Richard Serino

Mr. Serino was a panelist for the Forum’s discussions on Big Weather and Coastal Cities and Building Resiliency in an Age of Terrorism.

Richard Serino, former Deputy Administrator of FEMA and Chief of Boston EMS, has joined the NPLI faculty as a Distinguished Visiting Fellow. In this role he participates in the NPLI’s education and research initiatives.

Serino brings more than 40 years of experience in disaster preparedness, response, and recovery as well as mass casualty incidents and leadership and innovation in government. He has received more than thirty-five local, national, and international awards for public service and innovation, including the NPLI’s Meta-Leader of the Year Award for his work in the response to Super Storm Sandy.

At the Federal Emergency Management Agency, Serino worked directly with Administrator Craig Fugate to build, sustain, and improve the Department’s capacity to prepare for, protect against, respond to, recover from, and mitigate all hazards.

Serino has more than 35 years of state and local emergency management and emergency medical services experience. Prior to his appointment to FEMA, he served as Chief of Boston EMS and Assistant Director of the Boston Public Health Commission. In that role, he bolstered the city’s response plans for major emergencies, including chemical, biological, and radiological attacks. He also led citywide planning for H1N1 influenza.

Serino has served as an Incident Commander for over 35 mass casualty incidents and for all of Boston’s major planned events, including the Boston Marathon, Boston’s Fourth of July celebration, First Night, and the 2004 Democratic National Convention, a National Special Security Event.

Serino began working for Boston EMS in 1973; over the years he rose through the ranks and in 1999 became Chief of Department. During his tenure as Chief, he has seen the agency expand and improve to become nationally recognized for the first rate services provided by the agency’s EMTs and Paramedics.

Since 1998, Serino has been a National Faculty member for the Domestic Preparedness Program. He was an original contributing member for the Defense Department’s Domestic Preparedness Training Program and Metropolitan Medical Response System. Serino has been involved, since its inception, with the Lessons Learned Information Sharing www.llis.gov network for emergency responders. As a consultant to the Pentagon and the Defense Department, Serino served on the 9/11 after-action team to assess medical consequence management policies and procedures.

Serino attended Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government Senior Executives in State and Local Government program in 2000, completed the Kennedy School’s National Preparedness Leadership Initiative in 2005, and graduated from the Executive Leadership Program, Center for Homeland Defense and Security at the Naval Postgraduate School.