About Rachel
Rachel Porter CBCP, AZ-MEM
Emergency management and resilience leader helping people and organizations prepare for and lead through the moments that test them most.
At a glance
Nearly two decades building systems, developing leaders, and strengthening capabilities that perform under pressure.
Rachel Porter is an emergency management and business continuity leader with experience across public safety, government, nonprofit disaster response, and electric utilities. Her experience also includes disaster response, mass care, access and functional needs planning, workforce and family care planning, and cross-sector coordination in complex operating environments.
Her career has focused on building and maturing programs, developing leaders, and turning preparedness from paper into practice, through planning, training, exercises, incident management, and continuous improvement. Today, she leads resilience and emergency management for transmission and distribution for her state’s largest electric utility provider.
She founded Leading Resilience to share practical thinking on preparedness, high-stakes leadership, and organizational resilience.
Experience
A career built where plans meet reality.
Rachel’s perspective has been shaped by work that required plans, people, and systems to function together under real operational pressure.
Public safety
Rachel began her career in emergency communications, coordinating police and fire response in environments where information was incomplete, time was limited, and decisions had immediate consequences. The work built an early foundation in clear communication, operational judgment, and coordinated response.
Disaster response and recovery
In nonprofit and government disaster response and recovery roles, she supported multi-county mass-care operations, coordinated response partners, prepared teams for deployment into complex disasters, and contributed to recovery planning and community support.
Government continuity
In local government, she built a continuity program from the ground up, translating enterprise requirements into practical plans, training, and readiness across more than 60 departments. She also developed exercises, supported real-world continuity activations, and used after-action planning to identify gaps and strengthen the program.
Critical infrastructure
In critical infrastructure, Rachel’s work has expanded to enterprise resilience and incident management, including doctrine, continuity, high-consequence planning, exercises, leader development, cross-sector coordination, and improvement after real-world activations.
Professional focus
Building stronger programs, leaders, and systems.
Program development and maturity
Building and maturing emergency management, business continuity, and resilience programs so they are integrated, sustainable, and able to grow with the organization.
Leadership under pressure
Developing leaders for high-consequence moments, helping them make sound decisions, communicate clearly, and lead effectively when information is incomplete and conditions are changing.
Continuous improvement
Developing training, exercises, and after-action processes that reveal gaps, strengthen capability, and turn lessons from exercises and real-world events into sustained improvement.
Critical infrastructure resilience
Strengthening operational and critical infrastructure resilience by preparing for dependencies, continuity challenges, and the systems needed to sustain essential functions through disruption.
Selected work
Practice that shaped perspective.
- Established a continuity program supporting more than 60 organizational plans, then strengthened it through training, exercises, activations, and after-action improvement.
- Developed emergency operations plans, incident management doctrine, and response frameworks for complex, high-consequence events in critical infrastructure.
- Built comprehensive training programs that integrate foundational learning, role-specific training, practical tools, and position qualification to develop and sustain operational capability.
- Designed progressive exercise programs that intentionally build capability over time, moving teams from foundational understanding to coordinated performance under pressure.
- Turned lessons from activations and exercises into practical improvement—not reports that disappear after publication.
Leadership & industry contribution
Leading through service.
International Association of Emergency Managers (IAEM-USA)
Chair, Community and Member Engagement Committee
Leading member engagement, communication, and professional outreach initiatives
Association of Continuity Professionals (ACP)
President-Elect, Central Arizona Chapter
Supporting professional development and continuity leadership across the region
North American Transmission Forum (NATF)
Core Team Contributor, Resilience Practice Group
Developing and advancing resilience best practices across the electric utility sector.
Mentoring, speaking, & professional education
Leadership Development & Risk Education
Helping practitioners strengthen leadership, preparedness, and decision-making
Speaking, writing & resources
Continue the conversation.
Rachel speaks and writes about emergency management, utility and critical infrastructure resilience, continuity, professional growth, and leading through uncertainty.