Robert Fagan

Before teaching at Tulane University, Colonel Robert Fagan, U.S. Army Retired (Rob) was the Deputy Director for Disaster Recovery at the Small Business Administration (SBA). Prior to that he served as a Crisis Management Consultant and Senior Exercise Planner for the Department of State (DOS) Foreign Service Institute (FSI) where he delivered personal and organizational emergency preparedness training, emergency plan development, and exercises at over 120 embassies and consulates on five continents. As a Foreign Area Officer (FAO) in the U.S. Army he served in seven U.S. Embassies and Consulates in the Western Hemisphere which included Peru, El Salvador, Guatemala, Brazil, Bolivia, Ecuador, and Chile. His roles included being a Defense Attaché, Army Attaché, and Senior Security Assistance Advisor, which afforded him the opportunity to be a senior member of multiple country teams and Emergency Action Committees (EACs) while being a key leader in the emergency planning process at each location at each embassy. Rob has served at the highest levels of government in continuity of operations (COOP) planning on the U.S. Army Staff and Office of the Secretary of Defense (OSD). In addition to combat, NATO, and United Nations tours of duty, Rob also worked on several contingency deployments in various positions during Humanitarian Assistance and Disaster Relief (HA/DR) operations for hurricanes, floods, earthquakes, and other disasters. Rob’s teaching experience includes the United State Military Academy at West Point, U.S. Army War College, Salvadoran Army War College, Peruvian Army War College, U.S. Air Force Special Operations School, Webster University, Pikes Peak State College, Wheaton College, and Purdue University.

In addition to the degree granting programs listed, he also graduated from the Brazilian and U.S. Army Command and General Staff Colleges while also graduating from the U.S. Air Force and U.S. Army War Colleges. He is a national and state-level Certified Emergency Manager (CEM), Master Military Emergency Manager, and graduate of the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s (FEMA) National Emergency Management Advanced and Executive Academies along with their Master Exercise Practitioner Program (MEPP). Rob has also graduated from the NATO Crisis Management and Disaster Response Course, Harvard’s Kennedy School Leadership in Crisis and Yale’s School of Management Leading Through Crisis programs. He publishes regularly, presents his work in practitioner and academic settings, and collaborates nationally. He is globally engaged with various humanitarian assistance and emergency management topics by sitting on advisory boards for emergency management education at Pikes Peak State College, University of Central Missouri, and Purdue University. His most recent publication is a book entitled “31 Days to Emergency Preparedness and Personal Resilience.”