Hot Springs Workshop Material - Before the Storm: Economic Resilience Strategies for Arkansas Communities

Dr. Ron Swager leads Swager Consulting, LLC, a private economic development consulting service.  He retired in 2015 as Senior Research Professor for the Institute for Economic Advancement at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock, where his focus was on training and practical research for community and regional economic development.  Prior to joining IEA in 2003, he served for 20 years as Professor and Director of the Masters Program in Economic Development at the University of Southern Mississippi.  During his USM tenure, he also served for several years as Manager for a multi-county economic development marketing group in southwest Mississippi. Dr. Swager is Course Director for the Mid-South Basic Economic Development Course, offered in Arkansas each year in March, and was the director of the Mississippi Basic Course for 10 years prior to that.   He also served as Project Coordinator for the University of Oklahoma Economic Development Institute’s online training program (OU/EDI-Online) from 2008-2013. Dr. Swager received his Ph.D. in geography and economic development from the University of Illinois in 1975.  He served for five years on the faculty of East Carolina University, then on the Charlotte-Mecklenburg County (NC) Regional Planning Commission, and later as Assistant Vice President for Marketing at United Virginia Bank (now Suntrust) in Richmond, VA.  He is a Certified Economic Developer (CEcD) and a graduate of the Economic Development Institute (EDI).  He holds memberships in the International Economic Development Council (IEDC), C2ER, the Southern Economic Development Council, and the Arkansas Economic Developers Association.  He is a Fellow Member (FM) of IEDC and received the Richard Preston Award for excellence in economic development education from IEDC in 1999. Dr. Swager currently serves on the IEDC Education and Certification Advisory Committee, and on the Editorial Board for the Economic Development Journal. He also is a member and past Chair of the Basic Course Directors Committee for IEDC.  Dr. Swager and his family reside in Little Rock, Arkansas.  

 

Howard Pierpont, Board Chair, International Association for Disaster Preparedness and Response 

Howard Pierpont has over 30 years of business continuity and business resilience experience, having retired from Digital Equipment Corp/Intel Corporation.  He is a Certified Business Continuity Planner (CBCP) from the Disaster Recovery Institute International (US) and has attained the statutory Member grade with the Business Continuity Institute. As the Board Chair of the International Association for Disaster Preparedness and Response (DERA), Mr. Pierpont leads a nonprofit association that links professionals, volunteers, and organizations active in all phases of disaster preparedness and emergency management. He also serves as the President and Chief Education Officer (CEO) of the DERA Institute for Preparedness and Resilience. Mr. Pierpont is a former FEMA Reservist serving in both the Disaster Field Training Organization (DFTO) and the National Disaster Recovery Framework (NDRF) Community Recovery Assistance Cadre.  During his time with FEMA, Mr. Pierpont also worked to help communities recover from natural disasters including flooding in North Dakota and Pennsylvania, tornadoes in North Carolina, Hurricane Irene in Vermont, Super Storm Sandy in both New Jersey and Connecticut. He consulted with individual communities in identifying what their recovery could look like and how those communities could find the resources and funding that would be required.  This included researching, compiling and publishing a current listing of available local, state and federal resources, with an emphasis on natural and cultural resource needs, for business, not-for-profit entities and municipal governments. Mr. Pierpont created materials and trained community groups not only in how to develop successful and functional recovery plans following disasters but also on how to mitigate potential issues in their communities to keep them safer, stronger and more resilient from the next disaster.