Ann Lesperance

College of Social Sciences and Humanities Director, building programs on security and resilience studies and urban informatics

Ann Lesperance has more than 30 years of experience as a researcher and project manager in domestic and international fields including environmental and public health analysis, disaster management, and recovery from natural and man-made events. She is currently on a joint appointment to Northeastern University-Seattle from the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory where she is the Director of the Northwest Regional Technology Center for Homeland Security located in Seattle. Ann works extensively with federal, state, and local emergency managers and public safety officials on technical and policy issues with an emphasis on terrorist activities, biological events, port security, and critical infrastructure protection. She advocates a bottoms-up approach to public safety and disaster management, focusing first on the local level then linking the state and federal levels to ensure meaningful preparedness, response, recovery, and resilience actions are defined. She was recently awarded a Faculty Affiliate appointment with Northeastern’ s Global Resilience Institute. Ann is a recognized leader in response, recovery, and resiliency issues. She was selected to serve on a National Academy of Science, Engineering and Medicine (NASEM) Steering Committee exploring a “whole of government” approach to international CBRNE events and serves on the NASEM Resilient American Roundtable, overseeing the work of the Program on Risk, Resilience, and Extreme Events.