Mike was the Deputy Regional Director for Southern Region from 2016 to 2021, and the Deputy Director for Performance and Resources (now the Chief Program Officer) in Southern Region from 2011 to 2016.
In those roles, he led operations and workforce management activities across a very active region, leading and supporting the NWS mission through over 75 billion-dollar weather and climate events.
He previously served as the Meteorologist-in-Charge of the Weather Forecast Office in Huntsville, Alabama. Under his leadership, the office earned four Department of Commerce Bronze Medals and back-to-back National Weather Association Operational Achievement Awards.
Mike earned a Bachelor’s and Master’s degree in Meteorology from Texas A&M University. He and his wife Lori live in Mansfield, TX with their two daughters.
Ed attended Yale University where he received his BA with honors and Distinction in Economics, MA in Economics, and MBA, and he holds the CFA designation.
Dr. Hotez is an internationally recognized physician-scientist in neglected tropical diseases and vaccine development. As head of the Texas Children’s CVD, he leads a team and product development partnership for developing new vaccines for hookworm infection, schistosomiasis, leishmaniasis, Chagas disease, and SARS/MERS/SARS-2 coronavirus, diseases affecting hundreds of millions of children and adults worldwide, while championing access to vaccines globally and in the United States. In 2006 at the Clinton Global Initiative, he co-founded the Global Network for Neglected Tropical Diseases to provide access to essential medicines for hundreds of millions of people.
He obtained his undergraduate degree in molecular biophysics from Yale University in 1980 (phi beta kappa), followed by a Ph.D. degree in biochemistry from Rockefeller University in 1986, and an M.D. from Weil Cornell Medical College in 1987. Dr. Hotez has authored more than 500 original papers and is the author of four single-author books, including Forgotten People, Forgotten Diseases (ASM Press); Blue Marble Health: An Innovative Plan to Fight Diseases of the Poor amid Wealth (Johns Hopkins University Press); Vaccines Did Not Cause Rachel’s Autism (Johns Hopkins University Press); and a forthcoming 2020 book on vaccine diplomacy in an age of war, political collapse, climate change and anti-science (Johns Hopkins University Press).
Dr. Hotez served previously as President of the American Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene, and he is founding Editor-in-Chief of PLoS Neglected Tropical Diseases. He is an elected member of the National Academy of Medicine (Public Health Section) and the American Academy of Arts & Sciences (Public Policy Section). In 2011, he was awarded the Abraham Horwitz Award for Excellence in Leadership in Inter-American Health by the Pan American Health Organization of the WHO. In 2014–16, he served in the Obama Administration as US Envoy, focusing on vaccine diplomacy initiatives between the US Government and countries in the Middle East and North Africa. In 2018, he was appointed by the US State Department to serve on the Board of Governors for the US Israel Binational Science Foundation and is frequently called upon frequently to testify before US Congress. He has served on infectious disease task forces for two consecutive Texas Governors. For these efforts in 2017 he was named by FORTUNE Magazine as one of the 34 most influential people in health care, while in 2018 he received the Sustained Leadership Award from Research!America. In 2019 he received the Ronald McDonald House Charities Award for Medical Excellence.
Most recently as both a vaccine scientist and autism parent, he has led national efforts to defend vaccines and to serve as an ardent champion of vaccines going up against a growing national “antivax” threat. In 2019, he received the Award for Leadership in Advocacy for Vaccines from the American Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene. Dr. Hotez appears frequently on television (including BBC, CNN, Fox News, and MSNBC), radio, and in newspaper interviews (including the New York Times, USA Today, Washington Post, and Wall Street Journal).
While with TDEM, Suzannah has been actively involved in the state’s response to 15 presidentially declared disasters including Hurricane Harvey, one of the most catastrophic disasters to hit Texas. Suzannah came to DPS from the Texas A&M Engineering Extension Service (TEEX) where she worked in two different divisions: the National Emergency Response and Rescue Training Center and Disaster Preparedness and Response/Texas Task Force 1. She was involved in planning, training and exercises and managed large projects in both Texas and across the U.S.
Before her tenure at TEEX, Suzannah worked for the U.S. Department of State as a member of the Foreign Service, serving at several US embassies.
Suzannah obtained a bachelor’s degree in psychology/sociology at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas and a master’s in business administration from Schiller International University in London, England. Suzannah is also a Certified Emergency Manager® (CEM®) through the International Association of Emergency Managers (IAEM).
David R. Maidment is the Hussein M. Alharthy Centennial Chair in Civil Engineering Emeritus at The University of Texas at Austin where he served on the faculty from 1981 to 2019. He received his Bachelor’s degree in Agricultural Engineering with First Class Honors from the University of Canterbury, Christchurch, New Zealand, and his M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in Civil Engineering from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He is a specialist in surface water hydrology, and in particular in the application of geographic information systems to hydrology.
