Biography
Donna is an Internationally recognized risk and resilience advisor with 20+ years of experience working with Federal, State, local, NGOs, international governments and corporations. Donna has a proven track record of leading organizations in identifying, analyzing, mitigating emerging threats and risks through solution-oriented problem-solving.
She is a published thought leader with a passion for Operational Risk and Resilience. A problem-solver of large, complex, cross-functional challenges and an advocate of using gamification, microsimulations, and thinking outside the box problem solving techniques. She has presented in 2024 at numerous conferences on the subject of risk and resilience advantages and adversities of the use of Artificial Intelligence.
She sits on the Advisory Board for the Women in Leadership Program at the University of Colorado, Colorado Springs, as well as, the Advisory Board for MIT’s Resilience Courses where she also guest lectures as part of the program. She is a member of the Disaster Recovery Institute’s Women in Business Continuity Group and a mentor for TPRA’s Mentorship Program. She is a thought leader, a sought-after speaker at various industry conferences, and a published author.
Leadership Characteristics
Meyers Briggs – ENTP (no surprise!).
Strategic thinker and problem solver
Creative approaches to assist leadership in decision making
Uses unique learning approaches to explore complex concepts such as:
Gamification strategies,
Employing use of tools that aid in learning like microsimulations
Relationship builder
Leadership Challenges
Donna made the transition from supporting government entities to commercial business. This is a vast difference in approach when having gone from Federal, State, and local support to the commercial space where you have to market, brand, and sell products. Having shifted from the federal arena, she has also experienced working internationally both with governments and private sector entities. This has presented much larger compliance differences, cultural nuances, and challenges that she rapidly overcame and delivered successfully on for several international clients.
Her ability to work with clients in multiple time zones and present online training to employees from different cultures earned her recognition from many clients in the international space. She led teams and projects to success through challenging threat incidents and events. One of the biggest challenges she sees consistently in this space is still knocking down silos across an enterprise and building a risk culture across the entirety of an organization.
Key Take-a-ways
"I am very intrigued by the risk AI poses to our industry. The speed at which AI is evolving is incredible. I think our industry is largely unprepared for what is to come. It’s not a matter of AI replacing our jobs - but more if we don’t adopt AI we will be replaced. AI is the new black. We should be continuously learning in our space to begin with and AI is no exception to that. It will be interesting to see how AI risk is managed in different organizations and how it aligns with regulations and compliance. If an organization is too conservative to adapt AI, just know, competitors, your third parties, fourth parties are using AI as are your employees just not in your secure space. Also regulators want to know how your organization is reviewing AI Risk."
"I was once called a Resilience Unicorn. I suspect this is because I am a little ADHD, though it’s probably due to the wide skillset I have as a resilience professional. You have to be truly a jack of all trades in our profession. I definitely am always looking to do more, understand more. Constantly learn. Not everyone gets that. I am excited for what AI is going to do in our space. How it will evolve risk management. But we also need to think once we get more time as AI is adapted, what can I do now as a human that cannot be replaced by machine."
Fun Fact
Donna was raised in Heidelberg, Germany and lived there for 18 years. She produced an award-winning docuseries on childhood cancer, and as a result, is on IMDB.