Kyle King is TIEMS Treasurer.

Kyle is Founder and Managing Director of Capacity Building International (CBI). Kyle has spent 28 years in the emergency services and international security field with 8 of those years being with NATO.

He is Certified in the US Department of Defense as a Chief Fire Officer, and he helped design and build the first international DoD Fire and Emergency Services Certification Program for international students, and he also served as the first Civil Emergency Advisor to support NATO Operations.

Among his other accomplishments are that he worked to contribute to the development of NATO’s Security Force Assistance program and wrote NATO’s capacity building education and training program for Kosovo. Locations where he has worked in missions includes Bosnia, Afghanistan, Kosovo, and Ukraine.

Kyle holds a Masters in Diplomacy and Terrorism Studies as BS/BA in Public Administration as well as numerous certifications from US Department of Defense, NATO, and other institutions. Currently Kyle is focused on supporting the Institute for Security Governance and international programs as well as being seconded to the Organization for Security Cooperation in Europe (OSCE).

He is TIEMS partner in the Webinar series of International models in emergency management.

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Gregory D. Swick is TIEMS Director Membership and Chapters.

Greg is an execution oriented executive with decades of experience in project planning and management. In a career spanning multiple high-tech projects he has successfully deployed systems and products that resulted from complex hardware and software development. Throughout his career that has included many short duration, time critical projects and some activities measured in days and hours.

Greg Swick’s success is spawned from his ability to lead and manage teams. Leadership experience includes cross functional teams and multilevel actors. Leadership and deployment of matrixed resources, that is actors not in his direct chain of command, is a key strength.  

His focus in building customer intimacy to take into account the varied needs of multiple stakeholders is a key to his success. This includes the ability to listen with context and understand the desires and needs of a complex and varied set of stakeholders. The capabilities have included pre-award activities to include bidding and bid realism analysis, conceptualization and team stand-up - putting together the best elements from multiple organizations to attack a problem space. Execution: System engineering process / design reviews, EVMS, tech baseline, change management, acceptance.

His experience includes:

• More than 1000 sorties in the F-4 Phantom as an Electronics Warfare Officer
• Product management experience in electronics and networking
• Business Unit director doing advanced research for DARPA and government labs
• Program management for US and international programs in the US, Europe and Japan

Greg has proven program skills focused on risk management and mitigation, project scheduling including complex interactions with multiple dependencies, and accurate budgeting. Greg’s skillset includes capability in the program domain to execute programs and also to review proposed and in process activities to ensure that they comply with best practices and reasonableness. Experience includes preparation and review of program artifacts for the next level of oversight. Also included in his toolbox is over a decade in virtual simulation and its use in predictive analysis to include capabilities development, visualization and human-machine interactions. Greg was the business manager responsible for business units engaged in research and development of hardware and software systems for advanced networked virtual world simulation, and hybrid simulations involving live, virtual, and constructive simulations for training and capabilities development for US and worldwide customers.

Greg has a Masters in Management from Westminster College and attended the MIT Sloan Executive Management program in technology. His BS is from Miami University in Government studies and he did additional work in international studies to include a year studying in Luxembourg. Linked in profile including competencies and endorsements at linkedin.com/in/gregoryswick 

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Vinod Chandra Menon is TIEMS Regional Director for Asia

Vinod  is an alumnus of Kerala University, Thiruvananthapuram and Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. He has over 37 years of working experience, of which more than two and a half decades have been in the fields of disaster risk reduction, climate change adaptation and public policy analysis. He has worked as Professor (Disaster Management) in Yeshwantrao Chavan Academy of Development Administration (YASHADA) Pune, the Government of Maharashtra’s apex training institute for senior administrators and has worked in charge of emergency preparedness and response in the UNICEF India Country Office in New Delhi.

In 2005, he was nominated by the Prime Minister of India as a Founder Member of the National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA), Government of India, with the status of a Union Minister of State in the Government of India. He worked in this capacity from 28th September 2005 till 27th September 2010. He is on the Governing Boards of several organizations working on resilience building, emergency preparedness and response and is one of the co-founders of Sphere India. He was a Member of the High Powered Committee (HPC) on Disaster Management established by the Government of India in 1999. He is currently a member of the Peer Committee on “Technological Preparedness to Deal with National Disruptions” established by the Indian National Academy of Engineering (INAE). He is a Senior Advisor & Mentor of the International Institute of Information Technology (ISquareIT), Pune.

PHe is now an Independent Consultant in the fields of Disaster Risk Reduction, Climate Change Adaptation and Public Policy Analysis. He has been a Consultant to UNDP, UNICEF, UN ESCAP, World Bank, Global Facility for Disaster Reduction and Recovery (GFDRR), Asian Development Bank, Asian Disaster Preparedness Center (ADPC), Bangkok, Economist Intelligence Unit and several humanitarian organizations and networks, state governments and the national government. He has been invited to address several international conferences on disaster management and resilience building. He has published extensively and has Co-edited a book on Humanitarian Logistics published by Springer. He is the recipient of the SKOCH Challenger Award 2010 for his contributions in the field of disaster management.

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Thomas V. Robertson is TIEMS Regional Director for North America.

He directs North America operations of TIEMS, where he founded the TIEMS USA local chapter. He participated for TIEMS in the European Union Programs ASSET, which developed improved, participatory approaches to pandemic response, and HERACLES, which developed systems and processes to protect cultural heritage sites from the effects of climate change. He has published and presented numerous papers on risk communication during emergencies, disaster risk reduction, virtual simulation in emergency management, pandemic response, climate change resilience, AI implications for emergency management, and applications of advanced technologies in the US, France, Italy, China, Japan, Belgium, Greece, Ukraine, Saudi Arabia, the Philippines, Northern Cyprus, and Korea. He has been visiting faculty at Écoles des Mines d’Ales Master’s program in Disaster Management and Environmental Impact Studies, and he currently serves as an Expert in Small and Medium Enterprises for the European Innovation Council. He is a Senior Life Member of the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers.

He is Founder and Principal at Thinking Teams, an international consultancy specializing in harmonizing human and machine intelligence. As a researcher/engineer, he has developed innovations in biological system modeling, pattern recognition, and computer vision, and he is fluent in current deep learning technologies. His practical organizational experience includes leading research labs and aerospace organizations as Chief Scientist, Program Manager, and VP/General Manager. He has also consulted to organizations both inside and outside the technical sector, using his Organizational Alignment Model.

He earned BS, MS, and Ph.D. degrees in Electrical Engineering from Purdue University, where he did research in bioengineering, communications, artificial intelligence, and remote sensing. He was Member of the Technical Staff at Bell Laboratories, Director of the Advanced Information Sciences Division at The Analytical Sciences Corporation, Director of Engineering and Chief Scientist of Lockheed Martin Advanced Simulation Center, and Vice President and General Manager of Atlantic Aerospace Electronics Corporation. In these positions he performed and managed research and development in telecommunications, signal and image processing, advanced computing, artificial intelligence, computer graphics, and simulation.

Desiree Beekharry is TIEMS Regional Director for Australia, New Zealand and Oceania.

Dr Desiree Beekharry is the Utilisation Program Manager for the Bushfire and Natural Hazards CRC. The CRC’s mission is to ensure the Australian communities’ resilience to natural hazards. Dr Desiree Beekharry’s remit is to ensure that the high level research which are conducted in consultation with the emergency services sector are fit-for-purpose and are adopted by the various emergency services agencies. Dr Beekharry currently manages a research workforce across Australia and New Zealand of over 60 projects.

She comes from a long event, project and program management career in several countries including UK, USA, France, Germany, Spain and Switzerland. Her 2 professional passions are Project Management and Disaster Management – especially Risk in Disaster Management. Dr Beekharry is also a tutor and supervisor for the Master of Project Management Program at the University of South Australia and Torrens University. She is a qualified and experienced ESOL and French teacher, Conflict Negotiations trainer and facilitator.

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Roman Tandlich is TIEMS Regional Director for Africa.

Roman Tandlich, has been working in the field of emergency and disaater management since 2011. With background in biotechnology, Dr. Tandlich got involved in the development of low-cost and decentralised sanitation technologies. During the rollout of one such technology, policy and technical skills shortages at local government level. This resulted in the shift of focus of Dr. Tandlich's research towards disaster management approaches towards shift action to address water, sanitation and hygiene challenges in developing countries. This has led to the development of new teaching and research tools to deal with public health, disaster risk reduction and Development. 

Roman is originally from Slovakia where he completed his education up to Masters level. This occurred in 1998 and his background was originally in Biotechnology. He then continued on to complete his PhD in Pharmaceutical Sciences at North Dakota State University in Fargo, USA. After two postdoctoral fellowships, Roman joined the Faculty of Pharmacy at Rhodes University in South Africa in 2008. He has been with the same department since then and has recently been promoted there to the rank of Associate Professor. He has expertise in public health, water and sanitation and Disaster ethics

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Alonso Brenes Torres is TIEMS Regional Director for Latin America and Caribbean (LAC)

He is a Costa Rican geographer. He is international consultant and lecturer on disaster risk management, climate sciences, and territorial development, with experience in more than 30 countries in Latin America, Africa, and Asia.

He started his academic and professional career around 20 years ago, working on international cooperation projects related to management of international basins in Central America and Mexico. Since 2005 he has been working on disaster risk management initiatives, territorial development, and climate action.

Currently, he is the coordinator of the Network of Social Studies on Disasters Prevention in Latin America (LA RED). He is also a member of the Integrated Research on Disaster Reduction committee, of the International Council of Science; member of the steering committee on disaster risk reduction of the ICS – ROLAC, and the UNESCO’s Group of Experts on Risk Management for Latin America and the Caribbean; the Science and Technology Advisory Group for the Americas on DRM; and the editorial board of Disaster Prevention and Management Journal.

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