Department of Homeland Security Centers of Excellence Summit 2021 2021-05-17T04:00:00-04:00 2021-05-21T13:00:00-04:00
May 17 – 21, 2021
Virtual Event
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Wendy Walsh Chief Learning Officer, Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA)

Wendy Walsh is currently serving as the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) Higher Education Program Manager at the Emergency Management Institute (EMI). This program has been supporting academia for over 20 years, serving as the focal point for emergency management higher education, fostering the professionalization of this field via educational efforts and contributing to the resilience of the Nation by creating a strong cadre of emergency management and homeland security professionals. Ms. Walsh has managed and redesigned the National Emergency Management Executive Program 2016-2017. This program is the top tier of the Emergency Management Professional Program and is serving to enhance the knowledge of the top Emergency Management leaders as well as to leverage collective intelligence and expertise to address critical challenges in the discipline.

Prior to this assignment she of served as the Homeland Defense and Security Coordinator at the Naval Postgraduate School (NPS) in Monterey. In this position, she facilitated opportunities for homeland security research and technology collaboration within NPS, serving as a catalyst for establishing and managing viable intellectual and financial partnerships with other federal agencies, state and local governments, academia and the private sector that are addressing issues of Homeland Defense and Security.

Ms. Walsh is a founding member of the NPS Maritime Defense & Security Research Program. She contributed and coordinated curricula development and instructed for the International Maritime Security Education program deliveries at NPS and the NATO School in Oberammergau, Germany. Ms. Walsh served as the Maritime Security Educational Director for the Littoral Operations Center (LOC).

She has also been an active participant in projects that leverage military modeling, simulation and virtual environments to augment homeland security training, exercises and research. She has supported the development and implementation of the Massive Multi-player Online War-game Leveraging the Internet (MMOWGLI) game as well as managed the NPS Healthcare Modeling & Simulation Certificate Program. She has supported the development of the NPS Center for Infrastructure Defense (CID) and has developed and sustained information sharing research to improve the security of the global maritime supply chain since 2007.

In 2013, she was appointed to the California Cybersecurity Task force co-chairing the Workforce Development & Education Subcommittee for the task force and supported the development of the state’s cybersecurity strategy. She received the State’s award for Leadership in Cybersecurity Education in 2014.

Prior to working for NPS she served the US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) as a President’s Management Fellow filling the position of Citizen Corps Program Specialist within the Preparedness Directorate. In this position, she worked closely with the states of California, Nevada, Hawaii, Arizona and the Pacific Territories to better prepare citizens and align private sector activities with governmental homeland security efforts.

She has also worked for the State of California as a licensed psychiatric technician, served on the facility disaster committee planning preparedness activities and exercises as well as served as the public information officer (PIO) for a large state developmental center for people with access and functional needs. She holds a BA in Political Science, Masters of Public Administration from Sonoma State University, and certificates in Systems Engineering from NPS and Design, Partnering, Management & Innovation from Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey. She is a DHS Master Exercise Practitioner and has held a TS/SCI clearance.

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