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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 Mileti

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.

Liesel A. Ritchie is assistant director for research at the Natural Hazards Center. Liesel has served as principal investigator or senior researcher on more than 50 projects since 1996. Her dissertation on social impacts of the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill was the first study to examine the relationship between technological disasters and social capital. She has also led research conducted in the aftermath of the 2004 Selendang Ayu shipwreck and oil spill off the coast of Unalaska and the 2007 Cosco Busan oil spill in San Francisco Bay. Among other research projects with which she has been involved in the past three years is a National Science Foundation study of tsunami awareness and preparedness in various coastal states, including Alaska. Liesel has also evaluated organizational responses to disasters and been part of a research team examining social impacts of Hurricane Katrina. In 2005, she spearheaded efforts to establish an American Evaluation Association topical interest group on Disaster and Emergency Management Evaluation and is currently program co- chair of that group. Liesel is currently serving as lead for the Bay Area Disaster Preparedness Initiative project that is examining disaster preparedness among community-based organizations in San Francisco.

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.


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.

Ashly BarlauAshly Barlau is a professional research assistant at the Natural Hazards Center. Ashly joined the center in September 2006 as part of the Research Experience for Undergraduates program. She graduated from the University of Colorado at Boulder with a bachelor's in Anthropology in May 2009.

As an undergraduate, Ashly participated in research for the Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Response to Terrorism (START) and the Response to Crisis and Unexpected Events (RESCUE) project. She now supports several Center research projects, including NSF's iscovering the Educational Consequences of Advanced Technological Education (DECA) project and Research Digest.

Ashly’s research interests include Web 2.0 and social media, disaster recovery and resilience, and use of local knowledge in disaster preparedness, mitigation, and response.

Christine Bevc is a research assistant at the Natural Hazards Center and a graduate student in the department of sociology. She joined the Center in January 2005. She is currently working on her Ph.D. She has her master's in applied sociology and bachelor's degree in liberal studies from the University of Central Florida.


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.

Lori Peek is an assistant 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.

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.

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.