Each November, Hagerty recognizes Critical Infrastructure Security and Resilience (CISR) Month in support of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency’s (CISA) mission to educate and engage stakeholders on the importance of enhancing critical infrastructure resilience for the safety and security of the nation. In observance of this year’s theme, “Resolve to be Resilient,” we spoke with two of Hagerty’s grants management and resilience experts, Harrison Newton and Crysty Skevington, to discuss the intersection of federal funding, resilience, and infrastructure.
1. Tell us about yourself and how your career path led you to Hagerty.
Harrison Newton: My career in emergency management began as a health-focused non-profit director in Washington, DC. Within days of accepting that role, the Washington Post published a story about how toxic levels of lead in the water had poisoned children across the City. Soon after, I became part of the United States (US) Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) response team, directing an effort to go door to door to help families establish temporary water supplies and provide blood testing for children. This opportunity taught me how strong cross-sector, inter-agency relationships can bolster capabilities to respond to and mitigate a public health crisis effectively.
I went on to become Chief of the Environmental Health Branch in DC’s Department of Energy and Environment (DOEE), which led me to become deeply interested in systems improvement, working across agency lines, and being comfortable with intense scrutiny from the public. I was named the Deputy Chief Resilience Officer (CRO) in Washington, DC, supporting the development of the City’s first Resilience Strategy. I joined Hagerty after several years in that role. Since then, I have had the chance to work with several communities on the development of resilience strategies and resilience-building projects.
Crysty Skevington: My introduction to disaster recovery began in Plaquemines Parish, Louisiana, after Hurricane Katrina. This opportunity involved spending a hot summer living in a tent, repairing homes, and serving meals from a washed-out YMCA in Buras, Louisiana. Even then, I knew I wanted to do this work long-term and contribute more than my unskilled labor. Ultimately, I enrolled in a new graduate disaster resiliency program created in response to Hurricane Katrina at Tulane University. Since then, I have worked for public and social sector organizations, managing organizations’ grants for critical areas like housing, public and behavioral health, critical infrastructure, and community reconstruction following disasters like Superstorm Sandy and Hurricane Harvey.
I joined Hagerty in 2022 to help clients establish grants management practices, administer federal awards, and evaluate the impact of their long-term social and financial recovery from COVID-19. The throughline is a deep understanding of how institutions such as state and local governments and nonprofits can navigate financial windfalls, particularly those resulting from large-scale disaster events.
2. How is resilience integral to disaster recovery and response?
Harrison Newton: We all know what happens to a household object that is not resilient – eventually, it is knocked off a table, and it shatters. Repair is difficult, and often, the loss is total. With the scale of communities, we cannot afford to design systems and structures that are unable to resist stress and bounce back quickly after a disaster. From the small town that misses a maintenance routine on a water main to the big city that with an unreliable transit system, these situations can create their own incidents but also make larger disasters far more costly and dangerous. Simply put, they cause our communities to break too easily.
In some ways, the private sector understood this first – investments made in planning and prevention can be the most effective dollars spent in a disaster. The easiest person to rescue is the one who was safely evacuated due to great communication and planning. The planning, design, innovation, and coordination that allows a community to recover quickly and minimize loss is where resilience “lives.” Resilience defines the disaster you are experiencing.
Crysty Skevington: Resilience is a challenging term. With a single word, we encompass everything from physical issues like the current condition of our bridges and buildings to the less obvious but no less important systems and values that connect communities and knit our social fabric. The word also implies unpredictable and hard-to-imagine future scenarios that raise questions and can easily overwhelm. Resilience is an idea that starts big – an umbrella that connects every phase of the disaster lifecycle – but with conversation and focus, it can become very specific, strategic, and implementable. Funding provided by the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA) and Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) offers incredible opportunities to explore the solutions and resources available to support resilience initiatives.
3. How does a strong grants management strategy support resiliency and disaster recovery?
Harrison Newton: It is a frustrating truth that it will always be easier to justify expenses during the response to a disaster than the proactive investments spent on lessening its impact. However, the challenges of the 21st century have inspired communities to lead the way in demanding that their leaders approach disaster risk with foresight and wisdom.
Part of this approach directly confronts the question of resource development – how will we pay for resilience? Communities must connect their planning and problem identification to strategies around external resources. Acquiring the funding is only one part of the equation; the real challenge often lies in effectively administering those funds across strategic objectives, which can only occur when a strong management structure is in place. For example, a community that needs money for a community development plan may find opportunities to “braid” funding across multiple funding streams. That only happens with strategic management. Ultimately, in disaster management, no plan is truly finished until it addresses how the identified work will be funded and identifies the organization’s approach to development.
Crysty Skevington: We do not always recognize or verbalize enough how central grants administration is to the field of disaster recovery. Life-saving rescue operations are intuitive and compelling stories, but when survivors reflect on their recovery experiences, almost always the memories that last the longest and weigh most heavily are confusion, waiting, delays, denials, and the paperwork required to access basic services.
Strategic grants management is the invisible infrastructure that translates large financial resources into services and programs that flow outward to communities and households. When done well, the support is two-fold: it builds public trust and creates a thoughtful and effective experience for impacted individuals, and it also supports the civil and public servants at the front of this work so that they can focus more on direct community engagement and less on the process.
4. What are the most common challenges you see among communities working to increase resiliency, and what measures can they prioritize to get started?
Harrison Newton: I have never addressed a community-wide problem in which the final diagnosis of the challenge is precisely what everyone thought it was at the outset. Collaborative problem assessment completed in partnership with the served community or end user always better informs and often redefines “the problem.” The big secret is that bringing people together to do this work has the added benefit of broadening the conversation about solutions and potentially even resource development (i.e., dollars on the table). Get around the table with your colleagues. Invite your stakeholders. Avoid working in a vacuum and collaborate with a team that has a proven process around strategy development.
Crysty Skevington: This may seem rudimentary, but my first recommendation to anyone interested in resiliency is to begin by addressing the basics: establishing what you already know and where strengths already exist. There is always going to be more feedback to gather, data to collect, and certifications or expertise to acquire, but starting with what you already know makes it easier to filter what among the infinite ‘unknowns’ are relevant and worth investing in and where you can get started right away. I always like the maxim, “You are closer than you think.” While the shift towards resilience sometimes involves inventing new solutions or technology, it is just as often about looking around at all the available resources in front of you and being creative in how we apply them in new ways.
5. What is the best book you have read recently?
Harrison Newton: Not all disruptions are disasters. There is no challenge confronting humanity as significant as the dawn of true artificial intelligence (AI). In the discussion of resilience, it may prove to be the biggest disruptive force since the advent of the automobile.
Two books that everyone should read include Co-Intelligence: Living and Working with AI by Ethan Mollick, which directly confronts how humans can best partner with AI in the workspace, and The Coming Wave by Mustafa Suleyman, which rings the alarm bell for how different technologies may converge for unexpected and potentially dangerous outcomes. In my very humble opinion, we are a bit asleep at the wheel in our understanding of the implications of AI – which will go far beyond worrying about whether students are writing their own term papers!
Crysty Skevington: This is always my favorite question, and I can never choose just one. I really enjoyed Recoding America by Jennifer Pahlka, which validates anyone working in or with the public sector to implement services. I also participate in a local environmental book club in my community, which has led to some excellent reads lately, such as Weather by Jenny Offill for fiction or the travelogue/essay collection Islands of Abandonment by Cal Flynn.
It is not a recent read, but my single universal book recommendation to anyone – even those who do not enjoy reading as an activity or work outside the emergency management space – is The Unthinkable: Who Survives When Disaster Strikes and Why by Amanda Ripley.
Harrison Newton is a Senior Managing Associate at Hagerty Consulting. Prior to Hagerty, he spent nearly a decade in public service in Washington, DC. There, he was responsible for establishing the District’s first Resilience Office, where he ultimately served as the Deputy Chief Resilience Officer (CRO), promoting resiliency programs across various District departments and agencies.
Crysty Skevington is a Manager at Hagerty Consulting with 15 years of leadership, financial oversight, and program and project management within disaster recovery, and grants administration. Prior to joining Hagerty, she was a Deputy Director for the New York State Governor’s Office of Storm Recovery (GOSR) and a Senior Grants Manager for the American Red Cross.