build national and regional level policy, procedures, systems, innovation, and operational approaches.
Vanessa’s most recent role prior to social entrepreneurship was as the local technical contact for the National Capital Region’s emergency notification system (ENS) in the Washington, DC area. The now-updated alert system serves 5.5 million residents and a variety of public safety and other government agencies in the metro area's 18 core jurisdictions. The work included transitioning the 10-year-old system to the newer cloud-based Everbridge mass notification platform.
Ms. Burnett has served in a variety of capacities at the headquarters level for the US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) including the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), the Science & Technology Directorate (research and development), the National Protection and Programs Directorate, the Office of Policy, and the Office of Operations Coordination. Ms. Burnett also worked in the US Department of the Interior’s (DOI's) Office of the Secretary. Work in DHS and DOI included incident and disaster information sharing, incident management, the National Incident Management System (NIMS), resilience, infrastructure protection, public-private partnerships for incident management and infrastructure restoration, GIS, aviation operations for incidents, security, threat response, risk management, cybersecurity, and continuity of operations programs (COOP). This experience included Hurricane Katrina, the Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill, wildfires, tornadoes, volcanoes, floods, earthquakes, exercises, and other hurricanes and all-hazard incidents.
Ms. Burnett’s experience in public safety began at an early age serving several seasons as a lifeguard, and then as a park ranger. She became certified as a wildland firefighter, and spent several seasons fighting wildfires and lighting prescribed burns. Vanessa eventually moved into wildland fire management as a regional Fire Intelligence Coordinator at the busiest interagency wildland fire coordination center in the world. The Southern California Geographic Area Coordination Center, or “South Ops,” was the birthplace of formalized incident management that eventually led to the creation of NIMS after 9/11. Ms. Burnett transitioned from South Ops to the Washington, DC area after 9/11 to help evolve incident management and incident information sharing. While transitioning away from homeland security, Vanessa was trained in life coaching, or wayfinding, through the Martha Beck Institute in 2013. She now lives in central Iowa and is working to to make shift happen with Fierce Community work.
ABOUT THIS POST
Hi! Thanks for reading. I have a very unique background. It can be kind of unbelievable but it’s been pretty real. More real than I’d like, as character-building experiences go. Anyway. At least now I’ve got a lot of character.
This Substack here, Light Up The Chaos, is for me to tell some of those interesting stories… and to give my takes, advice, and perspective on this wildly unfolding era that we’re now in.
This specific post here is for the boring or at least more official looking factual background stuff, in case you’re wondering about why on earth I write some of what I do both here and at Fierce Community.
Here are links to more of my own “about” stories:
A quick story on why I’m angry, as a part of a longer storytelling post in 2025
Leaping, a post from 2016
Random Life Tidbits, a post from 2016
For more info or to set up a conversation, email: fiercecommunityteam@gmail.com