Consero is honored to announce that Jeff Suggs has joined the Forum faculty for Consero's Government IT Forum 2012.
Jeff Suggs is the Emergency Management Coordinator (EMC) and IT Director for the City of La Porte. Mr. Suggs has been with the City as EMC since April of 2004 as EMC and IT Director since 2008. However, he has worked in the City as a volunteer and part-time training Officer/Captain in the La Porte Fire Department since 1992. While in that role, he worked in a chemical facility for 15 years, leaving the Dow Chemical company in 2004 to pursue his career as the City’s first full-time emergency manager.
In his short time as the City’s EMC, Mr. Suggs managed many different federally declared disasters. In 2001, he was the City’s Incident Commander for Tropical Storm Allison. In 2005, Hurricanes Katrina and Rita were major hurdles and challenges for the City of La Porte, with the largest sheltering and then evacuations ever to take place in Texas. In 2007, Tropical Storm Erin came ashore and was declared an emergency for La Porte and a small area of East Harris County. And of course 2008 brought Hurricane Ike right over the top of La Porte, bringing some of the worst damage seen in this area since Hurricane Alicia in 1983. Overall, there hasn’t been a dull moment for natural disasters, not to mention the chemical events that take place almost monthly. Mr. Suggs has served as Incident Commander for many different chemical release events, both on the response and support sides in the City’s state-of-the-art Emergency Operations Center (EOC).
Following Hurricane Ike, Mr. Suggs was given the task to streamline and construct a resilient technology system for the City. Realizing natural and man-made disasters are always on La Porte’s hazardous risk list, he designed and developed infrastructure with numerous DR sites. He has also outsourced critical pieces of technology and processes for continuity of operations. This is where Mr. Suggs has focused most of the funding and efforts for IT in the last three years.
Along the way, Mr. Suggs has obtained the following degrees: Associate of Applied Science in Occupational Health and Safety from San Jacinto College; Bachelor of Applied Arts and Sciences in Emergency Management Administration from West Texas A&M University; and Master of Arts in Emergency and Disaster Management from American Military/Public University.
