Resilient World | Navigating Disruption In National Security, Foreign Policy, Crisis Response, Global Health, And More

Born to a Coast Guard officer, it was perhaps inevitable that Thad Allen would also become a ‘shallow water sailor’. His thirty-nine-year career saw him rise to the very top, serving as the Coast Guard’s 23rd Commandant from 2006 to 2010, and coming to prominence across America as the public face of the Hurricane Katrina relief efforts in 2005. In a wide-ranging conversation with Resilient World host Christine Wormuth, Admiral Allen draws on lessons from a career at the center of the federal government’s response to some very complex and challenging disasters to take a deep dive into exactly what makes a response resilient. Allen outlines how Hurricane Katrina changed the federal approach to storms, and why the response in Puerto Rico to Maria was much slower than the response to Hurricane Harvey in Houston. He discusses the qualities of good leadership and the core characteristics of resilient systems, how to improve the Department of Homeland Security to make it more effective in preventing and responding t