We welcome Ashley Lauria-Golden back to the show to discuss current happenings at Doberman EMG and life as a newly minted “emergency momager.” She shares her perspective on local emergency planning, and provides insight for those in the plan update process. From her time as a paramedic to serving in both local and state level emergency management roles, Ashley has experience working in the tactical, operational, and strategic levels of emergency management.
This Podcast has moved to the Readiness Lab.
Host: John Scardena (0s):
You've just entered the Disaster Tough Podcast, the place for emergency managers, first responders and humanitarians who want to get the job done. Stories, lessons and tips are provided by field experts. This show is owned and operated by professional emergency managers at Doberman Emergency Management. We apply disaster tough logic by protecting life, property, and business continuity through planning, mitigation, and training. Check us out at dobermanemg.com or click on the show notes.
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Host: John Scardena (1m 41s):
Welcome back to the show everybody at your host, John Scardena. I am so excited for this episode. Multiple reasons, we got the other Italian in the room, Ashley Lauria golden. Oh my gosh. I should not mess that up. Why multiple reasons? Three reasons I can think of Georgetown. We went to Georgetown together. Second, she's been on the podcast before she was representing her all of her background in Georgia with mitigation and as a paramedic and as a deputy director for one of the counties out there and planning and all this other stuff that she was doing. Now most importantly, most importantly, I would say we have grabbed her. That sounds super weird. We’re super lucky to have Ashley working with us here at Doberman. That was so weird to introduce that way, but we're super excited because obviously she has a ton of really great background experiences and competencies and she's bringing a ton of Doberman working with us in planning and mitigation, and really we're going to utilize her help with training as well because she has a lot of background with her Ashley, welcome to the show.
Guest: Ashley Lauria-Golden (2m 48s):
Thank you, John. I'm so happy to be back and that's okay. My name is literally a mouthful and as long as you don't call me Laura, Ashley. Yes because that my entire life of why do you have two first names? I don't, it's an Italian last name too.
Host: John Scardena (3m 3s):
Well, that's like no joke. I say your name like 50 times a week as we're talking to like clients or as we're working through different projects. So there's like, there's truly no excuse, but I will say we are still super excited that you're working with us and you're coming back on the show to be able to talk about some of your recent projects, things that are happening out there in Georgia. You and I were just taught a very fun meeting with a county. They actually brought up a concern that at the time I was like, okay, I had to dress it pretty seriously, but maybe you and I can talk about this because you and I both, I understand different sides of the spectrum of both working for government and clients or consultants coming in and talking. Now that we're in the private sector, how do we differentiate ourselves from like that DC perspective of just a money, money hungry, like cookie cutter to like, hey, we're emergency managers who want to help, but we are also for-profit and how do we balance those relationships. Maybe we can talk about that. But my very first question to you, I'm going to call you out here a little bit, are we LinkedIn official yet?
Guest: Ashley Lauria-Golden (4m 12s):
We are LinkedIn official. We've been LinkedIn official for at least a couple of days now. So I finally said we are LinkedIn.
Host: John Scardena (4m 23s):
That's awesome. Okay. So now that you're heading over plans and we're trying to balance this relationship, I guess that's a really good place to start. A lot of emergency managers on our local here, they're trying to get things done in house, obviously, if they can, but you can't get everything done. How do you find a good consultant or a good private emergency management group? And now that you're in the private sector, what do you think some things that we should be aware of as we're approaching people?
Guest: Ashley Lauria-Golden (4m 52s):
Well, if you want to find a good consulting group, you should Google Doberman EMG, that's a starting point. But besides that, that is an excellent question because it is really hard when I was working as a local deputy emergency manager, you know, there's tons of groups that approached you and it's a lot to wait through, but you really want to start at the local level, doing your own homework, know what you're looking for. Know what is your budget, if you're doing it over the course of a span of a few years, know your projected budget, know how much you can bring in to bring in outside, help to go through it with you. Then make your own checklist of your priorities because once you go through and know what your top two, your need is down to your lower, your need to reach out to you, or the internet is a wonderful repository, LinkedIn, other things to see what groups offer, but you know, they're scalable.
If you need something that covers your whole county, like a local emergency operations plan, you know, to something very small, like a specific annex, you need to make that clear because then you can find the consulting group that has best background in dealing with that specific type of work.
Host: John Scardena (6m 1s):
Yeah, I think that's the right call for sure. One of the comments that we worked with, for example, in that meeting, just for everybody else's situational awareness, it basically said the short polite version would be, you can't possibly understand our problems because you're not from here. The guy in house, even though he's literally a team of one should be able to do everything, and so I think there's like this call out of a recognition and you know, we were on a Facebook chain where everybody's giving their different ideas of how to avoid consultants. Again, there's a stigma of like, you know, if you hire a private group, they're just going to give you cookie cutter. Well, that's one way Doberman is trying to stand out. It's like, hey, we'll call you out. If you think about, we're just trying to do that and we definitely did in that meeting, but I think there's also this, I think both things can be true at the same time. The local emergency manager will be most invested in helping out the community because he's there every day or she's there every day, but it is an inaccurate assessment or a route of say the other truth would be the consultancy that's coming in there. The group, especially ours, that has GIS capabilities that has a team behind it, who come from a background of response and, and planning who actually knows how to do this because we were the government side. We can actually do it, right. So most invested, still do it right and the way that it happens is we pair the analytics, we pair all the team. We pair with all of our experience and training with the local. If you have a consultant group, who's to say, hey, give us two months. We'll come back to you and you'll have your plan. It's probably going to be terrible. But our big thing is that we're working with people and we're trying to get that done. So it's kind of a comes off as kind of a pitch on this show. It's really not meant to be a pitch, but that's the thing that you should look for. But budget is a big deal. Budget's a big deal for a company like me.
You know, we hired Ashley, who's fantastic, but we sell the pay. We have to pay you something reasonable, right? Well, wait I have something for this. But like seriously, like what are some things again, this is about education. If you can't hire a group to do that, how do you prioritize and how do you keep moving through moving the needle forward?
Guest: Ashley Lauria-Golden (8m 42s):
So I think a big thing to remember from emergency managers is that you can't always do it all on your own. You can't do it all alone and sometimes you just need a fresh pair of eyes. So that's absolutely where a good consultant group can come in, like you said, one, that's going to turn over a plan to you that they're going to work with you step-by-step and get your personal input on not just, you know, spit out a cookie cutter plan. But if you can't take that outside help and bring it in for budget reasons, work with your other departments, work with your other agencies, you're going to have to be including some of their capabilities in there anyway, depending on what you're writing about and really have them walk through it with you. You know, you're already all having to work together to build this, get their input, not just for their section, but on all of it.
You know, leverage those around you in a different way than you may have before with just writing down their little section, have them be playing writers with you. You can absolutely bring them in. If you're working on an EOP, you know, local emergency operations plan, have your roads and bridges have your public safety, have your planning department step up, you know, step in with you and bring in those groups that are already, you know, getting paid by our overall budget to start doing work with you. That's going to make your most comprehensive plan anyway, because then everyone is going to be really clear on their goals. Don't just take their information and their soundbites really make them go through the process with you.
Host: John Scardena (10m 3s):
Yeah. Speaking of process, we're segwaying a little bit, in fact, wait before I do that, because like, I'm like the ultimate, like all over the place guy right now. I hear a lot of chatter or hear a lot of people suggest don't go with X group, go with your local university, get a student to be an intern to write your plan. What do you think the pros and cons are there? I definitely have pros and cons in my head, but I'm just curious what you think about that?
Guest: Ashley Lauria-Golden (10m 59s):
So where I've worked previously at the local level, we actually had a working relationship with one of our large local universities to be able to have an intern come in with an intern with us, not just to plan, right. But to be able to see how things go day to day in an emergency management agency, which was awesome. But part of their deal with being able to do that because it was an unpaid internship was to produce deliverables. So they then were tasked with helping us write the plans. So we actually had this intern help us update our mass care, mass sheltering plan. It was great because it took a lot of that initial template search. You know, we had an overall template, but doing some of the template updates, those just kind of organizational pieces.
It took that away and took it off our plates where we could focus on other things. But the hard part comes in with just making sure that your intern is on your same time table because they have a timetable based off of their semester, their semester breaks. You know, if they're in a school situation, they may have a completely different schedule than what you're expecting them to have and our student excellent job. I want to clarify that he did a wonderful job, worked incredibly hard, did a ton of self research, but you just kind of have to remember they are a student, so they may not have a lot of real-world experience to vet some of these things that they're using as example templates, especially if you're starting from the ground up where you may then have to go back in and read it and make it clear. Okay, this may have worked for this community, but this is not how our community does it.
So it's a great tool, but you're still going to have to put in a lot of provider input when you're working with a student, because they're just still newer to the field. So depending on what your need is, it can be a great way to, to get that plan developed, but you're also still gonna really have to help and handhold on parts of it because they're not going to have necessarily, depending on their background, the operational experience to see what looks great in a plan versus what will actually be able to be built out in real time.
Host: John Scardena (12m 55s):
I'll definitely say that my first plan had a lot of red in it from my boss, just going through and just, you know, teaching me essentially. I'm grateful for that, that he did that. There are three stages of competency that I see in general. I think this could apply to any career field, but it really applies to us as well because this field is naturally full of highly passionate people. When you get into the field and you're learning, you're super passionate and you're that, that fire's is really strong, but it's like, it's on, it's off. It's like super passionate. Okay. Let's see, we're bashing it. But like that doesn't really do like the cook really well. Right? And sometimes that incompetency or that lack of experience that really shows through, despite the passion, then you get the second group, which is totally avoidable, but a lot of people get stuck in here is you've seen a little bit of success, you've have a little bit of experience and now you're super arrogant because you've learned two or three things. You're unteachable, you know, you can't, you can't really move forward in that process. If you can move beyond that and like I said, most people go through that process. I'm going to say that I didn't, but I probably definitely did.
You get to this point where you get excited again, you get that passion. Now you have a ton of experience and like now you have confidence. You don't feel the need to like blast all the time that, that passion, but at the same time you can walk in and get the job done. And luckily for us, we've been able to find a lot of good people here at Doberman who like have that ton of experience. So that's what I look at when I think of interns or want to think of college students is if you want a blast, if he's somebody who's super passionate, great, but you're still going to have to like manage that cook, add in all the other ingredients. So it doesn't get burned, maybe you want the sear on the steak, whatever. I'm getting a lot of cooking analogies, mostly barbecue in Georgia.
Yeah. But yeah, that's a really good call out there. I mean, our company has also thought about internships, you know, we're in St. Louis over here and we have offices now in St. Louis, LA and Georgia. So it's like, okay, like how can we leverage the local community? But I think there'll be a lot of hand holding if we do that. So that would be our call out probably to other people is if you have the time to be able to train somebody great. If you don't, then it's probably just going to be a burden. Okay, so now that we're officially moving onto the next topic, let's talk about your job here at Doberman.
Host: John Scardena (15m 45s):
Some of the recent projects here you're focusing on and, you know, moving that needle forward. So yeah. Give us an update. Give the crowd the update, I guess.
Guest: Ashley Lauria-Golden (15m 56s):
So it's the exciting time getting fully started and jumping right in. So a lot of what we've been working. Oh, wait for it. Nope. But we are heavily focusing on hazard mitigation, which is huge for me because I'm a hazard mitigation nerd. I was very fortunate to spend some time working in hazard mitigation for the state here in Georgia. So I fully believe the good news of hazmat cause I like to call it. So to be able to now start building the opportunity to work with local communities on updating their hazard mitigation plans, as well as if they have any interest in hazard mitigation projects.
So things like getting generators for critical facilities, tornado, warning, sirens, tornado, safe rooms, different flood mitigation projects. You know, the whole slew of what's covered under that FEMA umbrella be able to help communities really delve into that and better build up their mitigation. You know, better build up their resiliency and their future protections against disasters, along with doing some other plans, working on some local emergency operations plans for communities. Then on the side, still helping with some of the podcast stuff and some social media outreach, which is a lot of fun as well. So it's all been a lot of really fun and a lot of really good things that I enjoy.
Host: John Scardena (17m 16s):
You made me feel like I was talking to somebody about like the role of a mom as like, hey, what does a mom do? And then like you start naming off like a hundred different roles and responsibilities and I'm like, hey Ashley, what do you do? You're like, oh, I do 40 different things because we're a small company. And you know, you've been helping to do 400 different things.
Host: John Scardena (17m 42s):
You're a mom. So like, yeah, you know, so I had this, so Ashley knows Margaret Larson, who's on the show, we all went to school together. I was telling her that we need to do an episode about how a mom is the perfect emergency manager because like, wearing all the different hats. We seriously need to do that for next may. I think we should have all the moms had associated with Doberman or has been on the show, come on and be like, hey, I saved my kid's life 40 times a day every day. You know, don't put that in your mouth, whatever, you know, dads do that too, but that'd be kind of a cool call-out of like cross sector, you know how one thing applies to the other thing, but in terms of wearing lots of hats, yeah, it was cool because we're like, hey, can you take over planning for Doberman essentially and let's focus on hazard mitigation, our company disaster tough.
That's kind of what disaster tough solid be all about, right? Like stopping a problem from becoming a true crisis. You know, almost immediately, small company, somebody reached out for a different type of emergency plan. Now here we are, we're having to work on multiple different things. So that's pretty exciting for you to work on moving forward though. You know, Doberman is really looking to kind of change. I want to say change the perception, but solidify the perception of emergency managers, I think that's like our big thing here. Like how do we actually help people instead of writing the plans and saying, good luck, hopefully you don't have a problem. We're really integrated with those people. I think we talked about this last time on the show, but you're the first person outside of my wife that I called and talked about this idea, I'm responding to a tornado. So it's just like kind of cool to fast forward what, four years, five years, and see this happen. So exciting that you're on with us exciting that you're moving forward. If you were going to name the top three things that you want to happen with Doberman or yourself or emergency management in general for 2022, I'm kind of throwing that such a curve ball. What would you like to see? What were some of the things that you'd like to see our field do besides hiring Doberman on everything?
Guest: Ashley Lauria-Golden (20m 5s):
That is a fantastic question and before I get to that question, I just have to circle back and give a shout out to Maggie from our Georgetown class, because her episode was so impactful to me as a new mom at the time that it came out, she is awesome. So I would love for us to be able to do a disaster tough moms are emergency managers, myself now, emergency mother. I would love to do that and have her back because she's awesome and she gave through that episode, a lot of encouragement to me when I was in a transition period. So awesome man, for 2022, I would one love us to finally be getting on the end of the pandemic.
I think all of us definitely have quite a bit of pandemic exhaustion. So we would love to be able to for the field as a whole be able to concentrate again on more than just COVID-19, you know, obviously we got to get through it safely and effectively, but I think for everybody and, just for how, for lack of a better term burned out, so many of us are, it would be just hugely helpful from the mental toll side to be finally getting on a more stable upswing. But I would really love for us just to yes.
Host: John Scardena (21m 18s):
Yes. I think everybody feels the same way.
Guest: Ashley Lauria-Golden (21m 21s):
Everybody's going. Yes, definitely yes. But I would love for us to continue to grow, but really to delve into that mission of helping the local community, I would love through all of this, that we're working on individually as a company and then just for the field itself for emergency managers. I know it's been brought up on the show before, but just to keeping elevated in the public consciousness and to really be better understood where we can continue to be able to get the ear, you know, for folks at every level of the rest of our stakeholders to be given that legitimacy, to do what needs to be done. I feel like for so many emergency managers, you know, they have these fantastic ideas and so much growth and in all the different disaster cycles and preparedness cycles and every aspect of emergency management. But it's working with those other stakeholders and working within the confines of their communities that kind of hold them back.
You know, just to be able to still push through and be able to do more of those things, to really be able to have the field say, we've finally gotten away from saying, this is how we've always done it and it's going to be okay because that's been true in my life across working in public safety, emergency services, working in emergency management that unfortunately it always seems to take something like COVID, like a 9/11, like hurricane Katrina, something that just cuts outside of the norm for us to really step back and be able to say like, maybe we need to do it differently, but to be able to get on the front side of that. You know, a lot of that does come through hazard mitigation and not just in the FEMA sense with the projects, but the whole concept of mitigation of doing something beforehand, not just after the fact, that would be my biggest thing for the field is just to be able to get out in front and not keep playing catch up.
Host: John Scardena (23m 3s):
Yeah. You just hit the biggest pain point that we have to deal with, right? Like we're actually the two biggest pain points is that legitimacy and really that's on us. Then like getting ahead, technologies are definitely underutilized, the whole cookie cutter. The problem, my big gripe with FEMA is a former FEMA guy, I literally have an award, you know, like just chilling in the back here is that everyone tries to put it in the box of FEMA, but FEMA is, FEMA's role, I am going to be really, really blunt here. They're basically the IRS of disasters. They're there for money and they're there to coordinate making sure all the resources are there for other people to do their actual job. If you try to do it the way they want to do it, then you become the IRS of disaster. But that says that doesn't work at the local level because you are actually working directly with the red cross to standup, that shelter, you're trying to get those preliminary damage assessments done, you're trying to do the evacuation and coordination with the Sheriff's department. So like all locals, or all disasters are local ,locals should really be telling FEMA and, or, you know, the biggest spectrum, hey, we're dealing with the impact here. This is how you need to be able to work with us so that we are able to save and sustain life.
Unfortunately, I think it's kind of flip-flopped right now because the title federal emergency management agency makes everybody think, oh, it they're the ones who are, who are the best. Quite frankly, they're not, they're not always suited to be able to understand the needs of the local level. So yeah, just really interesting thought process there. Gosh, you made me talk about that forever. In terms of us changing our perspective, first perception, you know, we definitely have to add legitimacy to that. What do you think emergency managers who are like, yes, every politician or every PhD or every boss I have is not in this thing and gave me this job, isn't understanding what I'm trying to do. What would be some of your advice to them?
Guest: Ashley Lauria-Golden (25m 16s):
That's a great question, because that really has been an issue across all the different places that I've worked. It's just, sometimes it honestly comes down to that community being impacted by something before you're able to move the needle at all. That's terrible because that should not be the time that those light bulb moments should be happening. They should be happening well before you get to that point. But I think a lot, the most of yourself reached out and be really intentional with your most not vocal opponents, because that puts too much of an antagonistic spin on it. But if you're an emergency manager or you're in a position where you do rely heavily on another agency and other department, you know, whoever does your finance, your budget really make it, your prerogative to get into the weeds with the ones who are having trouble understanding, you know, ask them to come sit on in, on different meetings with you, with other stakeholders, you know, bring them to your table.
Don't just keep going to their table, bring them to your table, bring them in when you're doing different training exercises, whether it's just a small scale with some of your other agencies. You know, have them see firsthand in these kind of free opportunities to see more of what you do so that they can see bigger picture, how investing in, what you're saying is really going to make a difference because it's that perception shift can be so, so difficult, but if you can start chipping away with little things where they're getting a better idea of what you're doing, you know, you're not just the great Mr. Oz behind the curtain, but you're being very transparent in what you're doing and how it makes an impact that really, really helps. Or, you know, if you're working with a board of commissioners and you have friends who happen to live in a commissioner's district, and they're willing to reach out on your behalf and do some of that kind of behind the scenes lobbying on different projects you want to work on, that can make a big difference too. Sometimes it takes that outside source also reaching out for them to see, hey, it's more than just what my emergency managers saying. I get it now. Other people are questioning it too. Now I kind of see the bigger scope of where it applies. So it's hard. There's no perfect answer to that and I wish there was because it affects all of us in emergency.
Host: John Scardena (27m 22s):
Yeah. It's brutal to deal with. I would say that I'm looking at job postings before I could tell if a community was looking to hire an emergency manager for the purpose of trying to identify somebody to blame, but that's really the minority. Most people hire emergency managers because they think that's what they're supposed to do. They have no idea what they do. So, like, my call-out one of my many call outs is, hey, why did you hire me? You know, like, what do you want? And like, oh, I never wanted a disaster. Okay, well then start taking some of my suggestions or I hired you because I'm supposed to have emergency management. Honestly, I don't know what you're supposed to be doing and just have a very honest conversation of saying, let me give you like, what is best practice?
When you use words like best practice and you don't use word like preparedness use words like readiness. You're changing this mindset from a doomsday prepper of things that never happened to, hey, I'm a logical person. This is a community, this is a standard thing. I think we have to fight that quite a bit. I also think Doberman, letting the cat out of the bag here a little bit, if people check out the readiness lab and then in 2022, we're going to be addressing this directly. Not just from consultant's perspective, obviously, but from the subject matter expert perspective of how do we build legitimacy into our field. So whether you're working with us, for us, or against us, at least you can be known as somebody in a respected field who cares, who has that passion, but some intelligence behind there too.
So a good call-outs for that. Looking at the time, you know, it's been just over a year since we had gentlemen podcasts, a lot of changes, including your now, your a new mom. Like you're a mom. Last time you came on. No, no, you were pregnant when you came on. So yeah, you're definitely a mom now, you know, you're living the dream, you're working for us, lots of changes. You talked about upcoming, whatever, if it's a while, before we have you on the show again or not, what would be your advice to emergency managers in the field?
Guest: Ashley Lauria-Golden (29m 34s):
Keep up the good work. I don't think that they've heard that enough over the course of the last, you know, almost two years at this point that it's a, it's a wonderful field. It is a rewarding field, but it can be a really difficult field. So you are doing good work, not just like, oh, check class, you did this. So we needed this completed, but you're doing important work. You're doing good for your community. So just stay the course, hang in there, you know, and keep doing what you're doing because it is making a difference.
Host: John Scardena (30m 2s):
Mic drop quote moment. That's what's going to be on the quote. So now we know a fantastic Ashley, thanks again for coming on the show, helping me out this week. Also, thank you so much for helping out behind the scenes of the podcast with all of our guests. I'm sure all of our guests are very grateful for all your help there. Thank you for being an emergency manager, by the way. Awesome phrase. That has to be like on a t-shirt somewhere.
Guest: Ashley Lauria-Golden (30m 27s):
That's my copywriter.
Host: John Scardena (30m 29s):
She's going to get royalty for us for life on this. Also I'm so glad you're part of Doberman. I've said it quietly to you several times. I'm going to say publicly, we're very lucky to have you. Our company just got a lot stronger with you being a part of our team. You know, today's been not really supposed to be a sales pitch, but also kind of a sales pitch. If you want to work at Doberman or work with Doberman now, you know that we have an excellent emergency planner with us who has also response and paramedic and training background and all these other things, all these capabilities that you bring with you. We're really, really lucky. I'm so glad we went to Georgetown together. How did you for years to work with Doberman and yeah, just want to say thank you again for that.
Guest: Ashley Lauria-Golden (31m 18s):
Thank you, John. It's always a pleasure to be on this side of the screen and to get to chat on disaster tough. So thank you for everything and for having the faith in me too. So it's been good.
Host: John Scardena (31m 27s):
It's easy. You're smart. Yeah, absolutely. Okay. Everybody, I'm going to do my song and dance moment. If you liked this episode, if you learned something, you should give us that five star rating and subscribe. Please give us that five star rating. I just want to see how many people like this episode. So if you could do that, that'd be awesome. If you have a question, a comment, a concern, whatever you want for our team, for Doberman or for this episode, if you have a question for Ashley, the best way to do that is to reach out to us on social media. Make sure you check out disaster tough, make sure you check out Doberman and now check out the Readiness Lab. We have some other podcasts on there. We're really excited to bring those on onto our umbrella if you will. So we'll check that out and we'll see you next week.