A Guiding Hand: EmilyJane McLoughlin Zahreddine '05

The best way to respond to an emergency is to prepare for one. As an emergency manager, EmilyJane McLoughlin Zahreddine ’05 knows that better than most. She has spent her career on both sides of the equation, helping governments and organizations plan for the unthinkable and guiding communities through times of crisis.

Emergency managers are an essential link in disaster and emergency response, handling many of the services beyond those provided by fire, police, or medical personnel. Many people in the role don’t consider themselves first responders, EmilyJane says. Rather, their job is to collaborate with different stakeholders to share resources and information, such as engaging with social services to ensure that residents have a place to stay after an apartment fire. “We are not in the field, but we are very much behind the scenes managing the incident,” she says. It can be a high-stakes position. EmilyJane explains, “Being an emergency manager is being expected to make informed decisions with perspective and foresight and deep consideration with about two minutes’ worth of incomplete data.”

EmilyJane’s interest in emergency management began on September 11, 2001. The terrorist attacks occurred just two weeks into her freshman year at Santa Catalina, and she recalls sitting in Study Hall as history teacher Mr. Broeck Oder explained what was happening and offered assurances that everything would be OK. “That just set into motion for me this desire to help people who were experiencing the worst thing that could happen to them,” says EmilyJane, who was a boarding student from Berkeley, California.

After graduating from Catalina, EmilyJane earned a B.A. in public policy studies and political science from Hobart and William Smith Colleges. Her first job was with the USO, the military support nonprofit, where she was tasked with writing an emergency operations plan so the organization would still be able to provide services to troops if disaster struck. “This was in 2009, an especially sensitive time for our military, so it was really important for me to do a good job, and I kind of fell in love with the work,” she says.

Next, EmilyJane took a job on Capitol Hill, where she worked with the Sergeant at Arms for the House of Representatives to train members of Congress on how to evacuate safely and shelter in place if needed. She later served as an analyst in other governmental offices responsible for planning and preparing for emergencies, including the Office of Cybersecurity and Communications and FEMA’s Office of National Continuity Programs. Along the way, she earned a master of public administration degree in emergency management from George Mason University.

After four years of working with the federal government, EmilyJane took her talents to Arlington County, Virginia. While her day-to-day job was focused on preparedness, she also was the person in charge of coordinating response efforts when a disaster or emergency occurred—and it did, in the form of COVID-19. For the first 60 days of the pandemic, she served as the director of the county’s emergency operations center. Two important early tasks included depopulating high-risk living environments, such as homeless shelters and transitional housing, and securing masks for hospital personnel.

The timing of the pandemic was interesting for EmilyJane. Just a few months before the response kicked into gear, she had earned another master’s degree, this one in homeland security and national defense from the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey. Her thesis was on improving the emergency management process when the emergency in question does not originate from a single incident but instead is widespread. She argued for a better way to bring in community stakeholders who can help fill in the gaps when the response doesn’t primarily revolve around police and fire services.

In a way, EmilyJane is now one of those stakeholders. Around 2021, she left Arlington, moved to Denver with her husband, and started her own business, Golden Hour Preparedness, which focused on helping private companies and organizations prepare for disasters. After a couple of years, though, she shuttered the business, redirecting her focus to a persistent, slowmoving emergency: homelessness. This summer, she started a nonprofit, On the House Denver, which aims to provide free furniture, cleaning supplies, and household goods to people who are exiting homelessness or domestic violence situations, as well as refugees and others experiencing hardship. At the time of EmilyJane’s interview with the Bulletin, the city’s emergency management office had activated its emergency operations center to address the homelessness crisis. “I spent a lot of time as an emergency manager supporting communities and figuring out what they want their new normal to look like [after a disaster]. How do we rebuild our community?” EmilyJane says. “It all intersects in the idea of running this organization.” To help keep On the House stocked, EmilyJane is also starting a second nonprofit, Furnishing Hope Junk Removal, which aims to recycle more than 1,000 tons of material each year that would normally end up in the landfill.

Each of these endeavors is reflective of EmilyJane’s devotion to service—a practice she learned at Catalina. “When I have felt burnt out, when I have felt overwhelmed, when I have felt heartbroken about the state of things, I have always returned to service,” she says. “... That is a sliver of life that I didn’t know, and wouldn’t have known, if it wasn’t for Catalina.”