"Intelligence manifests itself as the possibility of varying one's behavior in a changing world." - Humberto Maturana
The Adapt Institute Team
Founders
Dr. Steven Jensen is an advisor in disaster risk management with thirty-five years international experience and a strong grasp of global trends for disaster risk reduction. His focus on emerging patterns of risk places Dr. Jensen in a unique position to advance how uncertainty and change are addressed in practice.
A formative experience for Dr. Jensen was managing refugee camps for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees in Southeast Asia. Subsequent experience includes firefighting, emergency management, and academic practices in both New Zealand and the United States. Fieldwork has taken him to East Africa, the Philippines, China, Japan, Mexico and El Salvador.
Shirley Feldmann-Jensen, DPPD, MPH, has policy expertise at the intersection of disaster risk management and public health. She brings both international and domestic experience, spanning a range of public health, disaster risk management, and instructional settings. The emphasis of her research and didactic work is given to policy influences for practice, implementation planning, evaluation and improvement processes.
She earned her Doctoral degree in Policy, Planning and Development from the University of Southern California Sol Price School of Public Policy. Dr. Feldmann-Jensen also holds a Master of Public Health (MPH) degree from California State University of Long Beach, and a graduate certificate in Health Emergencies in Large Populations from Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. Her undergraduate work was at the University of Minnesota, School of Nursing. Additionally, she is a Certified Health Education Specialist, holds several certifications from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, and brings international experience from a range of settings. Proficient in curriculum development and delivery, Dr. Feldmann-Jensen is dedicated to fostering students in the process of synthesizing disaster patterns and adaptive capacity building for the communities they live and work in.
Gregory Vigneaux began his career as a wildland firefighter for National Park Service and United States Forest Service Hotshot Crews. He has a bachelors in Wildland Fire Management and a masters in Emergency Services Administration. Gregory leverages his ongoing research at the intersection of risk, organizational design, and human dimensions, toward developing methods for integrating the Core Competencies in professional settings. At the 2018 Colorado Wildland Fire Conference, Gregory delivered a talk titled "Wildfire Risk Adaptation as Worldmaking: A look at human dimensions," presenting his work on making sense of and designing for human complexity.