Dr. Jeff Stern is the Superintendent of the National Disaster and Emergency Management University in Emmitsburg, Maryland. He previously led the Virginia Department of Emergency Management, where he was responsible for disaster and homeland security preparedness, mitigation, response and recovery efforts across the commonwealth. He deployed Virginia’s first responders to disasters across the United States, including Hawaii, Alaska, California, Texas, Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, West Virginia, Maryland, Pennsylvania, New York, Massachusetts, Puerto Rico, and the U.S. Virgin Islands. He also chaired the Virginia 911 Board and oversaw all the Commonwealth’s homeland security and emergency management grant programs.
Dr. Stern served for more than three decades as an emergency manager, first responder, agency executive, advisor and consultant. Over the course of his career, he served in local, state and federal government positions, in the private and academic sectors, as well as presidential appointments as a White House Fellow at the Department of the Interior and the White House Homeland Security Council, and as Executive Director of the Homeland Security Advisory Council, the advisory board to the Secretary of Homeland Security. Dr. Stern began his career as a firefighter and paramedic, serving through the rank of battalion chief with departments in Maryland, Virginia and Colorado, and deployed with incident management teams to hurricanes Charley (2004) and Katrina (2005), and the Haiti earthquake (2010).
Dr. Stern previously served on several advisory boards, including FEMA’s National Advisory Council, where he chaired the Response and Recovery Committee and the FEMA 2040 Committee, the U.S. Department of Commerce’s FirstNet Public Safety Advisory Committee, the National Capital Region Homeland Security Executive Committee, the National Homeland Security Consortium, the Department of Homeland Security Science and Technology First Responders Resource Group, the National Emergency Management Association’s board of directors, and the College of William & Mary Public Policy Program Advisory Board.
Dr. Stern graduated from the College of William and Mary (B.A. Government), the American University School of Public Affairs (MPA), and the Virginia Tech Center for Public Administration and Policy (Ph.D.), and he has attended the Naval Postgraduate School Executive Leaders Program. He is a Certified Emergency Manager and a National Fire Academy Executive Fire Officer.