Suzanne Frew
Suzanne Frew is the communication and partnership advisor for Pacific Disaster Center (PDC), a program office of the University of Hawaii. She is PDC team lead for Vietnam’s World Bank-funded Natural Disaster Risk Management Education and Training Program.
Before joining PDC, Frew provided independent consulting to public and private sector organizations throughout the Pacific Rim, Southeast Asia, the United States, and Canada. Her projects have addressed such areas as disaster operations, COOP, transportation, communications, medical care, and disaster preparedness. As a member of IBM’s International Humanitarian Response Team, she responded to Hurricane Katrina and the Indian Ocean Tsunami. Frew has worked with government agencies, business, academia, and community and faith-based organizations on national and international disaster preparedness, mitigation efforts, response and recovery operations and planning projects.
Frew was the FEMA Mitigation Education and Marketing branch chief, public information officer, and deputy mitigation officer on disaster response and recovery operations and a pilot officer on the launch of Project Impact. She specializes in the areas of cross cultural crisis and risk communications, community outreach/engagement, partnership development, vulnerable populations and socio-economic and cultural issues pertaining to natural disasters and terrorism-based events.
She has been published in several international publications, coauthored a U.S. integrated planning guide for local land-use development and economic planning, and written a risk communications guide for use in Asian countries as well as developed and instructed a wide range of disaster related courses.
Workshop Abstracts
Building Capacity: Vietnam’s Education And Training Program
International Program on Climate Change and Variability Risk Reduction (IP-CVR)