Tom Hughes

Tom Hughes is the director of the Pennsylvania Emergency Management Agency’s Emergency Management Mitigation, Insurance, and Resilient Communities Office, as well as the State Hazard Mitigation officer, where his office assists state, county, municipal, and special districts in natural hazard identification and implementation of cost-effective measures that will reduce future losses resulting from natural disasters. Hughes has a wealth of experience in the outreach activities, administration, implementation, and closeout requirements for the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s (FEMA) Hazard Mitigation Assistance (HMA) and U.S. Housing and Urban Development Community Development Block Grant-Disaster Recovery funding streams. He is currently Vice President for FEMA Region III’s Regional Advisory Council, on the Natural Hazard Center’s Advisory Council, and co-chair for the nationally recognized U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Programmatic Agreement Silver Jackets Team, and is an alumnus of the FEMA HMA External Stakeholder Work Group.

He has received his Certified Energy Manager from the International Association of Emergency Managers/National Coordinating Council of Emergency Management three times. He served 27 years with the United States Air Force/United States Air Force Reserve and retired from McGuire Air Force Base (AFB), New Jersey, as the 514th Mission Support Group Superintendent as a Chief Master Sergeant; he was deployed in support of Desert Storm/Desert Shield and North Watch/Iraqi Freedom operations in support of Chemical, Biological, Radiological, Nuclear, and high-yield Explosives, Disaster Preparedness, and Emergency Management needs. He received his AA in Financial Management from the Community College of the Air Force, Maxwell AFB, Alabama, and a Bachelor of Arts in business administration from Lycoming College, Williamsport, Pennsylvania.