Keith Randall: All-Hazards Hour is brought to you by Katmai Solutions, your trusted partner in preparedness. To learn more, visit them on the web at katmaisolutions.com.
Morgan Greenwood: Welcome to the show, Patrick. Help our listeners get to know you a little bit. What is your current role?
speaker-0: you
speaker-1: Welcome to the All Hazards Hour, the show where we explore disasters from mitigation to recovery, the people behind the response, and everything emergency management. My name is Morgan. And I'm Keith. Today, we're taking you inside the stories of how communities prepare, respond, and recover from disasters.
Patrick M. Campbell: Sure. So I currently serve as the deputy chief operating officer for the department in health and human services for Montgomery County, Maryland. For those who don't know where that is, we're just outside DC. We're a large county of about 1.1 million with about four of the 10 most diverse cities in the United States. We're in a very complicated region because right, we're in the DC region. So along with just dealing with supporting our regional partners, you know, we are right in the middle of all this federal government stuff going on. You know, we're a population of a little bit more than a million. ⁓ And then as the Department of Health and Human Services, we're an integrated department, which means in most states we might be five or six separate departments, but where every human services group plus public health is one united department.
Morgan Greenwood: So how did you kind of get started in the realm of emergency management?
Patrick M. Campbell: Yeah, sure. ⁓ So when I first got out of high school, I went right into the Coast Guard. So this is, you know, early 2000s. I'd never heard of emergency management other than maybe seeing Tommy Lee Jones in a ⁓ god awful movie from the 90s. Most of time I knew it as OEM. So I kind of thought of it as like a, you know, a city thing, right? Cities have it. And then when you're in Jersey, Jersey is a big state that's it's everybody has their own ⁓ borough or municipality. So it's all these little towns.
Keith Randall: Yeah. you
Patrick M. Campbell: And so even when they do have it, it ends up being like a police sergeant or somebody like that who might do it. So you don't really know it. It's not really a big thing. So I knew like New York City had it. I knew things like that. So eventually when I was a Coast Guard, I got stationed in New York City. Coast Guard has the absolute authority in the federal waterways. That's one area that's rarely disputed. So we have a lot of authority there, but we would be the command center for any big issues. And so also like when we had something big going on. the city's OEM would show up and they would be in our space. And I got to talk to, I still remember this guy, was like, they would always have this like NYPD guy and FDNY guy and OEM guy. And the cop guy was always funny. He had this little classic cop mustache, super New York accent. And so just chatting with him, I got to learn, you know, what does OEM do? What's the difference between what the police do? What does the fire do? And it made me aware of like, wow, there's kind of like this middle ground where it's not quite police, not quite fire.
Katmai Solutions: Throughout the guests that we've had on the show so far, one thing has been consistent. that is the importance of the relationships you build, communication, ⁓ and the importance of understanding the people that you serve, but also the people that you work As all of these people bring different experiences, values, cultures, and perspectives.
Patrick M. Campbell: But it's trying to harness an entire government and connect with people. And I really, really liked the idea of it. At that time, I was like, all right, let me look at schools for emergency management. And I was like, at that time, there wasn't really a lot of schools that did it. I believe there's like Tulane. There was Metropolitan College in New York, which for me was really expensive at the time. Like I was like, if I did that and I got out and I started at $55,000, I don't I could afford to my college loans.
Keith Randall: Yeah
Patrick M. Campbell: So I really liked it, but I was like, I'm not sure. At that time, it was hard to figure out how you get there. ⁓ It seemed like most of the time when I look up emergency managers, it'd be people who were like either at the tail end of their career who got it as like a prize to be a director, or they came up through the fire or police service or less common, but still not completely rare. ⁓ They were at least a more middle to senior ranking military member who got it. ⁓ Or you had to be within whatever government you were in for a long time to prove that you were credible.
Katmai Solutions: Our guest today, Patrick Campbell, brings a really unique perspective to emergency management. He previously served in the U.S. Coast Guard before transitioning to leadership roles in emergency management at the local and regional level.
Patrick M. Campbell: but there was no easy path to figure out how you get there. And then in a lot of jurisdictions, especially in the Northeast, and I say just unique to the Northeast because it just seems like when you get to the older states, they do things sometimes, especially before 9-11 and even for a little while after 9-11. You know, they did things the way they did things. You know, that was just, that was it. So if you didn't come this pathway, you didn't get there. And now I believe there's a broader recognition that diverse ideas are there.
Keith Randall: Mm-hmm.
Patrick M. Campbell: So I went there, then I, when I got out of the Coast Guard, I was like, I'd like to do it, but I couldn't afford the programs that did it. So when I went to college, I started volunteering, did Red Cross, I volunteered at the fire department, and I just kept trying to find ways to plug away, like the FEMA classes, do stuff like that. So that way I stayed at least adjacent to doing emergency management, right? Because there's not a lot of volunteer roles in emergency management, or if they do, the volunteer roles they offer are like CERT, which is really far further adjacent than most people realize. It really doesn't.
Katmai Solutions: Welcome back to the All Hazards Hour Podcast. Today's episode
Patrick M. Campbell: get its response. It's, it's a junior version of response. And so I just kept staying relevant. And then when I eventually went to the paid Red Cross, I kept trying to work my way into their deployable teams, just kind of like what I did in the Coast Guard. ⁓ and just kept trying to work my way up. And I just found this really joyous. I think what I like most about emergency management and why it was attractive to me was it's like being the composer of an orchestra, but you may not know how to play any of the instruments very well.
Katmai Solutions: goes beyond what we do in emergency management and dives into who we do it for, ⁓ and it really takes to lead in this field. Emergency management has traditionally been defined by structure, the structure of frameworks, planning, and chains of command. We often talk about response timelines, resource requests, after-action reports, and all of the technical things that make up the field of emergency management. However,
Keith Randall: Hmm.
Patrick M. Campbell: but you're really good at getting them to play together. And that's an area where both my skillset really thrives. I really love getting teams together and putting people in missions and priorities. ⁓ And I really have respect for all the different instruments that are part of it. ⁓ And I like getting them to work as a team. And that was kind of like when I first learned about New York City. Yeah, mean, it's, yeah, it just, you don't have to know the instruments well. You just have to have an idea how they're played and the value they bring.
Katmai Solutions: The longer you spend in this field, the more you realize those things only work because of people.
Keith Randall: Yeah. ⁓ That's a great analogy. Yeah, that's a really good. Mm-hmm.
Patrick M. Campbell: And so yeah, and so that's how eventually that got happened. That's the short version.
Morgan Greenwood: Yeah, that's an amazing analogy. ⁓ so was there any, particular experience where, you know, you talked about how being it, the maestro of the orchestra and leading everything, was there a particular experience that kind of shaped that view for you, ⁓ in, know, in emergency management where you're trying to get everybody to come together?
Keith Randall: Yeah.
Morgan Greenwood: rather than be siloed, per se.
Patrick M. Campbell: Yeah, I guess, when you, you know, like I just remember coming out of, you know, kind of 9-11, like there was so much infighting about even who is in charge of something. And I remember learning about that and then I'm just a young sailor and I'm like, why are we fighting about who's in charge? so you start learning that. And then I remember I had a couple, you know, in the national scope of things, it seems smaller, but the Staten Island ferry incident where Staten Island ferry, the pilot had crashed into a pier and caused significant mass casualty situation.
Katmai Solutions: Patrick is a public service leader, emergency management professional, and community advocate with a deep commitment to dignity, service, and building systems that last beyond any one person. His work has focused on strengthening human services operations, emergency preparedness, continuity planning, facilities coordination, ⁓ regional collaboration. Patrick is known for bringing a practical, people-centered approach to leadership.
Patrick M. Campbell: And you started seeing like improvements on the way the different groups from 9-11 like New York City learned. And they started figuring out how do we coordinate better. And then for me then 2005, Katrina was a huge one. ⁓ Like you saw all like, it was funny because even like people who had like good intentions with Katrina, like who just wants to go do something, but then they're not working together ⁓ or they're doing a lot of redundancy. And so like these things kept influencing me. So then when I finally got my
Katmai Solutions: Balancing strategy with compassion, accountability with humor, and public service with a strong belief in caring for the community. Outside of his professional work, he is also involved in advocacy and nonprofit leadership, including work connected to the Arthritis Foundation and food systems in Montgomery County. At the heart of his work is a simple belief, serving others is one of the highest forms of leadership. As we sat down with Patrick, we talked about that leadership style.
Patrick M. Campbell: My first big reason why I realized like one emergency management had it abroad and who was part of that table, right? For so long, it's like, let's coordinate police and fire. Let's coordinate police, fire and department of public works. Like it starts growing over time. ⁓ And then I remember I was deployed for Hurricane Matthew. And I won't say this is where my idea started, but this is where the ideas that I had around this idea that we need to come together more really came to light.
Katmai Solutions: relationship building and emotional intelligence, and how those elements show up in real world emergency management.
Patrick M. Campbell: I was located, our headquarters is in like Fayetteville and we were covering essentially that southern part of North Carolina. And I remember there were just so much community conflict and it was stuff that existed before the hurricane. ⁓ It was an area where there had been racial tensions at one point. ⁓ There's even a tribe that is not federally recognized, but it's recognized then we would say the Queen of England, but now it's the King of England. ⁓ but it didn't have federal recognition. And then there was all these like social dynamics. Then there were the farm workers who were ⁓ Hispanic descent who didn't feel comfortable getting government services. And I remember like all the ways I learned information and all the people who had all the pieces was a little bit of everybody. Like the news reporters letting me know about trailer park that was flooded but they were uncomfortable getting assistance because they thought they might get deported. The ⁓ community historian who let me know that history of the Lumbee tribe.
Katmai Solutions: This is the side of the field that you never really see. There's no lights, no sirens, no reports or ICS forms to fill out. Instead, we are focusing on the human side of the work, something that doesn't always get as much attention in emergency management conversations.
Patrick M. Campbell: and their community conflicts and this feeling they've lived for centuries of not feeling like they've been given their fair share. And so I started getting this idea like, wow, there are so many more people that need to be part of our table. And... You know, and then you think churches, you think religious groups, the groups that come down and assist the, you know, the, Cajun Navy, like, and then there's these groups that like, sometimes you'll get these government people who come in and they'll say, well, only government can be part of it. And then they try to exclude groups like the Cajun Navy. Or I remember even in the early days of like when team Rubicon came, people said, well, don't work with them. They're a bunch of cowboys. And I was like, you know, I kind of like cowboys. ⁓ But you realize like the more you try to control it in a tight way.
Katmai Solutions: but it impacts everything we do, from how we coordinate across agencies, how we engage with communities, how leadership and emergency management is evolving, how effective we are when it matters most, ⁓ and how emotional intelligence shapes outcomes just as much as technical expertise. As always, the views expressed on this program are those of the participants only
Patrick M. Campbell: is the less control you have. And so bringing everybody to a table, getting them to work together, getting them to understand each other and respect each other means at a time of disaster, we realize that we need all those different people and not everybody has one solution. If we only offer government solutions, and that's an important part of it, then we're missing this really dynamic part of our community that can do challenging things and solve problems in a way that government never will.
Katmai Solutions: and do not represent the views of any individual employer, sponsor, or of Katmai Solutions.
Patrick M. Campbell: We could do big things, but we can't always hit those details.
Katmai Solutions: So let's dive into today's episode.
Morgan Greenwood: Wow. Yeah, that definitely sounds like it was a lot of moving parts that weren't all moving together during that situation. So is there a particular area in emergency management? You know, we talk about preparing and responding to stuff, recovering and mitigating these things. Is there a particular area that you really like? And is there anything that you kind of didn't like or have grown to not like over time? Favorites, least favorites type thing.
Patrick M. Campbell: Sure. ⁓ I think like every, you know, like many people first get attracted, right? We all love response at first. You know, I got in the Coast Guard. That's what I wanted to do. ⁓ You know, you, you enjoy the fact that you can see a problem and in a realistic amount of time, solve a problem often, not all the time. And that part's really exciting. ⁓ But also over time, the response part, ⁓ you realize that you're, when you get to do a lot of responses, because a lot of other things failed. And so it's like, as you mature, you realize the reason, you know, like take Hurricane Katrina or when we have hurricanes where there wasn't enough evacuation, ⁓ either we didn't have enough mitigation, we didn't have enough preparedness. And then I started over time, just kind of feeling more sick about the response part, because you realize like, it's actually a failure when we need to do a lot of response. It's, and it's not that that group failed, it's that It's that the system failed populations. ⁓ Sometimes it's because of finances. know, people with money can evacuate people who have the financial means ⁓ can build a more resilient community. ⁓ And they don't have to build in the low grounds and areas like that. And over time, I got to this point where I just, don't enjoy a response like I used to. And just because it just comes down to it's like for me to enjoy a response, it means I'm mostly okay that somebody had to suffer for me to be there. And, know, I know it's normal, right? know, I got into volunteer firefighting. Of course you like fires, you like going to fires, but then you also over time, you mature and you realize that's somebody's home. Those are kids. So I've evolved more to where, where I definitely am interested in figuring out how we do more community work to help build resiliency in communities. I also enjoy the recovery work and I like the recovery work because It's not like I, like when I do response, I might see a person once and never again. And recovery work, feel like when we do it well, even in my leadership role now, I don't deal with them every day, but I'm in, they'll be like an incident. I'll see them a few weeks later. I'll check back in with them. And it's nice to know that if we're doing it right, I can help springboard people ⁓ to the next steps. So those are kind of, I'm leaning towards where I want more mitigation and more preparedness, but being a health and human services folk, what's most available to me to do is recovery. And I really like that. We can do it in a way that we might be able to change the long-term outcome of somebody's life.
Morgan Greenwood: phenomenal.
Keith Randall: Yeah, as you talk about ⁓ approaching emergency management kind of through that lens of human services and dignity, what does that look like in practice? What are some ways that you see that lived out?
Patrick M. Campbell: Yeah, dignity is, ⁓ I think the first thing to realize dignity is everybody is born with it, but we can do things to harm people's dignity and we can do things to help shield their dignity. And so it's like this recognition that everybody has value. And so some of it is how do we try to make our processes and systems, ⁓ have time to communicate with folks? Sometimes we're so focused on. systems and structures that are efficient. Like, and I think back to like tailoring economics where we're worried about like every motion a person makes. And what we're really often doing in a lot of our work is deciding how people should recover or how people should be prepared. And we're not including them in that conversation. ⁓ When I was down in that hurricane deployment and Matthew, I remember the, one of the chiefs of the Lumbee tribe said, you know, your people aren't, you know,
Keith Randall: you
Patrick M. Campbell: aren't communicating with us, aren't recognizing with us. And the truth was I ⁓ was deployed there on part of an incident command team. If there had been a federally recognized tribe, they would have automatically given me like a profile on this community. Well, I was like, well, what do I care if they're not recognized? I can treat them the same way. So I ended up requesting tribal a's on store with them. Then they were like, hey, but your people still don't understand our story in our community. And I was like, you're probably right. ⁓ So then I worked with them to create a class. So as our new volunteers for the Red Cross and our paid staff would arrive, they would do a class with the Lumbee historians to learn about their community. Now this wasn't a six hour course, right? Cause I had to get people out in the field, but every day we would offer this class to raise awareness, help them understand the story of their community and a way of connecting. And then we assigned tribal lesions ⁓ to that tribe to make sure that we were in tight communication. But dignity has also taken the time and space to adapt your methods for the community. I mean, it's, remember coming out of Katrina, not Katrina, I remember coming out of COVID and we had a lot of communities that loved when we were doing all the virtual work for recovery. They loved it, right? It was a great time. They loved the text messaging and we had added all this technology to work with the communities that way. And then all of I had a large incident that had a large ⁓ Ethiopian population displaced. And they just weren't digging virtually. They weren't digging the text messaging and all that. They really wanted us to get back to personal and get in, you know, spend time with them. So also we said, you know what? It's not working. So then we talked to them and said, what would you prefer? And we went back to doing the in-person meetings, setting up these big elaborate events. So it's realizing that in the scope of being a humanist is we can't have one solution that supports for everybody. ⁓ we have to ask questions.
Keith Randall: Mm-hmm.
Patrick M. Campbell: And then it's also just taking time. think because we don't often trauma inform so much of our staff, we don't realize that sometimes the anger we see actually has to do with something else. It could be something that's decades old. It could be something that's related to the incident, but we really have to spend time trying to understand each person and then figure out how we communicate. You'll never get everybody. But like I remember I had to do for my own home when we had a flood, like the SBA loan. the amount of work it took, the amount of paperwork, the amount of times you got to repeat things. And I'm sitting there thinking, well, I'm educated. I'm an experienced emergency manager and boy, I'm getting frustrated. So imagine somebody who has not ever thought about what this might look like, how they might feel. And so we very much in our county, we actually have an assigned recovery team for disasters that's prepared and trained for every incident. And even on like a small, we would consider small incident like 15 to 20 families displaced.
Keith Randall: Hmm. Yeah.
Patrick M. Campbell: they'll do four to 6,000 phone calls. They're not all picked up. And then we've also added text messaging, email, that way we're adapting per person. And then we make sure that the staff that are assigned per incident reflect the population they're serving. So if we're dealing with a primarily Hispanic population, we'll try to make sure we have staff that are from the culture. And the reason why I think that's really important too is there's a lot of cultural nuances that you could try to learn as an outsider.
Keith Randall: Hmm.
Patrick M. Campbell: But there's only so many you can pick up. They're just little things, whether how we can, who we communicate with the family, what are the words we use. And so it's really important to, if you can, and if you don't, if you can't fit it within your organization, find that partner that's part of that community to participate on your recovery teams.
Keith Randall: Yeah, that kind of leads right into what I was going to ask you next. And, and I think you already gave us the answer, but how for the, the solo emergency manager that's working in a one person shop or the fire chief that is also the emergency manager, ⁓ how can they incorporate these principles? And I think you kind of already answered that.
Patrick M. Campbell: Yeah, no, it's even because, you know, I know sometimes we'll think, OK, how do you do it in a small shop in a big jurisdiction? I do have more people, but I also have a lot of incidents. And so I have a different problem, right? I more incidents sometimes, especially during COVID. My fire is almost doubled because all some people are home 100 % of the time. So a lot of it is how do I do it in an efficient way and a meaningful way? And so we in our county, we formed our own county. VOAD, we call it a COAD, community organizations, active disaster. And when a big incident comes within 48 hours, we provide that group a brief. And then we also brief them on what's our donation management strategy, who is gonna be our primary organizations participating. Because like in my county, we have a few hundred nonprofits. So it's like, it's a Calvary Cam, but then now I can't figure out how to coordinate them because there's too many of them. And then we have a process where we train everybody thing like, Hey, if anything's going to happen, we're referring them to the co-ed new group wants to step up. And we try to pre-screen all the groups that we can before disaster. So we know who has what capabilities, what they can and can't do. But I do try to structure things around calls and briefing time. So that way it's just not constant. And so we have that general brief, and then we have smaller groups in our recovery, one who will talk about case management stuff. So that's the most protected.
Keith Randall: Hmm.
Patrick M. Campbell: right? They have HIPAA and privacy. But then we'll also have broader nonprofit coordination calls and we set that time. So somebody reaches out to me says, Hey, I need to talk about this. I like, is it an emergency? No, save it for that call. So sometimes it's about being efficient. And I think it's also being consistent. If every incident you provide them that brief, then eventually your nonprofits and your partners learn to wait for that call. They're like, okay, I know he's going to do the call. I know she will host the call within two days. I don't have to panic.
Keith Randall: You But using those community resources and sometimes in a small town, know, everybody, you know, they know everybody. These are their coworkers, their friends, their neighbors, and they want to get involved. But ⁓ coordinating those resources so that it is effective and efficient, I think, is good advice. So thank you.
Patrick M. Campbell: Yeah, another area to look at is, you know, don't forget that people come with a lot of skills. The during COVID was interesting for I think all governments, right? Because every county in America was hit, so there was no asking for help, right? And so I, we had to stand up all these additional feeding operations because at the height of it, we had like 24, 25 % of our own population was unemployed. And I didn't have, you know, we weren't doing mass feeding as a county government, right? We had nonprofits, but they were all overwhelmed.
Keith Randall: Mm-hmm.
Patrick M. Campbell: And so I ended up having to recruit volunteers in the early days. And my number one food volunteer was a guy who ran a catering company. ⁓ You know, he didn't have a background in doing distributions this way. ⁓ So I think it's also learning that, you know, just cause they're not government, it doesn't mean they don't have skills. And so figure out how you can draw talented people in. And I was very fortunate. You know, I got this guy who was super high talented and then ⁓ he helped me recruit additional folks.
Keith Randall: Mm-hmm.
Patrick M. Campbell: I eventually had the person who ran our school's nutrition program also joining our team. And so we ended up creating a task force that was probably one third government, one third community volunteers and one third nonprofit partners. And yeah, at the beginning, right, it was clumsy because we had to figure out who really could do. Cause you know, sometimes people want to, but they don't have time. So a lot of hiring and demoting and figuring out who should be where. But in the end, we created a... very effective, was what we eventually was named the Food Security Task Force, but an extremely effective team. And it actually stood up for a couple of years and then eventually we were able to make recommendations for long-term way for the county to deal with it in the future. But I think even in the future, big incident, it's always gonna include our community and our nonprofit partners.
Keith Randall: Excellent.
Morgan Greenwood: So it kind of leads into my next question, because we're sitting here talking about a more reactive approach that you had to stand up something quickly. Is there anything that you've done to try and shift the overall focus from a reactive emergency management to more of a proactive kind of mindset?
Patrick M. Campbell: Yeah, it's, I think it's interesting because like, I was thinking about this is how often emergency management leaned into doing like these community events where they hand out like little tiny first aid kits and CPR things. And they call that preparedness. ⁓ you know, because, you know, that's so much, so much of this field has leaned on those type of events when the truth is the people who go to those events are people who already care about preparedness. ⁓ the people who call us are people who care about. So the harder part is how do I get to the people that don't call, who don't complain, ⁓ who don't think government's there for them? And so that's the group that in many ways I want to get to because they're the ones who need me. I remember we had this like a... fire in our county and it was in a wealthier neighborhood. And within an hour, I had a call from all the senior administrators saying we need to do something. ⁓ And when I told them that we were gonna use a shelter, they all got rooms at the Marriott. And then at the same, and that was like a few weeks later, I had a fire in my low income community and nobody called me. ⁓ You know, other than the fire department asking us to send resources in the field. So it's the hardest group to reach. ⁓ is the group that I feel that we need to be present for resilience, right? People who have means, often will have insurance, they'll have family, they'll have intact resources. And it's not to say they don't need help, but we also have to acknowledge that there isn't a limitless amount of resources to give everybody what they want. And so if I'm not focusing my resources in the areas that where we're filling the most gaps, then I'm not doing something right. So our county during COVID created a number of outreach groups to try to effectively engage. ⁓ Sometimes it's just being able to create media campaigns that connect. ⁓ Like I know for COVID, they created one that was around ⁓ Abuelita, like the grandma. ⁓ And so that's one thing you gotta figure out, how you communicate, how you connect. ⁓ Reactive is difficult. ⁓ Not being reactive is difficult when you have transient populations, because it's constantly educating, constantly reaching out. But ⁓ one is trying to get materials in ⁓ that are written in a way that's relevant to the culture, but also in their language. I know there's been a lot of success in trying to do work that engages children. So like if you talk to the kids at the schools, they're more likely to come to mom and say, hey, I had a class today about smoke detectors. ⁓ We need to do this. That is one way. And then the other way is to look at the laws and codes that exist in your community. Some jurisdictions, for example, like with renters insurance, some jurisdictions have made it mandatory. And I know people hate it, but in my experience, the disaster, when people have insurance, they have a significant chance of recovering. Sometimes people will cancel it after they show it to the leasing office, but then it means I only have 5 % of the population I have to deal with versus 95. I do believe a big part of it is going to be code, right? We're going to have to make sure we're having stronger buildings that are safer, more secure. It's going to be working with groups to ensure that our road designs don't impact lower income structures. And I say that because often, especially like say for us in Maryland, our older infrastructure was designed for the rain amounts we got 50 years ago, not the rain amounts we get today. They build their build, they built buildings then the way we would never do. So we have a lot of buildings that have apartments that are below grade. All of our new buildings don't have that. And then our newer buildings, including single family homes. all have sprinkler systems if they're newer. And so that I think is how we often can benefit our lower income population is by upgrading our code, upgrading our building codes, and then having a proactive programs where we're inspecting apartments and complexes. The thing with transient populations or most vulnerable is they're always changing, right? It's, years ago, you know, like I think when my grandfather came, you know, he had Italian American 1920s, 1930s. in those same towns in Jersey, now the next generation of new population and new vulnerable is there. And so they're always evolving at who they are. And for a while I was even doing classes where I was targeting preparedness for immigrant populations. We have a lot of immigrant populations in Montgomery County. We're one of the most diverse in the United States. And when I was trying to design it, I was sitting there saying, well, how do I prepare them for emergency context in America? And the population in this case that I was working with is with Hispanic populations. So I looked at their building structures and I've spent some time in central and South America, lot of cinder block buildings. A lot of times the kitchen might be outside or in a more secure structure. Now they're in the United States where we build our kitchens out of flammable materials. ⁓ So I was like, I also was trying to recognize culturally like why are things different for their safety here? And what do they need to do differently here than they might've done at home? ⁓ And not in a way that I'm trying to say we're better or worse, but like if your home is made from cinder block, and how your home is made from flammable materials, which seems to be our preference in the United States, you need to be aware that there's certain things you gotta be prepared for that are different. And so that idea is like educating them around that, but I really think a big part of it is gonna be codes and inspections because the vulnerable populations never stop changing.
Keith Randall: Hmm.
Morgan Greenwood: Very interesting points. there's a question that kind of spins off of that. As you have been developing, you know, all these ideas and these practices, what's the sustainability of, you know, when you pass that torch eventually to the next emergency manager in the area, what's your sustainability look like for that?
Patrick M. Campbell: Yeah, it's interesting because to a degree, I felt like some of the work we've done in our region took a step back when we lost a bunch of the federal grants that's changed under this administration. So some of the programs we had dissolved in like three months. Particularly, we actually had a regional stockpile of mass care supplies that's now getting downloaded to local counties because it's no longer getting federal funding to support that. I say that to say it's like sometimes you think, oh man, we're leaving these great legacies and then boom, they're gone. ⁓ So a couple of things that I try to do, recognizing that all of us are going to move on. ⁓ I'm kind of the point in my career where I'm shifting to becoming more of a generalist, which is non-common in government right as you move up. I want to make sure, one, that I spend a lot of time mentoring and training. ⁓ So I'm at a couple of groups where I receive mentors here and there. Sometimes it's around the food work I did. ⁓ I think that's really, really valuable. How do you help people? ⁓ feel confident as they move up. Because I think one of the challenges of the new age emergency manager, so in the old days, right, they were a fire chief, they were a police chief, so they got all this formal leadership training. So now our new age one is they may not have any fire police services, they went to college, and they've been in emergency management for a while, but even a large emergency management unit might only be 19 to 25 people in some jurisdictions. So where do they really get leadership experience in a large scale sense for that once in a 10 year event? And I think that's the new problem, right? Is I think they have more awareness of all these big infrastructures and how the different layers of government work together, but then they get very little practical hands-on leadership. And I always think it's interesting, like in most governments, right? Your emergency manager is the senior ranking government official. And so like in my county, right? The county emergency manager has a staff of like, you know, 19 to 20 people. He has a similar rank to the person of my department, my director, who has a staff of 2,100. And I don't say that to say one is better than the worst, but where do you develop your leadership skills? And so that's, try to, I figure a big part I want to do is figure out how we help develop leaders. I have a handful of people I mentor. Like I was really excited that one of my mentors had invited me to her wedding. You know, I'm like 42, she's like 24, right? That was really cool. Like I felt like I had hit a home run in, in guiding and supporting her and her career. And now she's still thriving.
Keith Randall: you Yeah. Thank
Patrick M. Campbell: The other area too is trying to make sure a lot of our ideas and stuff are written down in guidebooks, manuals. ⁓ I participate in a lot of our regional work groups as well. And so every county in this region at one point or another, have briefed either their senior county staff or the people within their organizations. Cause like anything you could do great work and maybe my county will drop it, but just say maybe five other counties keep it up. I've even been coaching the county I live in cause I don't work in the county where I live in.
Keith Randall: you you
Patrick M. Campbell: And I've done like three or four sessions with them for free just to help them evolve. Cause I'm right now in the fastest group. live in the fastest growing County in Maryland, but it's still way smaller than the County I work for. And those are some of the small ways I can guarantee it. ⁓ It's the downside of emergency management is for a lot of County administrators, they want to put us behind glass until the emergency comes. But we're actually better if you let us be there all the time. It could be in building design, how we design our properties. A number of years ago, after a big incident, this county made sure that all of its rec centers were more resilient for disasters by having built-in generators, improved internet so we house people. And that's only works if you include emergency management in all phases of government. Don't put us back in glass. COVID could have been better for many jurisdictions if we didn't have that approach. ⁓
Keith Randall: Mm-hmm.
Patrick M. Campbell: because there are so many parts of our government that can participate in emergencies. But it's really hard if you don't know, because you say, oh, we're in the same government. You can just call so and so. All right. There's 19,000 people in my main government, 38,000 in my total. If you don't know the phone number to call, it doesn't matter if you know their name. so include us in all phases of government so we can build relationships, that we can build connections.
Morgan Greenwood: Yeah.
Patrick M. Campbell: ⁓ Sometimes like when I need a bus, you know, I'll call like the formal line and nobody's picking up. Then I can call some of the senior staff right now and they'll get that number picked up for me. We in our county, we run all distribution of ⁓ alcohol and liquor and things like that. During COVID, we use their vehicles and their refrigerators to store stuff. ⁓ Right? It's those relationships really matter, but that's only if you stop putting us back in the glass.
Keith Randall: Thank
Morgan Greenwood: Absolutely. That's a pretty, pretty common amongst emergency managers all over. So, you know, talking about those relationships and those partnerships, ⁓ we love to build them and they're, great in theory, but they can be very difficult in practice. What have you found that really works for you or in general when building partnerships and relationships across jurisdictions or across different agencies?
Patrick M. Campbell: Yeah, I mean, it does. ⁓ It's like the leadership challenge for everything is ⁓ who we pick to be our external kind of leaders really matter. So sometimes a person is really good at making a plan or really good at developing emergency manager structures. It's horrible with people. So we have to as individuals like develop our soft and our emotional IQ to connect with people. ⁓ A lot of times when I do this leadership classes, people will say, hey, what leadership books do you like? ⁓ And there's a lot of great leadership books. But I always tell people, read poetry and read literature. It sounds really simple. But I always said, you think Churchill was sitting there reading James Covey's book? Or Jim Collins, right? I mean, he was reading literature. He was writing poems. He also, one of his hobbies was brick laying. ⁓ It was really common in that time that rich guys would have blue collar hobbies. ⁓ But it's like this idea that you still got to be connected as a human being.
Keith Randall: .
Patrick M. Campbell: And it's those really, really soft skills that make you a genuine person. ⁓ So we can't think just because emergencies are important, people are going to listen to us. We also have to just be good people who care about people that are interested in people. And I feel like poetry and literature and having hobbies outside of work are the ways that help you connect with people. ⁓ Now those leadership books are great. In fact, I'm in an executive program right now at GW and I'm glad to read those books. Like right over there, I have Atomic Habits that I'm having to read. ⁓ I read James Covini and all those things are great too. ⁓ But you gotta meet people on a human level because that's how you first get trust before I ask you to do something for me. Because I can give you a plan that will make you happy, but then it's not really a genuine plan. And it's not one that I really did. because I only wrote it and a plan that's only written doesn't mean a lot. Right. And so a human connection, I think transforms that and human connection is really important. So I think our, our executive leaders and our senior leaders, we have to remember that likeability and gravitas and those types of skills are really important. mean, even Colin Powell said you bring the weather. That was one of his like favorite motto. So if I come into a space positive and optimistic, people are more likely to follow me.
Keith Randall: Hmm.
Patrick M. Campbell: I've known some great emergency managers that were like, encyclopedias and they knew all the ways you should do stuff. But boy, were they unlikable and boy, did they not connect with people. And that really, really matters. ⁓ and then also like caring about people, like getting conflict facilitation or conflict mediation skills. ⁓ my staff used to say to me, cause I used to tell them if you had a really, really difficult client, send them to me. I learned this from being like, worked in tourism for a while. When I went to back back in college, I worked at Thomas Jefferson's home as an operations manager. And like this idea, like I can deal with a difficult person because I can hide later on in my office. You can't, you got to stay out front. ⁓ But they also told me this was their observation, like was when people got mad, I would sit there, they'd see me sit down, just listen to them and said, by the time they left, you had them laughing. ⁓
Morgan Greenwood: You
Patrick M. Campbell: And I think it sounds like a small thing, but like we're dealing with really stressful environments and the worst thing the emergency manager could do is make it worse. Right. Make people feel more stressed out. It's your job to help bring perspective, get people to relax. ⁓ It is your job to give them direction, give them permission to feel upset, but also permission to get them to stay focused on the mission at this time. Say, Hey, I see you're upset, but this is where we need to be.
Keith Randall: Mm-hmm.
Patrick M. Campbell: And I think that's what we're talking about. Leaders doesn't mean all emergency managers have to fit that bill because we need everybody like the person who's terrible people, but great at details. We all love that person, right? They're so good at writing plans, but maybe they're not always the most extroverted or enjoy the people part. But like I'll never be the person who wants to sit down and like look for every mistake in a guidebook or a text. That's not going to ever be me. ⁓ I'm glad I had people who are better at that detail work than I.
Keith Randall: So looking back across your career, which is somewhat diverse, you've been in different, both in government and non-government and military, what was one of the toughest challenges that you faced that you didn't expect going in? Sometimes we go into something and we go, this is going to be tough. I know there's going to be a big challenge. Other times we kind of get blindsided by that challenge. ⁓
Morgan Greenwood: Yeah.
Keith Randall: Can you think of an instance when that happened as you were going into something and you really kind of hit an unexpected challenge?
Patrick M. Campbell: I mean, let's go back to the beginning of COVID, March, you know, 2020. You know, I remember we had, all these different plans and all these ideas of things we wanted to do. Um, but it required that in the end event of a big incident, right, you could ask for help. And so it's like, we're in March and our government sent everybody home, but us. And so here we are. And I got to sign down to public health.
Keith Randall: Yeah.
Patrick M. Campbell: And at first we're like, what can we do? Like all of our resources and tools are taken away. The world is shutting down. People are scared. I mean, this is, I remember this idea of like, what can we do? And so at first we're just, all right, well, let's start addressing some of like the policy things that are coming away. Like, I remember like funeral directors wanted to know all these things. How can you handle these bodies? And I wasn't a public health person. And then, so at first we're stuck there and then we're like, wait, we have to do something. And so then we started figuring out how we reorganize, find people, can we recruit other people from other parts of our government to join? And before you know it, we went from like a room of eight to 12 of us. Before you know it, had firefighters in our space. We pulled in volunteers. We had the Civil Air Patrol. But it also took trust, because some of these groups, like we had never really worked with the Civil Air Patrol, particularly as like a public health. is how do you find the right people? So we had to let go of this that only government people could be in government spaces And we started pulling them in then all of a one day said hey the food organizations are struggling like all right, what can we do about that? So then we started forming the group like I was telling you about earlier like okay We pulled some people out of public health to work there And then it was the same thing as we don't have any resources for dealing with this and then you know first that your your head hits the wall and then wait, we have to do something. And then we first thing we did was we can help them find more food. And we worked with our government to provide initial funding. And then we like, well, how do we get them food fast? And then my friend who I recruited as a caterer, he came in and said, we can get a contract with a food distributor to help us do that. All right, then how do we train them to do it? Then we found more people. But it was like the incident that I never thought I would be one assigned to public health in that way. I never thought I'd be assigned to the food security task force.
Keith Randall: Mm-hmm.
Patrick M. Campbell: which is funny, now I get recruited to do talks on the food stuff. If you asked me in March, 2020, I would have told you I'm not a food person. Like I did emergency mass feeding in the Red Cross context, but that's different. ⁓ And it's just this idea like the emergency management skills and what we did with the food security task forces, we created, know, incident command structure. We assigned leadership, clearly defined roles. Those are the tools we brought to it.
Keith Randall: Hmm.
Patrick M. Campbell: And then we made sure we pulled in nonprofits and people of various skills and abilities to fill in those other spots. Was it perfect ICS? Nope, not at all. But there was parts of it that were extremely useful in the sense that people understood, hey, this is your roles. This is your roles. This is your roles. This is your and I had to, I had to coexist in my normal mass care role. I had to exist in my public health role during that time. And I had to exist in my. a food security task force role and people like, well, how did you do it? Well, I did the method of when you have more work, you ask for more help. So I would have bosses and I would go to them and say, Hey, this is what I need to be able to do this. And so they ended up giving me additional staff at one point at national guard signed to me. And then I would give each group clearly defined roles and responsibilities in every area. And every level had clear areas that were within their decision-making authority. That way I wasn't making every decision.
Keith Randall: Yeah.
Patrick M. Campbell: And because I also took time to listen and care about what they had to say, they would give great feedback. Like, Hey, I think we should do it this way. I think we should do it this way. I'm very proud to say that a number of those contractors still work for my department. eventually moved into merit positions and I still see them around department. I said, you know what? We did that because of COVID. Like I helped bring people up by, you know, and it was really interesting because like when I first got contractors for COVID testing, it was a small team. Then they said, we need a bigger.
Keith Randall: Mm-hmm.
Patrick M. Campbell: So then I would promote within and then we got bigger. then I created just like ICS was I created another layer. And before, you know what, I had contract managers, supervisors, and then we had our frontline staff and we kept building out that way. And that's what you have to do. You have to figure out how you make it manageable and you have to stop micromanaging. You have to let people make decisions. The goal is the end result, not always every detail on how they get there. So long as they're not burning bridges and relationships, we got to get people to do it their way. because people just do things differently based on their background.
Keith Randall: Excellent. Has that continued ⁓ to influence and direct what you do in emergency management today from those things that you kind of those lessons you learned or the things you put in place?
Patrick M. Campbell: absolutely. ⁓ I'm fortunate to say like today, ⁓ like, well, we just got through a COOP process for my department. So I took those same ideas that, you during COVID, we narrowed our COOP planning with one person and it failed. And I was like, well, the only way to do this right is to teach ⁓ of the people who are within those organizations how to do it. So each group, and like I said, we're 2,100. merit employees, and other four to 500 contractors were broken down with 74, 74 spaces we managed, but staff in almost 400 spaces. And so there is no way to centrally control that. So I took that same model where each group had to create, um, three members who would be part of the planning team. We took them, these are social workers, therapists, administrators, people who have no COOP background whatsoever. And from July last year, so 13 months or 14 months ago,
Keith Randall: and
Patrick M. Campbell: We began their training. We brought them through a complete training evolution. Then a let's start planning phase, educate, you know, re process. Then we did a mentoring process where they had to submit their initial plans, where three or four of us worked with them, reviewed it, mentored them together. Where just last week we did a peer review where all of them had to present to each other and give each other feedback. So we took that same model and like, it was funny when I had to first get them doing it, it was like dragging them along. During the peer review, there was a lot of pride in what they had. had accomplished. And there were details in the work they did that if I had written that plan, I would never ever have paid attention to, gotten to, or been aware of. There's no way I could have done that.
Keith Randall: Excellent.
Patrick M. Campbell: So I got a better product out of it by taking people who didn't know the COOP part, but they knew that the job part.
Keith Randall: Yep. Yep.
Morgan Greenwood: So, you know, there's just so much ⁓ knowledge that you've acquired over time, so many experiences that you've had, know, reactive things that you've had to adjust to. ⁓ Since you have all this knowledge, what advice would you give to someone, you know, a student or someone who's making a career change who are either considering entering the field or have just now entered the field? What kind of advice would you give to them?
Patrick M. Campbell: I think the first thing is don't choose a part of emergency management yet you want to stay in. ⁓ What you think you're interested in and what you will end up doing may very well be different. And it reminds me when I first got in the Coast Guard, I went enlisted. And I remember I still in boot camp and the company commander asked, you know, who wants to do this job and who wants to do this job? So everybody, when they joined the Coast Guard, especially the enlisted side, they want to be like a boats and bait. They want to be an aviation survival technician, which is people jump out of helicopters. And he says, you know, this is what you all say now, but he says, within a few years, you guys are going to represent every part of the coast guard. And it was right. I didn't go boatswain's mate and I didn't go AST. I didn't want to go AST. I didn't want to jump out of the helicopters, but I did want to be on small boats and I ended up not being in small boats. Um, we make a lot of decisions in the early part of our career off of very limited information. And, you know, and especially if you are younger in your career or you're new in the career, if you're just new in the career, but maybe you've been around for a while, ⁓ you just don't know enough. And if you're early in your career, you don't really actually yet know what you're great at ⁓ and what you enjoy. And you should try, if you can in your career, try different opportunities. I've seen people who went into the hospital side of emergency management. They love it. Right. It's very clear about some of the things you have to execute. You're within a somewhat of a community by being a single hospital or maybe a hospital system, and that can feel good. Some people love the emergency manager who's in the small town. And you you got, you know, a lot of independence. You serve people who you know, ⁓ and that can feel good. And then some people will love the idea going to a larger organization like FEMA where it's, you know, it could be policy driven or it could be big systems. ⁓ Try to spread yourself out in different opportunities in your early career. Other important things is don't forget about the second part of who you are, your work outside, your life outside of work. And you want to make sure your professional goals align with that as well. You know, if you join a FEMA deployable team, you got to realize you're always going to be giving up your personal life for the sake of a deployment. And that could be what you want. That could be not what you want. ⁓ And so make sure you're making sure the outside of work you exist in the work and the choice you make in your professional life. When I did my, when I was doing a lot of deployments to the Red Cross, I had to sacrifice a lot of my personal life. And I love the deployments for me. It was exciting. You get out there, you were the team, you know, you're solving problems. You feel really, really good until a couple of weeks of, you know, 10 to 12 cups of coffee hits you. And that part's really exciting. But then there's a part where, like I was deploying and my wife, and at the time I just had one child. Now I have two.
Keith Randall: Thank
Patrick M. Campbell: is missing me and I get like videos from my daughter and she just, you know, asking me when I'm coming home. ⁓ and then the burden you leave on your family when you deploy and it also wears you out. I remember like coming back from one of my deployments and I was just worn out for like three months straight. ⁓ and so I was glad I did that for a while. ⁓ I was good at it, but then I was also glad when I stopped doing it as much. And so just make sure that two parts of your life are in balance. You can't forget that you are not just your work. And the other part is if you find a part of emergency management that doesn't feel right, realize there's a whole bunch of other parts of emergency management. You know, there's mitigation, there's COOP, ⁓ there's historical preservation, which I almost say ⁓ maybe once the FEMA jobs start reopening someday, I might want to go that way because there's the other part of Patrick that loves history. That's why when I went back to college, I got a full-time job at Monticello. ⁓ Before 9-11, I would have been a history teacher. That was the path I was headed on.
Keith Randall: Hmm.
Patrick M. Campbell: And in 9-11 learning about emergency management shift app, but that doesn't stop me from caring about that stuff. So I might someday try to find a way to maybe combine the two of them together. But yeah, just realize you can adjust. And then the last bit of advice is that emergency management looks so different in the nonprofit side, the local, the state and the federal. If you have an opportunity to try them, try them. They are different and they're different in good ways. They're different in bad ways. And people thrive at different ones. And sometimes you really like that big organization. Like the nice thing about a big organization is there's clear pathways up. There's clear structures about different roles. And you might really just like doing one part of emergency management and larger organizations make that easier. In your small town emergency manager, you might have two other jobs before you have your emergency management job. But you got to do everything. But you may like that. You might like that idea of being involved in all kinds of parts of people's lives. ⁓ It's a good chance that you may be from that area or from that community or deeply care about that community. That's why you chose it. And so you love that idea that you'll have all of these jacks of trades, but the challenge of being, you know, knowing a little bit about everything, sometimes we just don't know a lot about anything. And so that can also feel frustrating. So if you're not comfortable with that, not being the one who knows everything, that could be challenging for you. But if you're okay with that and then you're okay inviting people in your space when you need that help.
Morgan Greenwood: Mm.
Patrick M. Campbell: that now could work very well for you.
Keith Randall: Thank you.
Morgan Greenwood: Amazing advice, amazing advice.
Keith Randall: Very good. All right. Well, Patrick, thanks so much for being on today. This has been a great time spending time with you. appreciate you coming on and sharing with us your experiences and your insights, particularly on ⁓ kind of the human side, having that empathy, that people centered approach to emergency management that a lot of times we think about problems and we think about even the word management or we're managing things and And with people, we're caring for people. I think able to ⁓ that approach and have that human-centered approach is excellent. So thank you for sharing that with us.
Patrick M. Campbell: Yep, absolutely. I was glad to be part of it today.
Keith Randall: Well, we hope you enjoyed today's discussion on people centered emergency management and public service leadership. Keep an eye out for future episodes where we talk with others contributing in a significant way to the field of emergency management. If you enjoyed today's episode, please like and follow and subscribe to our future podcast. And as always, stay safe, stay prepared. and we'll see you next time.
Morgan Greenwood: Welcome to the show, Patrick. Help our listeners get to know you a little bit. What is your current role?
speaker-0: you
speaker-1: Welcome to the All Hazards Hour, the show where we explore disasters from mitigation to recovery, the people behind the response, and everything emergency management. My name is Morgan. And I'm Keith. Today, we're taking you inside the stories of how communities prepare, respond, and recover from disasters.
Patrick M. Campbell: Sure. So I currently serve as the deputy chief operating officer for the department in health and human services for Montgomery County, Maryland. For those who don't know where that is, we're just outside DC. We're a large county of about 1.1 million with about four of the 10 most diverse cities in the United States. We're in a very complicated region because right, we're in the DC region. So along with just dealing with supporting our regional partners, you know, we are right in the middle of all this federal government stuff going on. You know, we're a population of a little bit more than a million. ⁓ And then as the Department of Health and Human Services, we're an integrated department, which means in most states we might be five or six separate departments, but where every human services group plus public health is one united department.
Morgan Greenwood: So how did you kind of get started in the realm of emergency management?
Patrick M. Campbell: Yeah, sure. ⁓ So when I first got out of high school, I went right into the Coast Guard. So this is, you know, early 2000s. I'd never heard of emergency management other than maybe seeing Tommy Lee Jones in a ⁓ god awful movie from the 90s. Most of time I knew it as OEM. So I kind of thought of it as like a, you know, a city thing, right? Cities have it. And then when you're in Jersey, Jersey is a big state that's it's everybody has their own ⁓ borough or municipality. So it's all these little towns.
Keith Randall: Yeah. you
Patrick M. Campbell: And so even when they do have it, it ends up being like a police sergeant or somebody like that who might do it. So you don't really know it. It's not really a big thing. So I knew like New York City had it. I knew things like that. So eventually when I was a Coast Guard, I got stationed in New York City. Coast Guard has the absolute authority in the federal waterways. That's one area that's rarely disputed. So we have a lot of authority there, but we would be the command center for any big issues. And so also like when we had something big going on. the city's OEM would show up and they would be in our space. And I got to talk to, I still remember this guy, was like, they would always have this like NYPD guy and FDNY guy and OEM guy. And the cop guy was always funny. He had this little classic cop mustache, super New York accent. And so just chatting with him, I got to learn, you know, what does OEM do? What's the difference between what the police do? What does the fire do? And it made me aware of like, wow, there's kind of like this middle ground where it's not quite police, not quite fire.
Katmai Solutions: Throughout the guests that we've had on the show so far, one thing has been consistent. that is the importance of the relationships you build, communication, ⁓ and the importance of understanding the people that you serve, but also the people that you work As all of these people bring different experiences, values, cultures, and perspectives.
Patrick M. Campbell: But it's trying to harness an entire government and connect with people. And I really, really liked the idea of it. At that time, I was like, all right, let me look at schools for emergency management. And I was like, at that time, there wasn't really a lot of schools that did it. I believe there's like Tulane. There was Metropolitan College in New York, which for me was really expensive at the time. Like I was like, if I did that and I got out and I started at $55,000, I don't I could afford to my college loans.
Keith Randall: Yeah
Patrick M. Campbell: So I really liked it, but I was like, I'm not sure. At that time, it was hard to figure out how you get there. ⁓ It seemed like most of the time when I look up emergency managers, it'd be people who were like either at the tail end of their career who got it as like a prize to be a director, or they came up through the fire or police service or less common, but still not completely rare. ⁓ They were at least a more middle to senior ranking military member who got it. ⁓ Or you had to be within whatever government you were in for a long time to prove that you were credible.
Katmai Solutions: Our guest today, Patrick Campbell, brings a really unique perspective to emergency management. He previously served in the U.S. Coast Guard before transitioning to leadership roles in emergency management at the local and regional level.
Patrick M. Campbell: but there was no easy path to figure out how you get there. And then in a lot of jurisdictions, especially in the Northeast, and I say just unique to the Northeast because it just seems like when you get to the older states, they do things sometimes, especially before 9-11 and even for a little while after 9-11. You know, they did things the way they did things. You know, that was just, that was it. So if you didn't come this pathway, you didn't get there. And now I believe there's a broader recognition that diverse ideas are there.
Keith Randall: Mm-hmm.
Patrick M. Campbell: So I went there, then I, when I got out of the Coast Guard, I was like, I'd like to do it, but I couldn't afford the programs that did it. So when I went to college, I started volunteering, did Red Cross, I volunteered at the fire department, and I just kept trying to find ways to plug away, like the FEMA classes, do stuff like that. So that way I stayed at least adjacent to doing emergency management, right? Because there's not a lot of volunteer roles in emergency management, or if they do, the volunteer roles they offer are like CERT, which is really far further adjacent than most people realize. It really doesn't.
Katmai Solutions: Welcome back to the All Hazards Hour Podcast. Today's episode
Patrick M. Campbell: get its response. It's, it's a junior version of response. And so I just kept staying relevant. And then when I eventually went to the paid Red Cross, I kept trying to work my way into their deployable teams, just kind of like what I did in the Coast Guard. ⁓ and just kept trying to work my way up. And I just found this really joyous. I think what I like most about emergency management and why it was attractive to me was it's like being the composer of an orchestra, but you may not know how to play any of the instruments very well.
Katmai Solutions: goes beyond what we do in emergency management and dives into who we do it for, ⁓ and it really takes to lead in this field. Emergency management has traditionally been defined by structure, the structure of frameworks, planning, and chains of command. We often talk about response timelines, resource requests, after-action reports, and all of the technical things that make up the field of emergency management. However,
Keith Randall: Hmm.
Patrick M. Campbell: but you're really good at getting them to play together. And that's an area where both my skillset really thrives. I really love getting teams together and putting people in missions and priorities. ⁓ And I really have respect for all the different instruments that are part of it. ⁓ And I like getting them to work as a team. And that was kind of like when I first learned about New York City. Yeah, mean, it's, yeah, it just, you don't have to know the instruments well. You just have to have an idea how they're played and the value they bring.
Katmai Solutions: The longer you spend in this field, the more you realize those things only work because of people.
Keith Randall: Yeah. ⁓ That's a great analogy. Yeah, that's a really good. Mm-hmm.
Patrick M. Campbell: And so yeah, and so that's how eventually that got happened. That's the short version.
Morgan Greenwood: Yeah, that's an amazing analogy. ⁓ so was there any, particular experience where, you know, you talked about how being it, the maestro of the orchestra and leading everything, was there a particular experience that kind of shaped that view for you, ⁓ in, know, in emergency management where you're trying to get everybody to come together?
Keith Randall: Yeah.
Morgan Greenwood: rather than be siloed, per se.
Patrick M. Campbell: Yeah, I guess, when you, you know, like I just remember coming out of, you know, kind of 9-11, like there was so much infighting about even who is in charge of something. And I remember learning about that and then I'm just a young sailor and I'm like, why are we fighting about who's in charge? so you start learning that. And then I remember I had a couple, you know, in the national scope of things, it seems smaller, but the Staten Island ferry incident where Staten Island ferry, the pilot had crashed into a pier and caused significant mass casualty situation.
Katmai Solutions: Patrick is a public service leader, emergency management professional, and community advocate with a deep commitment to dignity, service, and building systems that last beyond any one person. His work has focused on strengthening human services operations, emergency preparedness, continuity planning, facilities coordination, ⁓ regional collaboration. Patrick is known for bringing a practical, people-centered approach to leadership.
Patrick M. Campbell: And you started seeing like improvements on the way the different groups from 9-11 like New York City learned. And they started figuring out how do we coordinate better. And then for me then 2005, Katrina was a huge one. ⁓ Like you saw all like, it was funny because even like people who had like good intentions with Katrina, like who just wants to go do something, but then they're not working together ⁓ or they're doing a lot of redundancy. And so like these things kept influencing me. So then when I finally got my
Katmai Solutions: Balancing strategy with compassion, accountability with humor, and public service with a strong belief in caring for the community. Outside of his professional work, he is also involved in advocacy and nonprofit leadership, including work connected to the Arthritis Foundation and food systems in Montgomery County. At the heart of his work is a simple belief, serving others is one of the highest forms of leadership. As we sat down with Patrick, we talked about that leadership style.
Patrick M. Campbell: My first big reason why I realized like one emergency management had it abroad and who was part of that table, right? For so long, it's like, let's coordinate police and fire. Let's coordinate police, fire and department of public works. Like it starts growing over time. ⁓ And then I remember I was deployed for Hurricane Matthew. And I won't say this is where my idea started, but this is where the ideas that I had around this idea that we need to come together more really came to light.
Katmai Solutions: relationship building and emotional intelligence, and how those elements show up in real world emergency management.
Patrick M. Campbell: I was located, our headquarters is in like Fayetteville and we were covering essentially that southern part of North Carolina. And I remember there were just so much community conflict and it was stuff that existed before the hurricane. ⁓ It was an area where there had been racial tensions at one point. ⁓ There's even a tribe that is not federally recognized, but it's recognized then we would say the Queen of England, but now it's the King of England. ⁓ but it didn't have federal recognition. And then there was all these like social dynamics. Then there were the farm workers who were ⁓ Hispanic descent who didn't feel comfortable getting government services. And I remember like all the ways I learned information and all the people who had all the pieces was a little bit of everybody. Like the news reporters letting me know about trailer park that was flooded but they were uncomfortable getting assistance because they thought they might get deported. The ⁓ community historian who let me know that history of the Lumbee tribe.
Katmai Solutions: This is the side of the field that you never really see. There's no lights, no sirens, no reports or ICS forms to fill out. Instead, we are focusing on the human side of the work, something that doesn't always get as much attention in emergency management conversations.
Patrick M. Campbell: and their community conflicts and this feeling they've lived for centuries of not feeling like they've been given their fair share. And so I started getting this idea like, wow, there are so many more people that need to be part of our table. And... You know, and then you think churches, you think religious groups, the groups that come down and assist the, you know, the, Cajun Navy, like, and then there's these groups that like, sometimes you'll get these government people who come in and they'll say, well, only government can be part of it. And then they try to exclude groups like the Cajun Navy. Or I remember even in the early days of like when team Rubicon came, people said, well, don't work with them. They're a bunch of cowboys. And I was like, you know, I kind of like cowboys. ⁓ But you realize like the more you try to control it in a tight way.
Katmai Solutions: but it impacts everything we do, from how we coordinate across agencies, how we engage with communities, how leadership and emergency management is evolving, how effective we are when it matters most, ⁓ and how emotional intelligence shapes outcomes just as much as technical expertise. As always, the views expressed on this program are those of the participants only
Patrick M. Campbell: is the less control you have. And so bringing everybody to a table, getting them to work together, getting them to understand each other and respect each other means at a time of disaster, we realize that we need all those different people and not everybody has one solution. If we only offer government solutions, and that's an important part of it, then we're missing this really dynamic part of our community that can do challenging things and solve problems in a way that government never will.
Katmai Solutions: and do not represent the views of any individual employer, sponsor, or of Katmai Solutions.
Patrick M. Campbell: We could do big things, but we can't always hit those details.
Katmai Solutions: So let's dive into today's episode.
Morgan Greenwood: Wow. Yeah, that definitely sounds like it was a lot of moving parts that weren't all moving together during that situation. So is there a particular area in emergency management? You know, we talk about preparing and responding to stuff, recovering and mitigating these things. Is there a particular area that you really like? And is there anything that you kind of didn't like or have grown to not like over time? Favorites, least favorites type thing.
Patrick M. Campbell: Sure. ⁓ I think like every, you know, like many people first get attracted, right? We all love response at first. You know, I got in the Coast Guard. That's what I wanted to do. ⁓ You know, you, you enjoy the fact that you can see a problem and in a realistic amount of time, solve a problem often, not all the time. And that part's really exciting. ⁓ But also over time, the response part, ⁓ you realize that you're, when you get to do a lot of responses, because a lot of other things failed. And so it's like, as you mature, you realize the reason, you know, like take Hurricane Katrina or when we have hurricanes where there wasn't enough evacuation, ⁓ either we didn't have enough mitigation, we didn't have enough preparedness. And then I started over time, just kind of feeling more sick about the response part, because you realize like, it's actually a failure when we need to do a lot of response. It's, and it's not that that group failed, it's that It's that the system failed populations. ⁓ Sometimes it's because of finances. know, people with money can evacuate people who have the financial means ⁓ can build a more resilient community. ⁓ And they don't have to build in the low grounds and areas like that. And over time, I got to this point where I just, don't enjoy a response like I used to. And just because it just comes down to it's like for me to enjoy a response, it means I'm mostly okay that somebody had to suffer for me to be there. And, know, I know it's normal, right? know, I got into volunteer firefighting. Of course you like fires, you like going to fires, but then you also over time, you mature and you realize that's somebody's home. Those are kids. So I've evolved more to where, where I definitely am interested in figuring out how we do more community work to help build resiliency in communities. I also enjoy the recovery work and I like the recovery work because It's not like I, like when I do response, I might see a person once and never again. And recovery work, feel like when we do it well, even in my leadership role now, I don't deal with them every day, but I'm in, they'll be like an incident. I'll see them a few weeks later. I'll check back in with them. And it's nice to know that if we're doing it right, I can help springboard people ⁓ to the next steps. So those are kind of, I'm leaning towards where I want more mitigation and more preparedness, but being a health and human services folk, what's most available to me to do is recovery. And I really like that. We can do it in a way that we might be able to change the long-term outcome of somebody's life.
Morgan Greenwood: phenomenal.
Keith Randall: Yeah, as you talk about ⁓ approaching emergency management kind of through that lens of human services and dignity, what does that look like in practice? What are some ways that you see that lived out?
Patrick M. Campbell: Yeah, dignity is, ⁓ I think the first thing to realize dignity is everybody is born with it, but we can do things to harm people's dignity and we can do things to help shield their dignity. And so it's like this recognition that everybody has value. And so some of it is how do we try to make our processes and systems, ⁓ have time to communicate with folks? Sometimes we're so focused on. systems and structures that are efficient. Like, and I think back to like tailoring economics where we're worried about like every motion a person makes. And what we're really often doing in a lot of our work is deciding how people should recover or how people should be prepared. And we're not including them in that conversation. ⁓ When I was down in that hurricane deployment and Matthew, I remember the, one of the chiefs of the Lumbee tribe said, you know, your people aren't, you know,
Keith Randall: you
Patrick M. Campbell: aren't communicating with us, aren't recognizing with us. And the truth was I ⁓ was deployed there on part of an incident command team. If there had been a federally recognized tribe, they would have automatically given me like a profile on this community. Well, I was like, well, what do I care if they're not recognized? I can treat them the same way. So I ended up requesting tribal a's on store with them. Then they were like, hey, but your people still don't understand our story in our community. And I was like, you're probably right. ⁓ So then I worked with them to create a class. So as our new volunteers for the Red Cross and our paid staff would arrive, they would do a class with the Lumbee historians to learn about their community. Now this wasn't a six hour course, right? Cause I had to get people out in the field, but every day we would offer this class to raise awareness, help them understand the story of their community and a way of connecting. And then we assigned tribal lesions ⁓ to that tribe to make sure that we were in tight communication. But dignity has also taken the time and space to adapt your methods for the community. I mean, it's, remember coming out of Katrina, not Katrina, I remember coming out of COVID and we had a lot of communities that loved when we were doing all the virtual work for recovery. They loved it, right? It was a great time. They loved the text messaging and we had added all this technology to work with the communities that way. And then all of I had a large incident that had a large ⁓ Ethiopian population displaced. And they just weren't digging virtually. They weren't digging the text messaging and all that. They really wanted us to get back to personal and get in, you know, spend time with them. So also we said, you know what? It's not working. So then we talked to them and said, what would you prefer? And we went back to doing the in-person meetings, setting up these big elaborate events. So it's realizing that in the scope of being a humanist is we can't have one solution that supports for everybody. ⁓ we have to ask questions.
Keith Randall: Mm-hmm.
Patrick M. Campbell: And then it's also just taking time. think because we don't often trauma inform so much of our staff, we don't realize that sometimes the anger we see actually has to do with something else. It could be something that's decades old. It could be something that's related to the incident, but we really have to spend time trying to understand each person and then figure out how we communicate. You'll never get everybody. But like I remember I had to do for my own home when we had a flood, like the SBA loan. the amount of work it took, the amount of paperwork, the amount of times you got to repeat things. And I'm sitting there thinking, well, I'm educated. I'm an experienced emergency manager and boy, I'm getting frustrated. So imagine somebody who has not ever thought about what this might look like, how they might feel. And so we very much in our county, we actually have an assigned recovery team for disasters that's prepared and trained for every incident. And even on like a small, we would consider small incident like 15 to 20 families displaced.
Keith Randall: Hmm. Yeah.
Patrick M. Campbell: they'll do four to 6,000 phone calls. They're not all picked up. And then we've also added text messaging, email, that way we're adapting per person. And then we make sure that the staff that are assigned per incident reflect the population they're serving. So if we're dealing with a primarily Hispanic population, we'll try to make sure we have staff that are from the culture. And the reason why I think that's really important too is there's a lot of cultural nuances that you could try to learn as an outsider.
Keith Randall: Hmm.
Patrick M. Campbell: But there's only so many you can pick up. They're just little things, whether how we can, who we communicate with the family, what are the words we use. And so it's really important to, if you can, and if you don't, if you can't fit it within your organization, find that partner that's part of that community to participate on your recovery teams.
Keith Randall: Yeah, that kind of leads right into what I was going to ask you next. And, and I think you already gave us the answer, but how for the, the solo emergency manager that's working in a one person shop or the fire chief that is also the emergency manager, ⁓ how can they incorporate these principles? And I think you kind of already answered that.
Patrick M. Campbell: Yeah, no, it's even because, you know, I know sometimes we'll think, OK, how do you do it in a small shop in a big jurisdiction? I do have more people, but I also have a lot of incidents. And so I have a different problem, right? I more incidents sometimes, especially during COVID. My fire is almost doubled because all some people are home 100 % of the time. So a lot of it is how do I do it in an efficient way and a meaningful way? And so we in our county, we formed our own county. VOAD, we call it a COAD, community organizations, active disaster. And when a big incident comes within 48 hours, we provide that group a brief. And then we also brief them on what's our donation management strategy, who is gonna be our primary organizations participating. Because like in my county, we have a few hundred nonprofits. So it's like, it's a Calvary Cam, but then now I can't figure out how to coordinate them because there's too many of them. And then we have a process where we train everybody thing like, Hey, if anything's going to happen, we're referring them to the co-ed new group wants to step up. And we try to pre-screen all the groups that we can before disaster. So we know who has what capabilities, what they can and can't do. But I do try to structure things around calls and briefing time. So that way it's just not constant. And so we have that general brief, and then we have smaller groups in our recovery, one who will talk about case management stuff. So that's the most protected.
Keith Randall: Hmm.
Patrick M. Campbell: right? They have HIPAA and privacy. But then we'll also have broader nonprofit coordination calls and we set that time. So somebody reaches out to me says, Hey, I need to talk about this. I like, is it an emergency? No, save it for that call. So sometimes it's about being efficient. And I think it's also being consistent. If every incident you provide them that brief, then eventually your nonprofits and your partners learn to wait for that call. They're like, okay, I know he's going to do the call. I know she will host the call within two days. I don't have to panic.
Keith Randall: You But using those community resources and sometimes in a small town, know, everybody, you know, they know everybody. These are their coworkers, their friends, their neighbors, and they want to get involved. But ⁓ coordinating those resources so that it is effective and efficient, I think, is good advice. So thank you.
Patrick M. Campbell: Yeah, another area to look at is, you know, don't forget that people come with a lot of skills. The during COVID was interesting for I think all governments, right? Because every county in America was hit, so there was no asking for help, right? And so I, we had to stand up all these additional feeding operations because at the height of it, we had like 24, 25 % of our own population was unemployed. And I didn't have, you know, we weren't doing mass feeding as a county government, right? We had nonprofits, but they were all overwhelmed.
Keith Randall: Mm-hmm.
Patrick M. Campbell: And so I ended up having to recruit volunteers in the early days. And my number one food volunteer was a guy who ran a catering company. ⁓ You know, he didn't have a background in doing distributions this way. ⁓ So I think it's also learning that, you know, just cause they're not government, it doesn't mean they don't have skills. And so figure out how you can draw talented people in. And I was very fortunate. You know, I got this guy who was super high talented and then ⁓ he helped me recruit additional folks.
Keith Randall: Mm-hmm.
Patrick M. Campbell: I eventually had the person who ran our school's nutrition program also joining our team. And so we ended up creating a task force that was probably one third government, one third community volunteers and one third nonprofit partners. And yeah, at the beginning, right, it was clumsy because we had to figure out who really could do. Cause you know, sometimes people want to, but they don't have time. So a lot of hiring and demoting and figuring out who should be where. But in the end, we created a... very effective, was what we eventually was named the Food Security Task Force, but an extremely effective team. And it actually stood up for a couple of years and then eventually we were able to make recommendations for long-term way for the county to deal with it in the future. But I think even in the future, big incident, it's always gonna include our community and our nonprofit partners.
Keith Randall: Excellent.
Morgan Greenwood: So it kind of leads into my next question, because we're sitting here talking about a more reactive approach that you had to stand up something quickly. Is there anything that you've done to try and shift the overall focus from a reactive emergency management to more of a proactive kind of mindset?
Patrick M. Campbell: Yeah, it's, I think it's interesting because like, I was thinking about this is how often emergency management leaned into doing like these community events where they hand out like little tiny first aid kits and CPR things. And they call that preparedness. ⁓ you know, because, you know, that's so much, so much of this field has leaned on those type of events when the truth is the people who go to those events are people who already care about preparedness. ⁓ the people who call us are people who care about. So the harder part is how do I get to the people that don't call, who don't complain, ⁓ who don't think government's there for them? And so that's the group that in many ways I want to get to because they're the ones who need me. I remember we had this like a... fire in our county and it was in a wealthier neighborhood. And within an hour, I had a call from all the senior administrators saying we need to do something. ⁓ And when I told them that we were gonna use a shelter, they all got rooms at the Marriott. And then at the same, and that was like a few weeks later, I had a fire in my low income community and nobody called me. ⁓ You know, other than the fire department asking us to send resources in the field. So it's the hardest group to reach. ⁓ is the group that I feel that we need to be present for resilience, right? People who have means, often will have insurance, they'll have family, they'll have intact resources. And it's not to say they don't need help, but we also have to acknowledge that there isn't a limitless amount of resources to give everybody what they want. And so if I'm not focusing my resources in the areas that where we're filling the most gaps, then I'm not doing something right. So our county during COVID created a number of outreach groups to try to effectively engage. ⁓ Sometimes it's just being able to create media campaigns that connect. ⁓ Like I know for COVID, they created one that was around ⁓ Abuelita, like the grandma. ⁓ And so that's one thing you gotta figure out, how you communicate, how you connect. ⁓ Reactive is difficult. ⁓ Not being reactive is difficult when you have transient populations, because it's constantly educating, constantly reaching out. But ⁓ one is trying to get materials in ⁓ that are written in a way that's relevant to the culture, but also in their language. I know there's been a lot of success in trying to do work that engages children. So like if you talk to the kids at the schools, they're more likely to come to mom and say, hey, I had a class today about smoke detectors. ⁓ We need to do this. That is one way. And then the other way is to look at the laws and codes that exist in your community. Some jurisdictions, for example, like with renters insurance, some jurisdictions have made it mandatory. And I know people hate it, but in my experience, the disaster, when people have insurance, they have a significant chance of recovering. Sometimes people will cancel it after they show it to the leasing office, but then it means I only have 5 % of the population I have to deal with versus 95. I do believe a big part of it is going to be code, right? We're going to have to make sure we're having stronger buildings that are safer, more secure. It's going to be working with groups to ensure that our road designs don't impact lower income structures. And I say that because often, especially like say for us in Maryland, our older infrastructure was designed for the rain amounts we got 50 years ago, not the rain amounts we get today. They build their build, they built buildings then the way we would never do. So we have a lot of buildings that have apartments that are below grade. All of our new buildings don't have that. And then our newer buildings, including single family homes. all have sprinkler systems if they're newer. And so that I think is how we often can benefit our lower income population is by upgrading our code, upgrading our building codes, and then having a proactive programs where we're inspecting apartments and complexes. The thing with transient populations or most vulnerable is they're always changing, right? It's, years ago, you know, like I think when my grandfather came, you know, he had Italian American 1920s, 1930s. in those same towns in Jersey, now the next generation of new population and new vulnerable is there. And so they're always evolving at who they are. And for a while I was even doing classes where I was targeting preparedness for immigrant populations. We have a lot of immigrant populations in Montgomery County. We're one of the most diverse in the United States. And when I was trying to design it, I was sitting there saying, well, how do I prepare them for emergency context in America? And the population in this case that I was working with is with Hispanic populations. So I looked at their building structures and I've spent some time in central and South America, lot of cinder block buildings. A lot of times the kitchen might be outside or in a more secure structure. Now they're in the United States where we build our kitchens out of flammable materials. ⁓ So I was like, I also was trying to recognize culturally like why are things different for their safety here? And what do they need to do differently here than they might've done at home? ⁓ And not in a way that I'm trying to say we're better or worse, but like if your home is made from cinder block, and how your home is made from flammable materials, which seems to be our preference in the United States, you need to be aware that there's certain things you gotta be prepared for that are different. And so that idea is like educating them around that, but I really think a big part of it is gonna be codes and inspections because the vulnerable populations never stop changing.
Keith Randall: Hmm.
Morgan Greenwood: Very interesting points. there's a question that kind of spins off of that. As you have been developing, you know, all these ideas and these practices, what's the sustainability of, you know, when you pass that torch eventually to the next emergency manager in the area, what's your sustainability look like for that?
Patrick M. Campbell: Yeah, it's interesting because to a degree, I felt like some of the work we've done in our region took a step back when we lost a bunch of the federal grants that's changed under this administration. So some of the programs we had dissolved in like three months. Particularly, we actually had a regional stockpile of mass care supplies that's now getting downloaded to local counties because it's no longer getting federal funding to support that. I say that to say it's like sometimes you think, oh man, we're leaving these great legacies and then boom, they're gone. ⁓ So a couple of things that I try to do, recognizing that all of us are going to move on. ⁓ I'm kind of the point in my career where I'm shifting to becoming more of a generalist, which is non-common in government right as you move up. I want to make sure, one, that I spend a lot of time mentoring and training. ⁓ So I'm at a couple of groups where I receive mentors here and there. Sometimes it's around the food work I did. ⁓ I think that's really, really valuable. How do you help people? ⁓ feel confident as they move up. Because I think one of the challenges of the new age emergency manager, so in the old days, right, they were a fire chief, they were a police chief, so they got all this formal leadership training. So now our new age one is they may not have any fire police services, they went to college, and they've been in emergency management for a while, but even a large emergency management unit might only be 19 to 25 people in some jurisdictions. So where do they really get leadership experience in a large scale sense for that once in a 10 year event? And I think that's the new problem, right? Is I think they have more awareness of all these big infrastructures and how the different layers of government work together, but then they get very little practical hands-on leadership. And I always think it's interesting, like in most governments, right? Your emergency manager is the senior ranking government official. And so like in my county, right? The county emergency manager has a staff of like, you know, 19 to 20 people. He has a similar rank to the person of my department, my director, who has a staff of 2,100. And I don't say that to say one is better than the worst, but where do you develop your leadership skills? And so that's, try to, I figure a big part I want to do is figure out how we help develop leaders. I have a handful of people I mentor. Like I was really excited that one of my mentors had invited me to her wedding. You know, I'm like 42, she's like 24, right? That was really cool. Like I felt like I had hit a home run in, in guiding and supporting her and her career. And now she's still thriving.
Keith Randall: you Yeah. Thank
Patrick M. Campbell: The other area too is trying to make sure a lot of our ideas and stuff are written down in guidebooks, manuals. ⁓ I participate in a lot of our regional work groups as well. And so every county in this region at one point or another, have briefed either their senior county staff or the people within their organizations. Cause like anything you could do great work and maybe my county will drop it, but just say maybe five other counties keep it up. I've even been coaching the county I live in cause I don't work in the county where I live in.
Keith Randall: you you
Patrick M. Campbell: And I've done like three or four sessions with them for free just to help them evolve. Cause I'm right now in the fastest group. live in the fastest growing County in Maryland, but it's still way smaller than the County I work for. And those are some of the small ways I can guarantee it. ⁓ It's the downside of emergency management is for a lot of County administrators, they want to put us behind glass until the emergency comes. But we're actually better if you let us be there all the time. It could be in building design, how we design our properties. A number of years ago, after a big incident, this county made sure that all of its rec centers were more resilient for disasters by having built-in generators, improved internet so we house people. And that's only works if you include emergency management in all phases of government. Don't put us back in glass. COVID could have been better for many jurisdictions if we didn't have that approach. ⁓
Keith Randall: Mm-hmm.
Patrick M. Campbell: because there are so many parts of our government that can participate in emergencies. But it's really hard if you don't know, because you say, oh, we're in the same government. You can just call so and so. All right. There's 19,000 people in my main government, 38,000 in my total. If you don't know the phone number to call, it doesn't matter if you know their name. so include us in all phases of government so we can build relationships, that we can build connections.
Morgan Greenwood: Yeah.
Patrick M. Campbell: ⁓ Sometimes like when I need a bus, you know, I'll call like the formal line and nobody's picking up. Then I can call some of the senior staff right now and they'll get that number picked up for me. We in our county, we run all distribution of ⁓ alcohol and liquor and things like that. During COVID, we use their vehicles and their refrigerators to store stuff. ⁓ Right? It's those relationships really matter, but that's only if you stop putting us back in the glass.
Keith Randall: Thank
Morgan Greenwood: Absolutely. That's a pretty, pretty common amongst emergency managers all over. So, you know, talking about those relationships and those partnerships, ⁓ we love to build them and they're, great in theory, but they can be very difficult in practice. What have you found that really works for you or in general when building partnerships and relationships across jurisdictions or across different agencies?
Patrick M. Campbell: Yeah, I mean, it does. ⁓ It's like the leadership challenge for everything is ⁓ who we pick to be our external kind of leaders really matter. So sometimes a person is really good at making a plan or really good at developing emergency manager structures. It's horrible with people. So we have to as individuals like develop our soft and our emotional IQ to connect with people. ⁓ A lot of times when I do this leadership classes, people will say, hey, what leadership books do you like? ⁓ And there's a lot of great leadership books. But I always tell people, read poetry and read literature. It sounds really simple. But I always said, you think Churchill was sitting there reading James Covey's book? Or Jim Collins, right? I mean, he was reading literature. He was writing poems. He also, one of his hobbies was brick laying. ⁓ It was really common in that time that rich guys would have blue collar hobbies. ⁓ But it's like this idea that you still got to be connected as a human being.
Keith Randall: .
Patrick M. Campbell: And it's those really, really soft skills that make you a genuine person. ⁓ So we can't think just because emergencies are important, people are going to listen to us. We also have to just be good people who care about people that are interested in people. And I feel like poetry and literature and having hobbies outside of work are the ways that help you connect with people. ⁓ Now those leadership books are great. In fact, I'm in an executive program right now at GW and I'm glad to read those books. Like right over there, I have Atomic Habits that I'm having to read. ⁓ I read James Covini and all those things are great too. ⁓ But you gotta meet people on a human level because that's how you first get trust before I ask you to do something for me. Because I can give you a plan that will make you happy, but then it's not really a genuine plan. And it's not one that I really did. because I only wrote it and a plan that's only written doesn't mean a lot. Right. And so a human connection, I think transforms that and human connection is really important. So I think our, our executive leaders and our senior leaders, we have to remember that likeability and gravitas and those types of skills are really important. mean, even Colin Powell said you bring the weather. That was one of his like favorite motto. So if I come into a space positive and optimistic, people are more likely to follow me.
Keith Randall: Hmm.
Patrick M. Campbell: I've known some great emergency managers that were like, encyclopedias and they knew all the ways you should do stuff. But boy, were they unlikable and boy, did they not connect with people. And that really, really matters. ⁓ and then also like caring about people, like getting conflict facilitation or conflict mediation skills. ⁓ my staff used to say to me, cause I used to tell them if you had a really, really difficult client, send them to me. I learned this from being like, worked in tourism for a while. When I went to back back in college, I worked at Thomas Jefferson's home as an operations manager. And like this idea, like I can deal with a difficult person because I can hide later on in my office. You can't, you got to stay out front. ⁓ But they also told me this was their observation, like was when people got mad, I would sit there, they'd see me sit down, just listen to them and said, by the time they left, you had them laughing. ⁓
Morgan Greenwood: You
Patrick M. Campbell: And I think it sounds like a small thing, but like we're dealing with really stressful environments and the worst thing the emergency manager could do is make it worse. Right. Make people feel more stressed out. It's your job to help bring perspective, get people to relax. ⁓ It is your job to give them direction, give them permission to feel upset, but also permission to get them to stay focused on the mission at this time. Say, Hey, I see you're upset, but this is where we need to be.
Keith Randall: Mm-hmm.
Patrick M. Campbell: And I think that's what we're talking about. Leaders doesn't mean all emergency managers have to fit that bill because we need everybody like the person who's terrible people, but great at details. We all love that person, right? They're so good at writing plans, but maybe they're not always the most extroverted or enjoy the people part. But like I'll never be the person who wants to sit down and like look for every mistake in a guidebook or a text. That's not going to ever be me. ⁓ I'm glad I had people who are better at that detail work than I.
Keith Randall: So looking back across your career, which is somewhat diverse, you've been in different, both in government and non-government and military, what was one of the toughest challenges that you faced that you didn't expect going in? Sometimes we go into something and we go, this is going to be tough. I know there's going to be a big challenge. Other times we kind of get blindsided by that challenge. ⁓
Morgan Greenwood: Yeah.
Keith Randall: Can you think of an instance when that happened as you were going into something and you really kind of hit an unexpected challenge?
Patrick M. Campbell: I mean, let's go back to the beginning of COVID, March, you know, 2020. You know, I remember we had, all these different plans and all these ideas of things we wanted to do. Um, but it required that in the end event of a big incident, right, you could ask for help. And so it's like, we're in March and our government sent everybody home, but us. And so here we are. And I got to sign down to public health.
Keith Randall: Yeah.
Patrick M. Campbell: And at first we're like, what can we do? Like all of our resources and tools are taken away. The world is shutting down. People are scared. I mean, this is, I remember this idea of like, what can we do? And so at first we're just, all right, well, let's start addressing some of like the policy things that are coming away. Like, I remember like funeral directors wanted to know all these things. How can you handle these bodies? And I wasn't a public health person. And then, so at first we're stuck there and then we're like, wait, we have to do something. And so then we started figuring out how we reorganize, find people, can we recruit other people from other parts of our government to join? And before you know it, we went from like a room of eight to 12 of us. Before you know it, had firefighters in our space. We pulled in volunteers. We had the Civil Air Patrol. But it also took trust, because some of these groups, like we had never really worked with the Civil Air Patrol, particularly as like a public health. is how do you find the right people? So we had to let go of this that only government people could be in government spaces And we started pulling them in then all of a one day said hey the food organizations are struggling like all right, what can we do about that? So then we started forming the group like I was telling you about earlier like okay We pulled some people out of public health to work there And then it was the same thing as we don't have any resources for dealing with this and then you know first that your your head hits the wall and then wait, we have to do something. And then we first thing we did was we can help them find more food. And we worked with our government to provide initial funding. And then we like, well, how do we get them food fast? And then my friend who I recruited as a caterer, he came in and said, we can get a contract with a food distributor to help us do that. All right, then how do we train them to do it? Then we found more people. But it was like the incident that I never thought I would be one assigned to public health in that way. I never thought I'd be assigned to the food security task force.
Keith Randall: Mm-hmm.
Patrick M. Campbell: which is funny, now I get recruited to do talks on the food stuff. If you asked me in March, 2020, I would have told you I'm not a food person. Like I did emergency mass feeding in the Red Cross context, but that's different. ⁓ And it's just this idea like the emergency management skills and what we did with the food security task forces, we created, know, incident command structure. We assigned leadership, clearly defined roles. Those are the tools we brought to it.
Keith Randall: Hmm.
Patrick M. Campbell: And then we made sure we pulled in nonprofits and people of various skills and abilities to fill in those other spots. Was it perfect ICS? Nope, not at all. But there was parts of it that were extremely useful in the sense that people understood, hey, this is your roles. This is your roles. This is your roles. This is your and I had to, I had to coexist in my normal mass care role. I had to exist in my public health role during that time. And I had to exist in my. a food security task force role and people like, well, how did you do it? Well, I did the method of when you have more work, you ask for more help. So I would have bosses and I would go to them and say, Hey, this is what I need to be able to do this. And so they ended up giving me additional staff at one point at national guard signed to me. And then I would give each group clearly defined roles and responsibilities in every area. And every level had clear areas that were within their decision-making authority. That way I wasn't making every decision.
Keith Randall: Yeah.
Patrick M. Campbell: And because I also took time to listen and care about what they had to say, they would give great feedback. Like, Hey, I think we should do it this way. I think we should do it this way. I'm very proud to say that a number of those contractors still work for my department. eventually moved into merit positions and I still see them around department. I said, you know what? We did that because of COVID. Like I helped bring people up by, you know, and it was really interesting because like when I first got contractors for COVID testing, it was a small team. Then they said, we need a bigger.
Keith Randall: Mm-hmm.
Patrick M. Campbell: So then I would promote within and then we got bigger. then I created just like ICS was I created another layer. And before, you know what, I had contract managers, supervisors, and then we had our frontline staff and we kept building out that way. And that's what you have to do. You have to figure out how you make it manageable and you have to stop micromanaging. You have to let people make decisions. The goal is the end result, not always every detail on how they get there. So long as they're not burning bridges and relationships, we got to get people to do it their way. because people just do things differently based on their background.
Keith Randall: Excellent. Has that continued ⁓ to influence and direct what you do in emergency management today from those things that you kind of those lessons you learned or the things you put in place?
Patrick M. Campbell: absolutely. ⁓ I'm fortunate to say like today, ⁓ like, well, we just got through a COOP process for my department. So I took those same ideas that, you during COVID, we narrowed our COOP planning with one person and it failed. And I was like, well, the only way to do this right is to teach ⁓ of the people who are within those organizations how to do it. So each group, and like I said, we're 2,100. merit employees, and other four to 500 contractors were broken down with 74, 74 spaces we managed, but staff in almost 400 spaces. And so there is no way to centrally control that. So I took that same model where each group had to create, um, three members who would be part of the planning team. We took them, these are social workers, therapists, administrators, people who have no COOP background whatsoever. And from July last year, so 13 months or 14 months ago,
Keith Randall: and
Patrick M. Campbell: We began their training. We brought them through a complete training evolution. Then a let's start planning phase, educate, you know, re process. Then we did a mentoring process where they had to submit their initial plans, where three or four of us worked with them, reviewed it, mentored them together. Where just last week we did a peer review where all of them had to present to each other and give each other feedback. So we took that same model and like, it was funny when I had to first get them doing it, it was like dragging them along. During the peer review, there was a lot of pride in what they had. had accomplished. And there were details in the work they did that if I had written that plan, I would never ever have paid attention to, gotten to, or been aware of. There's no way I could have done that.
Keith Randall: Excellent.
Patrick M. Campbell: So I got a better product out of it by taking people who didn't know the COOP part, but they knew that the job part.
Keith Randall: Yep. Yep.
Morgan Greenwood: So, you know, there's just so much ⁓ knowledge that you've acquired over time, so many experiences that you've had, know, reactive things that you've had to adjust to. ⁓ Since you have all this knowledge, what advice would you give to someone, you know, a student or someone who's making a career change who are either considering entering the field or have just now entered the field? What kind of advice would you give to them?
Patrick M. Campbell: I think the first thing is don't choose a part of emergency management yet you want to stay in. ⁓ What you think you're interested in and what you will end up doing may very well be different. And it reminds me when I first got in the Coast Guard, I went enlisted. And I remember I still in boot camp and the company commander asked, you know, who wants to do this job and who wants to do this job? So everybody, when they joined the Coast Guard, especially the enlisted side, they want to be like a boats and bait. They want to be an aviation survival technician, which is people jump out of helicopters. And he says, you know, this is what you all say now, but he says, within a few years, you guys are going to represent every part of the coast guard. And it was right. I didn't go boatswain's mate and I didn't go AST. I didn't want to go AST. I didn't want to jump out of the helicopters, but I did want to be on small boats and I ended up not being in small boats. Um, we make a lot of decisions in the early part of our career off of very limited information. And, you know, and especially if you are younger in your career or you're new in the career, if you're just new in the career, but maybe you've been around for a while, ⁓ you just don't know enough. And if you're early in your career, you don't really actually yet know what you're great at ⁓ and what you enjoy. And you should try, if you can in your career, try different opportunities. I've seen people who went into the hospital side of emergency management. They love it. Right. It's very clear about some of the things you have to execute. You're within a somewhat of a community by being a single hospital or maybe a hospital system, and that can feel good. Some people love the emergency manager who's in the small town. And you you got, you know, a lot of independence. You serve people who you know, ⁓ and that can feel good. And then some people will love the idea going to a larger organization like FEMA where it's, you know, it could be policy driven or it could be big systems. ⁓ Try to spread yourself out in different opportunities in your early career. Other important things is don't forget about the second part of who you are, your work outside, your life outside of work. And you want to make sure your professional goals align with that as well. You know, if you join a FEMA deployable team, you got to realize you're always going to be giving up your personal life for the sake of a deployment. And that could be what you want. That could be not what you want. ⁓ And so make sure you're making sure the outside of work you exist in the work and the choice you make in your professional life. When I did my, when I was doing a lot of deployments to the Red Cross, I had to sacrifice a lot of my personal life. And I love the deployments for me. It was exciting. You get out there, you were the team, you know, you're solving problems. You feel really, really good until a couple of weeks of, you know, 10 to 12 cups of coffee hits you. And that part's really exciting. But then there's a part where, like I was deploying and my wife, and at the time I just had one child. Now I have two.
Keith Randall: Thank
Patrick M. Campbell: is missing me and I get like videos from my daughter and she just, you know, asking me when I'm coming home. ⁓ and then the burden you leave on your family when you deploy and it also wears you out. I remember like coming back from one of my deployments and I was just worn out for like three months straight. ⁓ and so I was glad I did that for a while. ⁓ I was good at it, but then I was also glad when I stopped doing it as much. And so just make sure that two parts of your life are in balance. You can't forget that you are not just your work. And the other part is if you find a part of emergency management that doesn't feel right, realize there's a whole bunch of other parts of emergency management. You know, there's mitigation, there's COOP, ⁓ there's historical preservation, which I almost say ⁓ maybe once the FEMA jobs start reopening someday, I might want to go that way because there's the other part of Patrick that loves history. That's why when I went back to college, I got a full-time job at Monticello. ⁓ Before 9-11, I would have been a history teacher. That was the path I was headed on.
Keith Randall: Hmm.
Patrick M. Campbell: And in 9-11 learning about emergency management shift app, but that doesn't stop me from caring about that stuff. So I might someday try to find a way to maybe combine the two of them together. But yeah, just realize you can adjust. And then the last bit of advice is that emergency management looks so different in the nonprofit side, the local, the state and the federal. If you have an opportunity to try them, try them. They are different and they're different in good ways. They're different in bad ways. And people thrive at different ones. And sometimes you really like that big organization. Like the nice thing about a big organization is there's clear pathways up. There's clear structures about different roles. And you might really just like doing one part of emergency management and larger organizations make that easier. In your small town emergency manager, you might have two other jobs before you have your emergency management job. But you got to do everything. But you may like that. You might like that idea of being involved in all kinds of parts of people's lives. ⁓ It's a good chance that you may be from that area or from that community or deeply care about that community. That's why you chose it. And so you love that idea that you'll have all of these jacks of trades, but the challenge of being, you know, knowing a little bit about everything, sometimes we just don't know a lot about anything. And so that can also feel frustrating. So if you're not comfortable with that, not being the one who knows everything, that could be challenging for you. But if you're okay with that and then you're okay inviting people in your space when you need that help.
Morgan Greenwood: Mm.
Patrick M. Campbell: that now could work very well for you.
Keith Randall: Thank you.
Morgan Greenwood: Amazing advice, amazing advice.
Keith Randall: Very good. All right. Well, Patrick, thanks so much for being on today. This has been a great time spending time with you. appreciate you coming on and sharing with us your experiences and your insights, particularly on ⁓ kind of the human side, having that empathy, that people centered approach to emergency management that a lot of times we think about problems and we think about even the word management or we're managing things and And with people, we're caring for people. I think able to ⁓ that approach and have that human-centered approach is excellent. So thank you for sharing that with us.
Patrick M. Campbell: Yep, absolutely. I was glad to be part of it today.
Keith Randall: Well, we hope you enjoyed today's discussion on people centered emergency management and public service leadership. Keep an eye out for future episodes where we talk with others contributing in a significant way to the field of emergency management. If you enjoyed today's episode, please like and follow and subscribe to our future podcast. And as always, stay safe, stay prepared. and we'll see you next time.
