Associate Director, National Preparedness Leadership Initiative, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health

Eric J. McNulty holds an appointment as Associate Director and Program Faculty at the National Preparedness Leadership Initiative (NPLI), a joint program of the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and the Center for Public Leadership at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government and as an Instructor at the Harvard School of Public Health. His work centres on leadership in high-stakes, high-stress situations. He also works with the Program for Health Care Negotiation and Conflict Resolution at the Harvard Chan School.

In addition to his work with the NPLI, he teaches in executive education programs as the Harvard Chan School, Harvard Medical School, Boston University’s Questrom School of Business, the University of California/San Diego, and the UVA Darden School of Business. He has led executive trainings in North and South America, Asia, Europe, and the Middle East.

He is the co-author of You’re It: Crisis, Change, and How to Lead When it Matters Most (Public Affairs, 2019) and the second edition of Renegotiating Health Care: Resolving Conflict to Build Collaboration (Jossey-Bass, 2011). He is co-author of a chapter on meta-leadership in the McGraw-Hill Homeland Security Handbook (2012) and the e-book Your Critical First 10 Days as a Leader (O’Reilly/Safari, 2015).

Eric J. McNulty is a widely published business author and researcher, he writes a regular online column for Strategy + Business. He has written multiple articles for the Harvard Business Review (HBR), Sloan Management Review, CNN.com, and others. His HBR cases have been anthologized through the HBR paperback series and have been used in business education curricula in the United States and as far away as France and the Philippines. McNulty is a member of the Leadership Communications Council at the University of Virginia’s Darden School of Business.

Eric J. McNulty holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in Economics (with honors) from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst and a Master of Arts degree in Leadership from Lesley University.

Distinguished Senior Fellow, National Preparedness Leadership Initiative, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health

The Hon. Richard Serino spent more than forty years in public service. During that time he provided extensive leadership on emergency management, emergency medical and homeland security at local, state, federal and international levels. Mr. Serino is currently a Distinguished Visiting Fellow at the National Preparedness Leadership Initiative.
Serino was appointed by President Obama and confirmed by the Senate as the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s 8th Deputy Administrator in October 2009 and served until 2014. In this role, he also served as the Chief Operating Officer (COO) of the agency with more than $25 billion budget. Prior to his appointment as Deputy Administrator, he spent 36 years at Boston EMS where he rose to become Chief and Assistant Director of the Boston Public Health Commission.
Mr. Serino responded to over 60 national disasters while at FEMA and during Super Storm Sandy, he was the lead federal area commander for New York and New Jersey. Serino was also on scene at the Boston Marathon bombings as the Department of Homeland Security senior official.
As the Agency’s COO, Mr. Serino fundamentally changed how FEMA operates. He helped FEMA reorient its activities and improve its programs to be “Survivor centric,” ensuring that the agency supports the delivery of services focused on easing the recovery experience of survivors – as individuals, neighborhoods, and communities. As Deputy Administrator, he also led administrative improvements that were focused on emphasizing financial accountability, created FEMA Stat, which improved the use of analytics to drive decisions, advanced the workforce training and engagement and fostered a culture of innovation.
Under his leadership, FEMA launched initiatives such as FEMA Corps, a dedicated unit of 1,600 service corps members within AmeriCorps National Civilian Community Corps (NCCC) devoted to disaster preparedness, response, and recovery. His leadership took FEMA Corps from idea to implementation in nine months. When the program is at full operational capability, and in an average disaster year, there will be an expected savings of approximately $60 million in a year.

During his tenure at Boston EMS he transformed it to one of the best and nationally recognized EMS systems in the country. He bolstered the city’s response plans for major emergencies. He also led citywide planning for the first influenza pandemic in more than 40 years. Mr. Serino served as an Incident Commander for over thirty-five 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.

BSHRM, MPA

Mr. Henderson is currently a Distinguished Senior Fellow at the T.H. Chan School of Public Health at Harvard University. As a member of the National Preparedness Leadership Initiative (NPLI), Mr. Henderson focuses on the development of crisis leadership and navigating complex systems utilizing the Meta-Leadership Framework.

Prior to his current position, Mr. Henderson served as a Senior Advisor with Deloitte Consulting advising their leadership solutions group. In February 2018, he retired from the U.S. Government following 33 years of public service.

As a member of the Senior Executive Service (SES), Mr. Henderson was the Director of the Office of Safety, Security, and Asset Management at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). He was responsible for a budget of $320 million and overseeing a staff of 435 professionals and 2,500 contractors and assured CDC employees and contractors operate in a safe and secure environment at sixteen locations in the United States and Puerto Rico and in over seventy countries globally.

Prior to this assignment he served in several senior positions at the CDC, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Scientific Technologies Corp. and Cerner Corporation.

While at CDC, Mr. Henderson also served as the CDC Senior Management Official in New York State providing strategic oversight of CDC’s annual investment of $630 million across 233 grant programs, established key linkages with public health leaders in the state and assured a coordinated response for CDC during public health emergencies. In 2007-2008, Mr. Henderson served as the Acting Chief Operating Officer responsible for the agency’s budget of $8+ billion supporting over 15,000 staff and contractors.

Following the tragic events of September 11, 2001, Mr. Henderson was appointed the first Associate Director of Terrorism Preparedness and Response and Director of the Office of Terrorism Preparedness and Emergency Response at the CDC. In this capacity he was responsible for all of CDC’s public health emergency preparedness and response activities - supported by a budget of $2.3 Billion.

Mr. Henderson spent over nine years in the United States Air Force supporting preventive medicine programs. Since 2003, he has held an academic appointment at the Harvard University School of Public Health to support the National Preparedness Leadership Initiative, a program he helped develop. Mr. Henderson has a Masters Degree from the University of Oklahoma and a Bachelor of Science Degree from Wilmington College and completed coursework in pursuit of a Doctorate of Public Health from the University of Illinois at Chicago.

With over 35 years of experience leading teams of professionals Mr. Henderson remains interested in furthering the development of leaders to effectively solve problems, sustain solutions, and drive a long-lasting culture of high-achievement.