Advisory Board

Since 2012, Gradiva has worked in her community to advance emergency preparedness, with a focus on schools and community-based disaster response. She served as Commissioner, Vice-Chair, and Chair of Berkeley’s Disaster and Fire Safety Commission from 2016 to 2021. During this tenure, she developed recommendations to enhance safety and equity in a WUI fire, earthquake, or other public safety emergency. She is also a moulage artist and has volunteered to provide victim injury effects at many responder trainings.

From 2020-2021 Gradiva was a founder and program lead for Berkeley Mutual Aid, a community non-profit organization helping people stay safe and connected through the Covid crisis. At BMA, she spearheaded programs to facilitate peer-to-peer assistance and distribute masks and other PPE.

Gradiva is a licensed Civil Engineer (PE) in California, with an MS from Purdue University.

Leah is an Emergency Services Coordinator for the City of Berkeley, who focuses on community preparedness programs, alert and warning, and mass care and shelter. She has worked in emergency management since 2016, as a disaster recovery consultant on multiple federally declared disasters, a disaster recovery planning program manager for the California Governor’s Office of Emergency Services, and most recently as an emergency services coordinator and public information officer for Napa County. She has been fascinated by disasters since a 2007 service trip to Louisiana following Hurricane Katrina and the levee failures, and remains particularly focused on social vulnerability, climate risk, the political and legal foundations of emergency management, and disaster communications. In her spare time, you can catch her wandering Berkeley’s many great paths or on another Bay Area hike.

Lars Eric is the Disaster Preparedness Coordinator for Eden I&R / 2-1-1 Alameda County, the 2-1-1 service provider for all of Alameda County. Before joining Eden I&R in 2016, Lars Eric was the Senior Community Educator for CARD – Collaborating Agencies Responding to Disasters.

He has been involved in disaster preparedness since 2008. Throughout his career, he has enjoyed being able to incorporate his past experiences: teaching children, information technology, and martial arts.

Lars Eric conducts trainings and workshops for numerous agencies on the wide range of topics: personal preparedness, agency planning, violence prevention and active violence, Incident Command System (ICS) for Community Responders, and Continuity of Operations Planning (COOP), using the curriculum developed by CARD, using CARD’s fear-free, empowerment-based, and facilitatory approach. He has conducted trainings for diverse communities, ranging from children to seniors, the visually impaired to deaf/hard-of-hearing, and developmentally disabled, low-income, and others in need.

Ana-Marie is the lead for projects related to readiness, resilience, and public safety. Her current projects focus on helping clients with pandemic-related issues, as well as supporting teams in finding their post-Covid new normal.

Before joining InterPro, for 16 years Ana-Marie was the executive director of CARD — Collaborating Agencies Responding to Disasters. At CARD, Ana-Marie worked with hundreds of nonprofits, government partners, and community stakeholders to address preparedness, safety, and resilience planning with and for diverse and more marginalized communities.

Locally, Ana-Marie is the safety lead for the Adams Point Neighborhood Group, which is the local National Crime Prevention Council for the City of Oakland’s most densely populated neighborhood. She’s a member of the Lake Merritt Community Alliance Working Group, and she serves as the Chief Innovation Officer for the Oakland group known as the Trash Falcons.

In 2012, she was inducted into the Women in Emergency Management and Homeland Security Hall of Fame for her innovations with engaging diverse communities.

Bio TK.

Barbara has rich experience as a disaster medical responder, service to medically under-served communities as a Primary Care Physician Assistant, disaster response planning and training with non-profit Community Health Centers in the East Bay and Disaster Preparedness field research in Cuba.

First hand disaster response experience as a member of disaster medical teams includes the World Trade Center (New York, 2001), Hurricane Katrina (New Orleans, 2005), the San Diego wildfires (California 2007), earthquake response in Haiti (Jan 2010), shelter medical support for wildfire evacuees in northern California and medical care in Indonesia following the tsunami.

Doug is an Oakland Firesafe Council board member and founder and manager of its emergency preparedness and wildfire safety programs. These programs provide education, materials/Guides and community engagement, and include Personal Emergency Preparedness workshops, Firewise USA support, firescaping, ember safety and the GENOAK emergency 2-way radio network. Doug has been leading community preparedness and organization efforts in Oakland for over 20 years. He is CORE/CERT and FEMA trained and an amateur radio RACES volunteer. His “day job” is CTO at SeniorFusion; a non-profit initiative to improve seniors’ health, safety and wellness through increased awareness and adoption of innovative technology solutions.

Susan has 30 years of experience working as program creator, fundraiser, project manager, strategic planner and educator centered in people-powered and nature-based solutions that build thriving, equitable and resilient communities. Since starting out as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Costa Rica, she has worked for a variety of organizations, including Acterra, Hostelling International, the Berkeley Unified School District and NorCal Resilience Network. Susan is the founder of Planting Seeds Consulting and the nonprofit organization Collective Resilience and is currently working with a variety of organizations to help develop and fund resilient hubs and spaces, integrating disaster preparedness, sustainability & community care.

Susan has long been interested in mental health and well being during disasters. She holds a MA in Counseling Psychology and is a Lecturer at the Haas School of Business. Susan also teaches “Disaster Mental Health” and “Improvisational Leadership for CERT” for the City of Berkeley.