Among those who laid the foundation for Emergency Management, we owe a special debt to Leon Frazier, who at the time was head of Public Sector for Nextel. He educated us on the problems of all-hazards emergency management and convinced us that there was a need for a publication to bring together all the stakeholders across federal, state and local government and private-sector partners, as well as volunteer organizations. His vision gave us our unique mission, and his support made the launch of Emergency Management magazine possible
We received more insights and encouragement from contributing writers such as Russell Decker, Bob Jaffin, William Eggers and Eric Holdeman who brought on-the-ground experience to our pages. Their perspectives gave real depth to our editorial coverage.
We developed many of our story ideas from participants in our editorial roundtables in Miami-Dade, Fla., and Los Angeles. Experts like Doug Bass, Bob Palestrant, Frank Reddish, Jim Featherstone, Tony Cardenas, Randi Levin and Thera Bradshaw shared valuable insights. These roundtables allowed us to bring together diverse regional stakeholders to discuss initiatives and issues that affect all of us. We look forward to holding many more editorial roundtables and we hope we will get to meet many more of you at these nationwide events in 2009.
We will move from a quarterly publication to a bimonthly publication, expand our audience and bring you a greatly enhanced Web site with more content and new ways for you to connect with your peers. We will reach out to many of you through surveys to understand the issues that most concern you and will ask some of you to contribute articles to share with your peers in our magazine and on our Web site.
To make all this possible, we are adding some key players to our team. Marty Pastula joins us as vice president of Justice and Public Safety and Emergency Management. He will have the primary responsibility for developing our relationships with government and industry stakeholders and guiding our expansion efforts. Scott Fackert, the publisher of Emergency Management, will have the task of managing the talented team of editors, writers, designers, and sales and marketing professionals who produce the magazine.
We've come a long way in a short time, and we look forward to meeting and working with more of you. Our goal is to give honor to your service, tell your stories and share your ideas and insights. Thank you all for giving us this opportunity.
Tim Karney is the founding publisher of Emergency Management magazine.
