SHELLEY NAPIER
Shelley was employed with the Manitoba Emergency Measures Organization for 32 years, retiring in 2017. Her career has been spent working with Manitoba communities, Indigenous clients, academic institutions, businesses and organizations offering emergency management program building through training, education and planning. During the span of her career she has worked internationally leading federally funded international training contracts in the Czech Republic, Ukraine, Hungary and Asia educating government and municipal officials on how to build emergency programs.
Shelley’s extensive knowledge of emergency management has been gained through work with the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA), North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), the Institute of Public Administration of Canada (IPAC), and the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) in the United States as well as through years managing emergencies across Canada and Europe. She was Manitoba’s representative on the Canadian Emergency Management College’s training committee for 17 years, developing training and teaching educational programs to emergency managers across Canada.
During her career Shelley has participated in the provincial government’s emergency response to major disasters such as the 1989 Northern Fire Evacuations, 1997 Flood of the Century, the 2007 Elie F5 Tornado, the 2011 and 2014 floods and all other disasters that affected Manitobans and their property in between.
Her persistence, leadership and demand for excellence have helped to shape emergency management training for a generation of responders and community leaders in Canada. She was awarded the prestigious International Visitors Scholarship with the US Department of Homeland Security and has studied emergency management at Georgetown University in Washington DC. Shelley also studied emergency management in California, Texas, Illinois and New York post 911. She has been a guest lecturer for FEMA, the Disaster Emergency Management Conference Ontario (DEMCON), Disaster Research Institute (DRI) and the Northern Alberta Institute of Technology (NAIT) conferences.
Shelley is the founding member and chair of the Manitoba Disaster Management Conference (1991) and the founding member and Executive Director of the Manitoba Association of Municipal Emergency Coordinators (2018). She has been awarded the Emergency Management Exemplary Service Award for her work achievement in the areas of prevention, preparation, response, and recovery from emergencies and disasters in Canada. Shelley was recently awarded the King Charles III Coronation medal for her emergency management work with communities and First Nation communities in Canada. She is a frequent contributor on television and radio during emergency events in Manitoba and participated on the television documentary series “Disaster Deja Vu” as an emergency management expert contributor.
Now as the managing director of Napier Emergency Consulting, she works coast to coast in Canada teaching and educating communities, Indigenous clients, businesses, and academic institutions about the importance of having programs to manage and recover from disasters effectively.