Who We Are
Kathleen Tierney is professor of sociology and director of the Natural Hazards Center. With over 25 years of experience in the disaster field, she has been involved in research on the social aspects and impacts of major earthquakes in California and Japan, floods in the Midwest, Hurricanes Hugo and Andrew, and many other major natural and technological disaster events. Since September 11, 2001, she has been directing a study on the organizational and community response in New York following the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center. Her other recent research projects include studies on public perceptions of the earthquake threat in the Northern California Bay Area, sociobehavioral aspects of real-time warning systems for earthquakes, risk communication, and the business impacts of disasters. Kathleen is the author of dozens of articles, book chapters, and technical reports on the social aspects of hazards, disasters, and risk. She is a member of the National Construction Safety Team Advisory Committee, which is overseeing the official federal investigation of the World Trade Center disaster, and serves on Leaders Working Group on Biodefense of the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center on Biosecurity/Johns Hopkins University Center for Civilian Biodefense Strategies and the executive committee of the Multidisciplinary Center for Earthquake Engineering Research.
Dennis S. Mileti is recently-retired professor and chair of the department of sociology and director emeritus of the Natural Hazards Center. He is author of over 100 publications most of which focus on the societal aspects of mitigation, preparedness, response, and recovery for hazards and disasters. His book Disasters by Design, published in 1999, involved over 130 experts to assess knowledge, research, and policy needs for hazards in the U.S. He has served on a variety of advisory boards, and was co-founder and Co-Editor-in-Chief of the Natural Hazards Review, an interdisciplinary all-hazards journal devoted to bringing together the natural and social sciences, engineering, and the policy communities.
Wanda Headley began working as a library assistant for the Natural Hazards Center in 1999 and was appointed library manager in 2001. She is responsible for overseeing the library's physical collection as well as managing all aspects of the HazLit database. She holds bachelor's degrees in geography and history, both from the University of Colorado, and is currently working towards a master's degree in library science at Texas Woman's University.
Ezekiel (Zeke) Peters is the Natural Hazards Center's Assistant Director for Programs & Outreach. A licensed attorney and paramedic, Ezekiel holds a J.D. from the University of Colorado School of Law and a B.A. in wildlife and fisheries ecology and environmental policy from Hampshire College. He served as editor-in-chief of the Colorado Journal of International Environmental Law and Policy and has done graduate work in public health and political science. He has worked in Alaska, New York, and Colorado, most recently serving at the Denver Paramedic Division. Ezekiel is interested in information flow and decision making at all levels of local emergency medical response, as well as in the tensions between preparing for infrequent catastrophic events and providing day-to-day services. He is also interested in the role that disasters play in calling attention to poor environmental planning and pre-existing social inequity, especially as they affect indigenous peoples.
Jolie Breeden joined the staff in May 2008 as Program Associate. In that position, she compiles and edits the Disaster Research e-newsletter, manages the Center Web site, assists in the coordination of special projects and publications, and manages the Quick Response Research Program. Jolie graduated summa cum laude from the University of Colorado at Boulder with a bachelor’s degree in journalism. Before joining the Natural Hazards Center, she was as a reporter for various Front Range newspapers, including the Broomfield Enterprise, the Longmont Daily Times-Call, the BoulderDaily Camera and the Rocky Mountain News. She has also administered news Web sites for Clear Channel Denver. Jolie is interested in how people use the Internet and Web communication to create authentic social groups outside real-time interactions and how these groups function in opposition to hegemonic institutions.
Dan Whipple joined the staff in May 2008, as the Observer editor. Dan will compile and edit the Natural Hazards Observer newsletter and assist with coordination of special projects and publications. Dan has been a writer and journalist for more than 30 years, specializing primarily in science and environmental issues. He served as editor of High Country News and Northern Lights and held several editorial positions at the daily Casper Star-Tribune in Wyoming.Dan holds a bachelor’s degree in international affairs from Georgetown University and was a Ted Scripps Fellow in Environmental Journalism at the University of Colorado during the 1997-98 academic year.
Liesel A. Ritchie is assistant director for research at the Natural Hazards Center. She has served as either principal investigator or senior researcher on almost 70 projects since 1996. Since 2001, Liesel's focus has been on the social impacts of disasters with an emphasis on technological disasters, social capital, and resilience in renewable resource communities. Her 2004 dissertation on the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill was the first study to examine the relationship between technological disasters and social capital.
Liesel currently directs three National Science Foundation projects—one on the social impacts of the high stakes litigation resolution associated with the Exxon Valdez oil spill (ARC 0909497), a second on the 2008 TVA Kingston Fossil Plant ash release (CMMI 1000612), and another on enhancing targeted research in the Advanced Technological Education Program (DUE 0832874). She is also involved with two NSF-funded RAPID grants. The first study examines postdisaster housing and recovery in Haiti following the January 12, 2010, earthquake. The second study is comparing community impacts of the 2010 BP oil catastrophe with those of the Exxon Valdez oil spill, focusing on the renewable resource community of Bayou La Batre, Alabama. She is also co-PI on a NOAA-funded project to incorporate social science into its tsunami program.
Liesel is coeditor of the January 2012 issue of American Behavioral Scientist on the BP disaster and is author or coauthor on five recent articles related to her work on that event, the Exxon Valdez oil spill, and the earthquake in Haiti. She is currently serving as program co-chair of the American Evaluation Association topical interest group on disaster and emergency management evaluation.
RoseMarie Perez Foster is a research and clinical psychologist who is a Senior Research Associate with the Institute of Behavioral Science's Environment and Society program and the Natural Hazards Center. Her previous appointments at the New York University School of Social Work and New York University (NYU) School of Medicine, Department of Psychiatry, focused on immigrant mental health and the interface between pre-migration traumatic exposures and host country adjustment. Her current investigation of Chernobyl disaster survivors from the former Soviet Union explores the impact of long-term post disaster psychological sequelae. RoseMarie received her PhD in psychology from St. John's University and post-doctoral training at NYU. She is on the international roster of Fulbright senior specialists in mental health and a recipient of the Frantz Fanon Award for contributions to the immigrant mental health and racial issues literature.
Diane Smith is the Natural Hazards Center's office manager. Her main responsibilities are to monitor and maintain the budget and finances of the Center. She also works with personnel issues and scheduling and planning the Center's meetings and events (especially the annual workshop!). Diane has been here for 19 years, so she is very familiar with the Center's activities and the University of Colorado.
Brandi Gilbert is a PhD student in the Department of Sociology at the University of Colorado and a research assistant at the Natural Hazards Center. She graduated from the University of Delaware with a bachelor's degree in elementary education and a minor in Spanish studies. She is currently working on the Bay Area Disaster Preparedness Initiative project at the Natural Hazards Center. Her research interests are the role of educational, community, and religious organizations in disaster preparedness and recovery initiatives.
Alexandra (Ali) Jordan is a graduate student in the Department of Sociology's PhD program and a research assistant at the Natural Hazards Center. She earned her bachelor's degree in political science, with an emphasis on terrorism and genocide, at the University of Southern California. Before coming to the University of Colorado, Ali worked for the U.S. Senate Sergeant at Arms Office of Security and Emergency Preparedness as a government contractor. She is currently working on the Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Response to Terrorism (START) project at the Natural Hazards Center. She is also interested in perceptions of risk, community resilience, terrorism, and using GIS as a tool for analysis in disaster research.
Wee-Kiat Lim is a PhD student in the Department of Sociology at the University of Colorado and a research assistant at the Natural Hazards Center. His research interests include organizational crisis response and social informatics. Before embarking on his doctoral education, Wee-Kiat was a researcher at the Information Management Research Center at the Nanyang Business School in Singapore. He has also held research and planning positions in Singapore's telecommunications and national defense sectors.
Nnenia Campbell is a doctoral student in the Department of Sociology, research assistant at the Natural Hazards Center, and managing editor of the Natural Hazards Review. She received her bachelor’s and master’s degrees from the University of Central Florida. Her research interests include technological disasters, risk perception, and social capital in disasters.
Courtney Farnham is a temporary research assistant at the Natural Hazards Center. She graduated from the University of Colorado in May 2010 with her bachelor's in psychology and sociology and has experience in disaster planning and policy with the Anchorage Municipality Office of Emergency Management. Courtney is working on multiple NSF-funded research projects at the Natural Hazards Center, including Discovering the Educational Consequences of Advanced Technological Education (DECA), a longitudinal study of the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill, and a study on the 2008 TVA Kingston Fossil Plant ash release. Her research interests include community preparedness and resilience.
Lori Peek is an associate professor of sociology at Colorado State University. Lori has authored several articles in the areas of environmental risk, social vulnerability, and disasters. She also served for three years as the assistant co-editor of the Natural Hazards Reviewjournal. In addition to her interests in environmental sociology and the sociology of disasters, she specializes in the areas of religion, gender, race and ethnicity, social psychology, and ethnographic methods. Lori received her Ph.D. in 2005 from the University of Colorado at Boulder. Her dissertation research focused on the experiences of second-generation Muslim Americans following the events of September 11, 2001. Lori currently works with the Natural Hazards Center to coordinate the Mary Fran Myers Award and the Mary Fran Myers Scholarship.
Deborah Thomas is an assistant professor of geography at the University of Colorado at Denver, where she is also affiliated faculty with the doctoral program in health and behavior sciences. She works with the Natural Hazards Center on numerous education-related projects. She completed her Ph.D. at the University of South Carolina in 1999, specializing in hazards geography, and has over ten years of experience working with geographic information systems (GIS) in a variety of social science application areas, including hazards management and environmental health. Her research interests focus on the use of technologies in support of hazards management and issues of vulnerability as they relate to both natural and human-induced hazards and environmental health hazards.