Mary Fran Myers Scholarship
Past Winners
The Mary Fran Myers scholarship was established in 2003 to fulfill Myers’ request that qualified and talented individuals receive support to attend the annual Natural Hazards Workshop, ensuring that representatives of all ages, professions, and communities were represented. Previous winners are listed below.
2008 | Edy M. Barillas | Monalisa Chatterjee | Charna R. Epstein |
Molly Mowery | Uchenna Okoli
2007 | Steve Samuelson | Saeed Ashraf Siddiqi |Yu Xiao
2006 | Aurélie Brunie | Elenka Jarolimek |Alessandra Jerolleman
2005 | Wei Choong | Ana Pamela Membreno
2004 | Becky Ault
2008 Winners
Edy M. Barillas holds a master’s degree in engineering geology from the Colorado School of Mines in Golden. He currently lives and works in Guatemala, but interacts with professionals and practitioners across Central America regarding disaster preparedness. His work focuses on landslides in urban areas, natural hazards zoning using Geographic Information Systems, and early warning systems for rain-triggered landslides. As an Oxfam Project Officer, his main responsibilities focus on community organization, training and equipment monitoring for rain; early warnings; and emergency response. He is interested in developing communication and coordination protocols that promote more efficient early warnings and emergency response between local community-based risk reduction committees and municipal and institutional representatives. His primary research interests include landslide susceptibility analysis and modeling, analysis of historical rainfall records, and rain thresholds for landslides triggering.
Monalisa Chatterjee is a doctoral candidate in the Department of Geography at Rutgers University. Monalisa has a master's and master of philosophy from the Delhi School of Economics, University of Delhi and has worked on environmental degradation and the impact of cyclones on cities in India. Her dissertation, “Urban Flood Loss Sharing and Redistribution Mechanisms among the Impoverished Industrial Population of Mumbai,” examines informal coping methods of poor urban flood victims and studies the impact of globalization on the changing nature of coping strategies. In her research she explores the possibility of integrating poor populations with more formal mechanisms of risk redistribution and loss sharing. In future work, she intends to continue research applying scientific information to the human dimensions of natural hazards and public policy.
Charna R. Epstein directs the Crisis Prevention and Disaster Recovery Department at Heartland Alliance for Human Needs and Human Rights headquartered in Chicago. As part of her responsibilities, she helped lead the Chicagoland Katrina Relief Initiative. The initiative was responsible for the resettlement of approximately 10,000 Gulf Coast evacuees in greater Chicago. This nationally recognized initiative received more evacuees than any site outside of the South—none of the evacuees in Chicagoland went homeless. While her work still involves Katrina and Rita recovery, Epstein now spends the majority of her time on disaster planning and preparedness initiatives. A major project now underway involves the development of the first Metro-Chicago VOAD, bringing together partners from the public, private, and nonprofit sectors to collaborate and coordinate on all phases of disaster. Before assuming her current position, Epstein was a Fellow in Response and Recovery at the Region V Federal Emergency Management Agency. Prior to her work at FEMA, she spent four years working with immigrants and refugees. She received her bachelor’s degree with high honors from Brandeis University and her master’s in social service administration, with a focus on public policy and management, from the University of Chicago. Epstein is now in graduate school at the University of Chicago, studying for a master’s in threat and response management (2009 candidate).
Molly Mowery received her master’s in city planning in 2008 from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Her research interests focus on natural hazards, sustainable development policy, and climate change adaptation. Specifically, her thesis analyzed the relationship between land use planning and wildfire mitigation. She also has worked on site planning in East Biloxi, Mississippi to address Hurricane Katrina recovery and landscape restoration efforts. Before pursuing graduate study, Mowery worked in land use planning at a law firm in Denver, Colorado. More recently, she has worked for the Scottish Government Planning Department and will return to Edinburgh as the Associate Director of an international consulting firm specializing in environmental planning and management projects. She has co-authored articles on tree preservation and outdoor lighting ordinances and has given a number of presentations worldwide. Mowery earned a bachelor of arts in psychology from Naropa University in Boulder, Colorado.
Uchenna Okoli is a native of Nigeria. She holds a bachelor of science degree in botany from the University of Benin-Nigeria, a postgraduate diploma in contemporary diplomacy from the University of Malta and is currently completing a master’s in disaster management and sustainable development at Northumbria University in Newcastle upon Tyne, United Kingdom. Her master’s thesis is a policy study of the strategies being implemented by the Nigerian government and other development organizations to address the socio-economic vulnerability of Nigerian women. Since 2003, her work has focused on raising awareness about the importance of disaster risk reduction and integrating a culture of safety in Nigeria through advocacy and capacity building. With particular emphasis on the development and implementation of policies that effectively address “soft” hazards, her work underscores the importance of people’s empowerment as a vital asset, especially for developing countries constantly grappling with scarce resources. Okoli has worked as a lead facilitator for a non-governmental organization and also served as a volunteer with the Institute of Safety Professionals of Nigeria and the Nigerian Red Cross Society, among others.
2007 Winners
Steve Samuelson works as Zoning Administrator, Floodplain Manager, Residential Data Collector for the Appraiser, and Grant Writer for Lyon County, Kansas. Steve started working for Lyon County in December of 2005. Since then, his accomplishments have included rewriting the floodplain regulations for Lyon County, enrolling the county in the Community Ratings System, writing a comprehensive hazard mitigation plan for all the jurisdictions within the county, successfully appealing problems in new Flood Insurance Rate Maps, and negotiating for certification of the levee that protects Hartford, Kansas. In addition, he spoke at the State Association of Kansas Watersheds conference about how to use zoning and land use planning to prevent construction in dam breach inundation areas, even when a county has no zoning or building permits.
Saeed Ashraf Siddiqi is Programme Manager (social protection) at the Earthquake Reconstruction and Rehabilitation Authority (ERRA) for the Government of Pakistan in Islamabad. Following the most debilitating earthquake in Pakistan’s history on October 5, 2005, the Government of Pakistan established ERRA with the mandate to work on a comprehensive response to devastation caused by the earthquake. Saeed has a background in development and governance issues, and holds Masters' degrees in English and Governance & Development Management. With Saeed's leadership, ERRA has initiated useful programs, such as medical rehabilitation of the disabled in affected areas, distribution of compensation to people who lost land during the earthquake, provision of legal assistance to vulnerable groups, and rehabilitation programs for widows and children.
Yu Xiao is a PhD candidate in the Department of Urban and Regional Planning at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. She has education in planning, regional science, computer simulation modeling, and applied econometrics, and has researched economic impacts of disasters for the Mid-America Earthquake Center. Her current research focuses on empirically assessing the short- to long-run social and economic impacts of the 1993 Midwest Flood on various types of communities. She hopes to continue empirical disaster research in both developed and developing countries, such as her home country, China.
2006 Winners
Aurélie Brunie is a PhD candidate in city and regional planning at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Originally from France, she has an engineering degree from the Ecole Centrale de Lyon and a master of science in environmental pollution control from Pennsylvania State University. Brunie specializes in social capital, collective action, empowerment, and disasters, focusing particularly on how assistance programs can take advantage of existing structures to achieve more equitable and sustainable outcomes. Her dissertation examines the importance of disaster management capacity building, social capital, local leadership, and middle-level institutions in the sustainability of community preparedness efforts in underdeveloped countries.
Elenka Jarolimek is an emergency management specialist at the University of Washington in Seattle. Her professional accomplishments include co-organizing Symposium 2005: Best Practices in Risk Reduction for Colleges and Universities and co-managing the University of Washington’s “Report on Emergency Preparedness for Special Needs Populations.” She is currently working on designing a model mitigation program to help departments and college units address seismic and storm-related risks and developing emergency preparedness training programs for students, staff, and faculty. Jarolimek has a bachelor’s degree in political science from Metropolitan State College of Denver and a master’s in urban planning from the University of Washington.
Alessandra Jerolleman works on mitigation, community outreach, and disaster planning at the Center for Hazards Assessment, Response, and Technology at the University of New Orleans. She has worked on projects benefiting the New Orleans area, including completing benefit-cost analyses for the potential retrofitting of university buildings, flood mitigation planning for several suburban New Orleans neighborhoods, identifying and implementing outreach projects for the Disaster Resistant University project, and conducting community outreach related to the Hazard Mitigation Grant Program. Jerolleman is completing a master’s in public administration at the University of New Orleans and will begin work on a PhD in urban studies in the fall. Her dissertation will focus on hazards planning for school districts in disaster prone area.
2005 Winners
Choong, from Melbourne, Australia, has a background in international development and has worked in Bangladesh, Fiji, Lao PDR, Thailand and East Timor on development
issues such as food security, poverty alleviation, and natural disaster risk management. Over the past two years she has worked at
the Asian Disaster Preparedness Center (ADPC) in Bangkok, Thailand, as both a research intern and as part of an Australian Government
program - Australian Youth Ambassadors for Development. She has also served as an external evaluator for a disaster prevention and
livelihood security project for CARE International in Lao PDR. Through research focused on reducing natural disaster risks at the
community level, Choong has developed interests in disasters and development, community based disaster risk management, public
awareness and education, and the exploration of indigenous coping strategies. In her pursuit of these interests, she hopes
to continue contributing to the existing body of knowledge while working practically at a grass roots level to further reduce risks
in developing countries.
Membreno is a civil engineer who recently finished her master of science in
rural planning and development at the University of Guelph in Canada. She
chose to pursue this degree after working in her native Honduras as a
project manager for reconstruction projects in the wake of Hurricane Mitch.
Throughout her studies, she pursued an interest in floodplain management
(looking specifically at vulnerability reduction measures, institutional
capacity building, and promotion of community participation) and is a
certified floodplain manager. During the summer of 2004, she did a 12-week
internship with the Natural Hazards Project at the Unit of Sustainable
Development and Environment of the Organization of the American States in
Washington, DC. Through this work, Membreno was encouraged to further pursue
vulnerability reduction issues with the possibility of implementing a
floodplain manager certificate program for Honduras. Currently she is
conducting environmental assessment consistency analyses for Yap
Environmental Systems Analysis Limited-Guelph and hoping to return to
Honduras to work on development projects in the area of disaster management.
2004 Winner
Becky Ault lives in North Dakota. She has been Emergency Manager/9-1-1 Coordinator for Pembina County since 1995 and has led the county through ten Presidential Disaster Declarations during her tenure. She is also very active with GIS and computer mapping issues, mitigation activities, and helping implement the 9-1-1 system countywide.
Becky has worked to create a multi-functional digitized mapping system for the county, which is currently in use in multiple departments. The system has the capability of linking with 9-1-1 dispatch (emergency response), mitigation planning, zoning issues, repetitive loss tracking, election precinct mapping, water resources mapping, and parcel information. In addition to creating the system, Becky has been active in knowledge sharing and technology transfer with other North Dakota agencies as well as other states and federal agencies.
Pembina County is small and has limited resources. Becky has been very proactive in seeking out alternative revenue sources for the county and she successfully pursues funding for projects that directly benefit the citizens of the county and reduce private and public property damage, promote public safety, and reduce the impact of extreme environmental events. She has managed projects funded by Hazardous Materials Emergency Planning Grants (1995-present), the Pre-Disaster Mitigation Grant Program sponsored by the Federal Emergency Management Agency, and the Public Safety Foundation of America, and she provided research and administrative support for the county's Project Impact grant.
Some of her other efforts include a variety of mitigation projects along the Red River, updating the county wide warning system, and assisting with the county StormReady designation from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. In addition, she has received numerous awards of excellence, been active in a variety of professional associations, and has served her community in a variety of capacities related to emergency management, public safety, communications, GIS, and warning technology.
Becky Ault was chosen as the recipient of the 2004 MFM Scholarship in recognition of her ability, enthusiasm, and creativity. She was nominated by colleagues from the Association of State Floodplain Managers, a nationally respected organization of professionals involved in floodplain management; flood hazard mitigation; the National Flood Insurance Program; and flood preparedness, warning, and recovery. The Hazards Center is proud to inaugurate the MFM Scholarship by awarding the first scholarship to someone who so closely embodies the spirit of Mary Fran Myers' work.