Business Resilience DECODED

Episode 95: Building Personal Resilience Through Gratitude and Meditation with Lori Saitz Emergency management and business resilience professionals are often in high-stress situations and can be among the key decision makers in a crisis. While we focus so much on the resilience of our organizations, we might forget to pay attention to our personal resilience as well. In this episode, Lori Saitz o...

Episode 94: The Risk of Exclusion – How Avoiding Diversity Puts Organizations at Risk with Raven Solomon This episode is brought to you by Fusion Risk Management, Building a More Resilient World Together. Request a demo at https://bit.ly/FusionDECODED today! Raven Solomon is back to dive deeper into the topic of generational diversity, and how Gen Z is modeling the future of diversity in the workp...

Episode 93: Olanike Ayomide-Mensah What does equity look like on a global scale? In this episode, Equity Strategist Olanike Ayomide-Mensah joins us to share her perspective on moving from Nigeria to Ohio as a young girl and navigating adolescence as both an American citizen and an immigrant. Olanike has worked with several organizations through her DEI consulting firm Mosaic Consulting, and she sh...

Episode 92: How DEI Should Connect to Your Business Goals and Operations with Kevin Clayton, VP of diversity, inclusion and community engagement for the NBA's Cleveland Cavaliers This episode is brought to you by Fusion Risk Management, Building a More Resilient World Together. Request a demo at https://bit.ly/FusionDECODED today! There have been so many conversations around diversity, equity, and...

Episode 91: How Generational Diversity and Racial Equity are Getting Companies Future-Ready with Raven Solomon This month, the Business Resilience DECODED Podcast will be focused on diversity, equity, and inclusion in the workplace. Avoiding this important topic and all the critical conversations around it means accepting risk in our organizations, so in this episode, Raven Solomon is guiding us t...

Episode 90: The Role of Individuals and Local Government in Disaster Preparedness with Former FEMA Administrator Brock Long This episode is brought to you by Fusion Risk Management, Building a More Resilient World Together. Request a demo at https://bit.ly/FusionDECODED today! While FEMA is the first organization mentioned when a disaster hits a community, there is actually a lot of responsibility...

Episode 89: The Four Vectors of Risk – Risk Management Strategies to Follow in 2022 This episode is brought to you by Fusion Risk Management, Building a More Resilient World Together. Request a demo at https://bit.ly/FusionDECODED today! I sat down with James Donnelly of M Booth Public Relations to discuss our thoughts on the unique challenges emergency managers will be facing in a post-pandemic w...

Episode 88: How Strong Negotiation Skills Build Strong Business Relationships Negotiation is a skill that so many leaders don’t practice before they need them. While negotiation might bring to mind some imagery of a power struggle, it can actually be an excellent tool for building your business relationships. In this episode, Richard Coughlan is giving us a short masterclass on the skills we need...

Episode 87: How the Great Resignation is Affecting Business Continuity & How to Prepare for It in 2022 We’ve all heard of “The Great Resignation,” but many of us in the business continuity space are on the frontlines witnessing and feeling the effects of massive staffing shortages. Unfortunately, this phenomenon is only continuing into 2022, but with the right action steps, you can reduce its effe...

Episode 86: 2021 Year in Review In this episode Vanessa takes a solo tour through the past year, looking at some of the big public events as well as some private lessons learned. She remembers the election of Raphael Warnock as the first African-American to represent Georgia in the Senate, the ransomware attack on the Colonial Pipeline, the U.S. departure from Afghanistan, and the victory of her h...

Episode 85: Below the Headlines: The Real Details of a Cyberattack Every executive has been warned about cyberattacks. Few are prepared for the stress that occurs when a hacker encrypts their data and their insurance company tells them they won’t pay. This week Vanessa talks cybersecurity with Mark Sangster, vice president of industry security strategies at eSentire and the author of “No Safe Harb...

Episode 84: Solutions to Financial Services Risks (in 15 Minutes) What are the main risks facing financial services companies today? How can these risks be minimized? These are the questions Vanessa tackles in this week’s fast-paced and insight-packed solo edition of the podcast. The past couple of years have been hard on financial services companies. Independent reports have shown that the COVID...

Episode 83: Infrastructure Considerations for Disaster Recovery What infrastructure do companies need to make sure their precious data doesn’t vanish into thin air? That’s the topic of this week’s episode, in which Vanessa interviews data security expert Jeff Barber, partner and executive vice president for sales and business development for Prime Data Centers. Vanessa and Jeff chat about what org...

Episode 82: The Intersection of Logistics and Crisis Management Vanessa is joined by logistics expert Fred Cartwright, business development manager with Haversack, for a talk about the crisis facing the global supply chain. There’s a worldwide shortage of semiconductors, space in U.S-bound cargo ships is at a premium, vessels are backed up outside U.S. ports, everybody wants everything right now,...

Episode 81: Diversity Is More Than Skin Deep In this episode, Vanessa talks diversity with Dan Rector, business resilience advisor with her company, Asfalis Advisors. In addition to being content coordinator for the Business Resilience DECODED podcast, Dan helps organizations prepare for the unexpected. Prior to joining Asfalis, he served six years on active duty in the Coast Guard and worked full...

Episode 80: Personal Resilience Vanessa’s guest is Marie Hale, cofounder and visionary at @revenue, the innovative Chicago sales and marketing agency. The topic is personal resilience. Vanessa defines personal resilience as the “ability to absorb an impact or disruption and be able to bounce back.” Marie has thought a lot about personal resilience over the past few years. She had no choice after t...

Episode 79: Understanding Ransomware Vanessa is joined by Brian Kirk, director of cybersecurity for Elliott Davis, LLC, a Southeast-based accounting and consulting firm. The subject is ransomware, specifically ransomware, as it impacts small businesses. Ransomware attacks on companies with 100 or fewer employees get little publicity, says Vanessa, and most small business owners underestimate the d...

Episode 78: Sound Practices for Leadership Please take part in our podcast listener survey at: https://forms.gle/XDuYPcFjXaydkEXV6 In this bonus episode of the podcast, Vanessa sits down with Margaret Millett of Uber Technologies, Inc. Margaret is a global resilience senior manager with more than 25 years of experience leading business continuity programs. She is interested in helping interns and...

Episode 77: Attracting and Recruiting Talent for a Crisis Management Company This week on the podcast, Vanessa sits down with one of the key behind-the-scenes players at her company to talk about attracting and recruiting talent for a crisis management company. Her guest is Venus Arthur, Asfalis’s director of administration. Venus has a master’s in accounting and financial management and spent man...

Episode 76: This week Vanessa talks with Justin Pierce, emergency management director at Los Angeles World Airports in L.A., about the challenges involved in finding the right people to fill positions in emergency management. Earlier this year, Justin published an article on his LinkedIn page called “Coffee Shop Thinking: Hiring the Next Emergency Managers.” Vanessa loved the article, and this was...

Episode 75: This week’s podcast is all about sin. Vanessa’s guest is Rick Christ, a senior consultant at Crisis Prevention and Response, Inc., and a FEMA Master Exercise Practitioner. Rick lays out his seven deadly sins of crisis management exercises. The sins are mistakes organizations commonly make in preparing for and conducting exercises to demonstrate their readiness to respond to a disaster....

Episode 74: After-Action Reports and the Blameless Postmortem Concept This week on the podcast Vanessa explores a new approach to an old tool with Justin Kates, the head of the Nashua (NH) Emergency Management Agency and president of the International Association of Emergency Managers, Region 1. The tool under discussion is the After-Action Report (AAR). Justin explains that in the past few years...

Episode 73: Crisis Management with an Equity Lens Vanessa is on her own and speaking truth to power in this episode on crisis management and the ongoing racial-justice crisis. Directing her remarks toward people responsible for diversity and inclusion at their organizations, as well as forward-thinking business continuity and risk management professionals, she lays out some of the key issues lying...

Episode 72: ‘Reset and Recover: Navigating the Road to Resilience’ In this special extended edition of the podcast, Vanessa and guest cohost Jeni Bukolt, president and founder of Haven Creative, talk to three dynamic local leaders from around the country about how they have been helping their communities navigate the road to resilience following the public health and economic crises of the past ye...

Episode 71: Doniella Mckoy of Health Partners Plans and University of Alaska Fairbanks Contact Doniella Mckoy at: https://www.linkedin.com/in/doniella-mckoy/ Business Resilience Decoded: https://www.drj.com/decoded/ https://www.asfalisadvisors.com/decoded/ https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCNEIrqWlxuyDvkXB24h6Obw https://twitter.com/BRDecoded https://www.linkedin.com/showcase/business-resilience-de...