Nicole Morales

Ms. Nicole Morales, Deputy Director of Response, is a strategic advisor to local and state governments and private sector organizations responding to natural and human-made disasters and humanitarian crises.

Nicole has led multi-disciplinary response teams across the country for hurricanes, wildfires, explosions, the COVID-19 pandemic, and most recently, refugee resettlement and humanitarian missions at the United States (US) Southern Border. Throughout her career, Nicole has contributed to more than 30 preparedness initiatives for local and state governments, focusing on mass care, sheltering, and evacuations; terrorism and active threat response; incident management; community engagement; and disaster recovery and resilience.

During her time as a consultant to the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), Nicole provided planning expertise to the National Planning Branch within FEMA’s Response Directorate and collaborated with federal interagency stakeholders to develop national response plans including the all-hazards Response Federal Interagency Operational Plan; the Nuclear and Radiological Incident Annex; Federal Evacuation Support Annex; and the Region V Power Outage Incident Annex.

In support of the United States (US) Department of State, Nicole designed and facilitated multiple international exercises for the Office of Weapons of Mass Destruction Terrorism (WMDT) in support of the Global Initiative to Combat Nuclear Terrorism, a multilateral initiative co-chaired by the US and Russia that sought to improve global capacity to prevent, detect, and respond to nuclear terrorism.

Nicole has also been deployed as a Public Information Officer (PIO) on multiple response missions with the veteran-led, non-governmental organization Team Rubicon. She is a disaster survivor turned disaster responder. While she is now San Diego-based, she remains fiercely proud of her New Orleans roots.

Nicole graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in International Conflict and Security from George Washington University and a Graduate Certificate in Intelligence Analysis from the University of Maryland.