Lucas Basham Murphy, a Principal Emergency Response Specialist for the Nevada National Security Site (NNSS), recently graduated from FEMA’s National Emergency Management Executive Academy (NEMEA) at the Emergency Management Institute in Emmitsburg, Maryland. The NEMEA program is designed to challenge and enhance the talents of emergency management leaders’ critical thinking, visionary strategic planning, negotiation and conflict resolution applied to complex real-world problems.
Individuals who apply for the academy must have more than 10 years in emergency management. The NEMEA committee selects up to 40 applicants each year based on experience, recommendations and role in emergency management in the private or public sector.
“I’m thankful NEMEA provided me with this opportunity to network and collaborate with other leaders,” Murphy said. “With those leaders being from different states and different sectors of emergency management, it allowed us to share best practices and lessons learned for similar challenges that we face.”
This year’s academy was a hybrid learning model with two courses held virtually and two in-person. Murphy’s 128-hour coursework included advancement of the emergency management field at the strategic policy and executive leadership levels. He examined emergency management policies, leading complex systems, interpreting the contemporary emergency management environment and creating a community among the emergency management stakeholders.
Murphy’s capstone consisted of how to effectively use disaster mitigation dollars for a crumbling infrastructure. The capstone project gave him translatable skills in finances, deployment of resources and collaboration. He also said he gained a deeper understanding of contemporary and emerging emergency management issues, debates and public policy.
Murphy brought back best practices to help with response to current challenges and prepare for emerging issues. He also learned messaging techniques to be used during disasters and gained insight to what others in the emergency management field are doing. He is utilizing newly gained skills to review the current policies the NNSS has in place to ensure they are up to date with the latest standards and help to implement new policies as needed.