Arrietta Chakos is director of the Acting in Time Advance Disaster Recovery Project at Harvard Kennedy School focusing on disaster policy research and application. A seismic safety advocate, she was assistant city manager in Berkeley, California, until 2007 and managed the city’s intergovernmental coordination and hazard mitigation initiatives.
She worked with the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) for its report to Congress on all hazards risk mitigation, and with the California Governor’s Office of Emergency Services (CalEMA) on natural hazards projects and seismic safety legislation. She served as a technical advisor to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) on its international seismic safety program for schools; the World Bank on disaster risk reduction and sustainable development in the metropolitan Istanbul region; and with the National Research Council’s Committee on Community Disaster Resilience. Currently, she is a member of the Disasters’ Roundtable at the National Academies of Science and an advisor on the current Ford Foundation study of Stafford Act implementation in the Gulf Coast region. Other efforts include working on disaster policy issues with the Association of Bay Area Governments; the Earthquake Engineering Research Institute; GeoHazards International; the Center for Biosecurity; and the University of Colorado’s Natural Hazards Center.
Publications include papers on disaster risk reduction for technical conferences; the American Society of Civil Engineers; Spectra, an engineering professional publication; the Natural Hazards’ Observer; the United Nations journal, Regional Development; and as a contributor to Keeping Schools Safe in Earthquake Country (OECD, 2004) and Global Warming, Natural Hazards, and Emergency Management (2009). She received a B.A. from California State University, Humboldt, and a M.P.A. from Harvard Kennedy School.